SpaceX's plan to colonize Mars

How are we feeling about SpaceX's plan to colonize Mars?

Here's one link talking about it, but a simple Google search will yield tons of others.

Personally I'm giddy about it. I can't wait for humans to colonize another planet. Just think about that, humans living on another planet. It's fantastic. It's a bold claim, but if anyone can do it it'd be Elon Musk and SpaceX. It won't happen quite by their timeline (sending the first manned mission in 2024) but I don't doubt that they'll do it soon after.

That planet looks like Vulcan. hell yeah when are we leaving !!

I'm super excited about it.

Not just for the chance of humans exploring space and advancing science, but also to push social and political boundaries.

Imagine how colony politics will play out! I don't even like politics, but interplanetary politics would be mind-blowing! Also, what kind of culture would Mars end up developing? Would it do its own thing? Or remain closely tied to Earth/cultural society?

SO MUCH EXCITING STUFF!

     
“We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not yet learned the simple art of living together as brothers.”

http://thinkexist.com/quotation/we_have_learned_to_fly_the_air_like_birds_and/255182.html


Why take US.. our problems else where where we can't even decide to do with ourselfs? Just a thought


*edit I'm for space exploration and...AND the human potential. Yes but we are still fighting...here as... we will most likely fight...there

I think that at first it will have to function like a colony politically. The interesting thing though is that it's a private company doing this, not a government. That makes the politics more interesting I think. I would imagine that it will fall under US rule since SpaceX is US based. Give it enough time though I think the colony will want to establish it's own political structure and become independent. Musk said that the reason he wants to send 1 million people is that he thinks that's how many people it will take to make Mars self sufficient. If Earth stopped sending ships there would need to be at least 1 million Martians to keep the society going. I get that.

I think like any society it will have political problems just like we do on Earth because they will still be humans. But, I think that the first few decades might not have that. The people there will be struggling to survive, that struggle could push people to band together rather than fall apart. Or they'll all kill each other and the next crew will show up to the start of a sci-fi/horror movie.

I am super excited about it though. If it wasn't going to cost $200k a person to be on early flights I'd probably try to trick my wife into going.

Despite there being a lot of technical issues, there is also the huge psychological toll of ICE environments (Isolated, Confined, Extreme).

Polar research stations and nuclear submarine crews have to often spend most of the year locked up in isolation with a small team, so I would have imagined a seasoned nuclear submarine crew might have been the best choice for something like this - rather then just paying passengers. Or of course Jedi trained in mind control (there own mind that is!!!).

So I wonder what will be a stronger psychological foundation for ICE.. the 'I paid for this' or 'its my duty to do this and I'm getting paid to do it'. The former seems vulnerable for a shifting perspective on ones return on investment and therefore a risk of a crash in their investments value to them LOL!! The later seems vulnerable to 'duty to who' as a result of the disconnection between Earth and humanity - but then the duty might seamlessly shift to duty to us ie survival. But in both cases with no chance of ever returning, the best they could hope for is resupply and new arrivals. Though maybe good virtual reality will allow them to feel like they are able to spend a lot of time back on Earth.. at least the sights and sounds.

A nasty solution to overpopulation perhaps.... send everyone at a certain age to Mars, 40 or 50 perhaps :ohmy:

Inter planet retirement...has merit!

I've read the thread really quickly while on the bus so the only thing I can say is.... yeah! Absolutely excited about this.
Moreover... More work for me! :lol:

I think it's great! I would like to visit or at least go out into space one time before I return to The Force. I would be happy with going to the moon because it's closer but, if Mars is the place to be sign me up! just make sure to bring plenty of food! LOL

In fairness, I'm not an engineer, but I keep being told that the recent... royal frak-up (to put it mildly) with a SpaceX mission was - and I quote - "a noobish mistake, there is just no other word for it". Couple that with the whole HyperLoop fantasy and I don't know why that bunch deserves our attention, let alone money. If I were a tad more cynical, I'd suspect that this is exactly and exclusively what they are after, too.
This is not to say that a Mars colony is impossible, but I have zero confidence that Elon Musk or SpaceX out of all people will have anything to do with it, and I'll be happy to be proven wrong when it happens.

Before we go on, I wish to take a moment to remind everyone that this is the man who according to this in all seriousness thinks that vaporizing what ever frozen carbon dioxide there is on Mars' surface with nuclear fusion bombs detonated in rapid succession above the planet's poles, in the hopes of raising the atmosphere's CO₂ to warm it up is viable. Meanwhile in reality, that atmosphere consists of over 95% CO₂ as it is, and Mars also has a solid core, so it has no magnetic field to speak of which is why its atmosphere is so thin and cannot retain much of the heat it receives from the sun, even if it consisted entirely of greenhouse gases. Of course it should be also noted that the kind of nuclear energy this would take in total puts all of mankind's past and current energy expenses to shame and a rapid succession of separately launched missiles is borderline impossible even with the best of probe controls we have unless we bind them together with literal chains.

A thousand rockets, one every 26 months, that's their "minimum". Let's be generous and say we launch four rockets every two years. Even at a rate like that we are looking at a 500 year time period between the very first and the very last launch, at the "minimum" number of rockets. There is a saying about rocks and glass houses, so I shan't press this much, but what kind of vanity does it take to presume that the idea one personally has or the company one set up is so brilliant as to persevere over half a millennium? This is of course assuming Earth will remain habitable for us, we don't annihilate ourselves and that we retain a cultural interest in colonizing other planets at all. Is one more small-minded for not gazing into the stars quite so much, or for thinking that twenty generations down the line people still will only because we do now?
I hesitate to call him insane, because I think there is a chance he is in it for the attention and the money, but there is hardly a more fitting term to describe all of his recent... "visions".