Elon Musk’s SpaceX is planning on going to Mars. NASA estimates that the cost will only be around $300 million.
Ever since Musk founded SpaceX is 2002, with the intention of eventually colonizing Mars, every move he has made has been the subject of attention. And for the past two years, a great deal of this attention has been focused specifically on the development of the Falcon Heavy rocket and the Dragon 2 capsule – the components with which Musk hopes to mount a lander mission to Mars in 2018.
Among other things, there is much speculation about how much this is going to cost. Given that one of SpaceX’s guiding principles is making space exploration cost-effective, just how much money is Musk hoping to spend on this important step towards a crewed mission? As it turns out, NASA produced some estimates at a recent meeting, which indicated that SpaceX is spending over $300 million on its proposed Mars mission.
When we reason mankind discovered and invented so much without having developed the concept of money, it gets hard to accept that money plays a major role in such endeavor.
What could, or rather should, be pondered is whether by turning our attention to space we would be giving up our own planet, since all inhospitable environment found in Mars can be found here on Earth with the advantage of having magnetic field, Atmosphere, gravity and source of heat with bearable variation, for instance, in desert places like Mojave, Aconcagua, Sahara or our poles.
It is peculiar that not only Elon Musk but several other organisations are applying a huge effort to accomplish this task. Would there be another major reason unknown to mere mortals?
What kind of people would accept to go in such project, knowing that communication will not be possible for a certain time periodically? Most certainly not the brightest minds will.
I won’t even get into deep about the time it will take to get there and the possible mental issues anyone might have during almost seven months of travel. There is absolutely no way to foresee behavior of people who will be submitted to this level of stress.
I fear academy is no longer in charge of paving the best roads for mankind but protecting the interest and/or vanities of few powerful, yet not as bright, people who simply have no better way to share their fortunes in a beneficial way with the ones who truly could use it.
As an astrophysicist, I tend to look a lot farther ahead our time and it’s just too sad people don’t live long enough to suffer the consequences of their own mistakes.
Godspeed