What a time to be alive. We could be (probably are) on the cusp of being an interplanetary species. Elon Musk revealed his plans for taking humanity to Mars at the International Astronautical Congress on Tuesday. And it starts in July of 2018.
There are a lot of things you could read about his plan, but THIS is the only thing you need to. For those of you who have an hour to kill,
.Essentially he’s going to fire skyscraper-sized rockets carrying 100-300 people and thousands of tons of cargo into space every 26 months until there are a million people on Mars and the planet is completely autonomous from Earth. He anticipates hitting this number some time around 2070, with the first manned mission to Mars leaving in January 2025, about eight years from now. Right now it’s estimated to cost $10 billion per person to go to Mars; he wants that number to be around $500,000 by the first manned missions, and as low as $60,000 (2016 dollars) by the time they reach scale. If all goes to plan, the first mission will take three months to reach Mars; by the time it’s a full blown colony that it will take as little as 30 days.
Implications
You guys know I’m an implications guy. So let’s assume for a moment that Musk is right. He’s notorious for being overly optimistic, so maybe his timeline is off by a couple years but he’s not the guy I’m going to bet against. What are the implications of starting a new society on another planet?
The first one that comes to mind is who do we send first? In days of old, you’d send warrior sailors to vanquish whatever natives you encountered. But we’ve already kinda done that with all the probes we’ve sent. So far we haven’t found anyone/anything worthy of rape and subjugation, so that’s out.
The obvious answer might be scientists and engineers. I wouldn’t argue that point. But there’s a lot of heavy lifting to be done in the early days. Job Number One (or close to it) is going to be establishing a propellant plant so you’re able to gas up and get the hell back to Earth. That means plumbers, hazmat guys, construction workers, etc. If you’re limited to 100 people, what mix of genius vs. regular Joe do you send?
Naturally, this speaks to the larger issue. As things scale up, who are we sending to Mars? Are we really looking to import a bunch of Earthly problems to a new planet? I’m pretty sure there’s no place for bankers in the new world. That doesn’t mean I don’t expect to see a Rothschild heir worm his or her way onto a Mars manifest to establish a Central Bank in the early going.
But seriously, how do you keep assholes off of Mars? Even if Musk is wildly successful and manages to put a million people up there by 2070, that’s still only .01% of the projected Earth population. Who makes the cut, and how do we ensure that we never face a Clinton vs. Trump on the Red Planet?
As jazzed as I am about becoming an interplanetary species, these are the things I worry about. Greedy shitheels are the rule of our species, not the exception. Musk himself is concerned that he’ll die before he achieves his vision, and some greedhead will replace him and rape Mars.
Perhaps the worst possible outcome is that Mars becomes
and Earth becomes a ghetto. It’s tough to imagine this with all the work Mars has cut out for it, but it’s conceivable that Martians eventually reach a time when they’re sick of Earthly bullshit and cut off ties. Musk is even more concerned that Earth will just continue to fuck up, and endanger the nascent colony (which is why he’s so anxious to scale it to autonomy from Earth).The Plus Side
On the plus side, oh my God what an opportunity if you’re in your 20’s. Think about the real estate alone. This is a brand new planet where no one owns anything yet.
Musk even says that Mars will be a glorified way-station to other parts of the solar system. You put his technology together with that of Planetary Resources asteroid mining and the possibilities are limitless.
Think about starting everything over from scratch, only knowing what you know now. All the best of Earth’s technology, plus whatever you figure out on Mars. And nobody is there yet. It’s the New World without the smallpox blankets.
I’m fired up about life on Mars. I pretty much consider life a joke to begin with, so I think it’s pretty ironic to be born on one planet and buried on another. That’s not to say I’ll ever make the cut, and if they’re smart about the shitheel filter I won’t. My kids might, though, and that’d make it harder for them to pick my pocket. It’s a win for me either way.
So what do you guys think? Is Musk full of shit and we’re doomed to spend the remainder of our days on this miserable rock? Is there some flaw in the technology that’ll turn the first few settlers into human candles? Is Mars really where it’s at? Where we’ll transcend all the Earthly bullshit like money and status? Is our species destined to become interplanetary, or does our grasp exceed our reach to the point that no one will ever know we were here?
Most important: How long until there’s an M&A shop on Mars? And can you get in if you’re non-target?
My dad and I were talking about this recently...the erosion of progress in America.
Now more than ever, this Country needs some sort of exciting project to unite us together and invoke some sort of national pride like the Apollo space program in the 1960's.
I'm too lazy to look but I was watching a NASA documentary recently and the guy said in the 1960's NASA's budget was something like 2% of Fed Budget now it is .05%. It doesn't seem like our government really cares about going to Mars given the lack of budgeting for this purpose.
Progress and innovation in STEM should be a national priority. It doesn't seem like it is.
All the momentum is from the private sector interested in commercializing space. Government is a second-tier player at this point (or at least will be very soon).
Nice
Not Lazy enough to give you an SB. Well done!
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I say it's a century before we actually make travel to Mars safe enough and cost effective enough. I say 150 years before we get a small civilization living on Mars full time with proper communication between the two planets. 200 years Mars civilization prospers or we abandon the project.
I also don't believe people would live on Mars. There's barely any oxygen, it's not a livable planet! One fuck up of whatever system in pumping out oxygen the whole civilization dies and it scares off even the few brave enough to consider to live there.
"Most important: How long until there's an M&A shop on Mars? And can you get in if you're non-target?"
Depends on how well you network and whether you know anyone in the area. You also might need to learn to speak Martian.
In all seriousness, I second REPE8 that STEM should be a national priority.
Turning Mars into a habitable planet seems like a tall order, to say the least.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars
Adapting to the environment is very different than adapting the environment.
I see it as a mining colony at most. there's a great documentary on hulu about how because of mars's core, lack of plate tectonics, lack of atmosphere, and temperature, that it won't be hospitable for tens of thousands, probably millions of years. these types of changes that would cause an entire planet to change take tremendous amounts of time.
also, there are plenty of places on earth I'd rather see before going to Mars
I'd like to hit all 7 continents of my own planet first...
Right, but that's tens of thousands of years with current technology, correct? Impossible to know that we won't come up with some amazing terraforming techniques once we have a colony there.
Not technology, geology bro
Ready to get into Space Construction. It's going to be "out of this world".
listen to Arnold
Why would someone want to live on a planet with no oxygen/water/plants/animals? Wouldn't it be easier to just colonize South Dakota first?
zing!
I have no idea, but I think the concept is really cool. I would be curious to see how scientists approach making the planet more habitable. What I like about Musk is even if this is just completely crazy, it will lead to something good, some byproduct of this whole adventure will benefit us in ways we don't know.
That said, I'm not going. Maybe we could send some of the shitheels there first to test it out.
meh, sounds like a fancy / bigger version of Dubai. Worth seeing when on a long layover I suppose.
Galactic Emperor Musk - let's make it happen.
All Elon has to do is get there and prove there is oil on Mars. The US military and oil companies will do the rest.
+1 for the Mean Girls reference
Elon Musk is lucky he's smart and wealthy because that is one crazy mofo.
It blows my mind that in the 1960's, with the technology back then, we sent people to the moon. When I think about that and juxtapose it with today it feels like we've gone backwards. 60 years prior to that, we were JUST LEARNING HOW TO FLY. Hell, even 40 years before that we were in bi planes running around. It's incredible to think about and realize just how much, in some respects, we've slowed down on the innovation and exploration front.
I'm bullish on Mars. Market opportunity =new planet, kinda hard to beat even with extreme low probability of success.
Maybe Musk should focus his time on hitting a Tesla delivery target or selling a solar panel for a profit first.....
Yeah. This.
