(October 5, 2024 at 6:24 pm)HappySkeptic Wrote: Humans are not going to go to Mars and back on Musk's Starship anytime soon. That is fantasy. He will require many refueling rockets, and hasn't even thought about radiation protection (water around the surface would add to the weight) or the food requirement.
When humans do go to Mars, there is no reason to stay beyond some billionaire's fantasy.
Okay, Elon, let's say Skynet destroys humanity, or a planet killer asteroid hits. Your colony of a few hundred people have no way of sustaining their technology without help from Earth. You would need mining, smelting, and heavy manufacturing, energy and air creation facilities, high tech food growing facilities. Literally every piece of important technology will break down and have to be replaced with something that does a similar job.
Even if you had a population of millions to make an economy viable, and had figured out natively-viable low-tech methods of surviving, the environment is so hostile that even a single problem would doom everyone to death.
Musk would be better off working out terraforming technology. Without water, an atmosphere, non-poisonous soil and protection from Solar radiation, there is no way for Mars to be more than a curiosity for Nations or billionaires to visit.
(Bold mine)
He hasn’t got the resources. If it’s expensive to send humans to Mars - even for a looky-loo and an immediate return - terraforming would be orders of magnitude pricier.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax