Elon Musk

[Fake Messiah]

Recently, Elon Musk has been promising that he will send humans to Mars in 4 years, and even Donald Trump is now saying that if he becomes president, he will send humans to Mars.

In reality, it is ridiculous to expect that humans will be landing on Mars in less than ten years, but it will probably take several decades—probably not even this century.

These are just some of the problems that haven’t been solved even by “the smartest man on Earth” Elon Musk.

What you think?

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Energy. Humans need lots of energy—think kilowatts, especially since Mars is frequently colder than Antarctica, and you can’t heat on coal or burn wood. This can’t be solved by solar panels since there is less sunlight than on Earth. This also can’t be solved by the Plutonium-238 radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which some rovers are currently using on Mars because you don’t get that much electricity per unit of mass (roughly speaking, for every 2 kg (4.5 lbs) of plutonium, you get enough electric power to run a laptop). So the only viable solution would be some kind of mini nuclear fission reactor which seem to exist since recently, but they are still in the testing phase.

Wearing heavy spacesuits. People on Mars would need to be dressed as if they were doing spacewalk around the ISS, but, unlike in space, there is gravity on Mars which would make these suits very heavy to walk around in, although gravity on Mars is only 1/3 that of on Earth.

Carrying all the food and equipment from Earth to Mars and landing it there. Just imagine carrying food for at least 3 people for a 3 years trip and add to that equipment, living quarters, nuclear reactor, and so on, that is some heavy load that needs to be lifted from Earth and then landed on Mars. That kind of technology (boosters) doesn’t exist yet.

Water for drinking. Remember when I mentioned food for 3 people for 3 years? Well, water is a whole different category that NASA pretty much gave up on carrying all that water and instead is thinking that people could dig for (frozen) water on Mars and then drink it. But for humans to drink Martian water, that water would be needed to be discovered well in advance, and then filtered and tested so people can drink it. And how can you test if water is drinkable on Mars when you are on Earth? There would need to be missions just devoted to finding and preparing water on Mars at least 10 years before humans arrive there, but this has not been happening. Maybe even bring some of that water back to Earth for further testing.

Radiation in deep space and on Mars Considering that humans have not been much farther than Earth’s orbit, it is unknown what kind of effects would radiation have on the human body in that journey between Earth and Mars. Maybe the best way to find out is to send a pig inside of a spaceship toward Mars and back. The surface of Mars is also very radioactive, so spacesuits would need to have some protection, which has not yet been solved.

Carrying it all back to Earth You would need at least 7 kilograms per 1 kilogram of propellant to take off from Mars and that propellant would need to be carried from Earth. Now, there are some plans that it could be made on Mars (taking carbon from air and hydrogen from water and turning it into methane), but most lean that it would need to be carried from Earth. Plus, the rocket would need to take off from the Martian equator and there aren’t many interesting things on the equator, so people would need to make long journeys toward the launching site hauling wagons of food and equipment.


So no wonder this 2016 official tweet by SpaceX was never nothing more than a blatant lie:



BONUS
So when could people walk on Mars? My guess is when they make nuclear (fission) rockets because they would be capable of carrying much more weight than the current chemical rockets. Then people could, perhaps, launch a lot of load into Earth’s orbit, assemble it there like ISS, hook nuclear rockets to the load (because they can’t take off from Earth by themselves), and push it all to Mars. But how would it all then land there? — idk. And these rockets could see the light of day relatively soon, but there also needs to be the testing stage period, and who knows what else.

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