I'm bullish on Mars. Market opportunity =new planet, kinda hard to beat even with extreme low probability of success.
I'm a fan of Elon Musk, but the guy can't seem to follow through on anything. He's a great visionary, but will never reach his potential because he can't/won't follow through. Figure out timely, profitable production of Tesla's, deliver a hyperloop here on Earth, etc. Stop being so ADD.
Each of his ventures may take longer to come to fruition than had he focused on only one, but that doesn't mean they won't come to fruition. And let's be honest - his achievements and influence on humanity to date haven't exactly been trivial. And who knows. Perhaps, if one has resources as vast as that of Elon Musk, this may be the superior long-term strategy, rather than focusing on single ventures.
How about one of his ventures comes to fruition? I love Teslas and I want one, but he needs to freakin' focus on delivering his orders on time--Tesla hasn't yet won; it is just beginning to fight. He needs to get his bloody auto pilot working as I'm tired of reading about a Tesla auto pilot accident every month now. He needs to get his rockets to not blow up on the pad before he can start promising to set up a 1 million person colony on Mars. And the list goes on. To your point about Musk's resources, he may be wealthy, but he's not exactly liquid. His practical ability to deploy his financial resources are not as robust as one might assume by simply looking at his overall wealth.
Like I said, I'm a huge fan of Elon Musk--we need more big thinkers--but it's 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. The world would be better off if great men like Musk--and he's a great man--would focus on difficult but attainable goals rather than floating impracticable ideas like hyperloop (i.e. private property rights is a huge problem for hyperloop, even though the science may be sound) or setting up huge Mars colonies in the 21st century.
Its also worth pointing out that he is not involved in any hyperloop ventures and has said that he won't be. He merely promotes the construction of one.
Musk is not a closer. Period.
People treat this guy like a pariah. All hail Father Musk.
Many shareholders of Tesla/Solar City are going to lose a lot of money if Musk cannot pull out the tight timelines he set in place to scale production. Tesla is significantly overleveraged and has a short 3-5 year window to get to profitability.
If you don't believe that the big 3 aren't currently developing similar capabilities as Tesla, then you are oblivious. They just aren't public about it. Tesla has to get people to feed off the dreams and visions of Musk in order to maintain it's excessive valuations to raise capital. Rant over.
Wow I messed that one up. Darn my non-target education.
pa·ri·ah. NOUN
1.an outcast:
"they were treated as social pariahs"
synonyms: outcast · persona non grata · leper · undesirable · more
Coffee is for closers only!
I do think Musk is more of an ideas guy than a "see it through from start to finish" kind of guy, but he is still doing great things in his own right. I think a future on Mars is achievable given the amount of innovation we have seen in the past 100 years alone, surely we can make it to another planet within the next 100.
As for life on Mars, I'm not educated enough to understand the complexities of a life on the red planet, I could see humans potentially living underground in a "City of Ember" way.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of space travel advancement occurred between ~1940 and 1970. And once the Cold War came to an end that pretty much ended the perceived need for national prestige through investment in space travel technology. Point is, we are unlikely to see major leaps forward in the next 100 years in space travel technology, if for no other reason than the huge cost that governments are not willing to incur; rather, we're more likely to see incremental improvements. I don't see incremental improvements leading us to a 1 million man Mars colony in the next century.
I'm bullish on Mars
This is really trippy actually. Imagine starting society from the ground up.
We need more people like Musk.
He may be overly optimistic and will probably miss his target dates by a mile, but at least he's trying to meaningfully evolve us as a species. We need to get off this damn planet.
If given a choice between people like Musk and the upteenth banker coming up with a 1,007th way to structure a synthetic CDO, I'll take Musk any day.
Indeed.
What are people's thoughts on orbital ark for those who want to get some exposure?
I love the idea. In regards to the timeline, I guess it all comes down to whether people see if this can become profitable commercialized, then it might even go faster and vice versa.
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