"A Bunch of People Will Die" Going to Mars, Elon Musk Says

[hunter]

9. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Here, hold my beer.

The last courageous expansion of human territory was accomplished by the Pacific Islanders. Putting humans on Mars is not analogous, it's not even comparable to early explorations of Antarctica since we now have the means to explore places remotely with machines that have better sensory equipment than our own natural senses.

I don't think ordinary humans will ever have a significant presence in space beyond low earth orbit. We're just too fragile.

Sure, we can build habitats on the south pole, but that's easy in comparison to Mars. On the south pole there is water, air, human friendly atmospheric pressure. and shielding from the harsher radiations of outer space.

Lower earth orbit is partially shielded from the worst radiation, most of the time, but we're still playing the odds.

Mars has none of that.

If high technology human civilization manages to survive the environmental and social catastrophes it brought upon itself (which isn't a sure bet at this time) then outer space will belong to our intellectual offspring -- beings able to walk around on the surface of Mars naked.

I put my own energy into avoiding the environmental and social catastrophes, and encouraging the development of remote sensing technologies and artificial intelligence.

If hard-core genetic engineering of humans can ever be done in an ethical manner (which doesn't seem likely anytime soon) maybe we can build radiation resistant humans who don't need space suits.

Until then Elon Musk's dreams of Martian colonies are the modern equivalent of Jules Verne fantasy. We did not use giant canons to land the first men on the moon.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon