Futurism: Elon Musk's Plans for a City on Mars Will Likely End in Horrifying Mass Death

[Dennis Donovan]

Futurism - Elon Musk's Plans for a City on Mars Will Likely End in Horrifying Mass Death

"No way that you could scale up to a million people on Mars without something catastrophic happening."

Nov 30, 7:00 AM EST by Victor Tangermann



/snip/

But his lofty plans for a highly risky space colony over 100 million miles away from home could be doomed from the start.

As biologist and author Kelly Weinersmith and her husband, cartoon artist Zach Weinersmith, detail in their painstakingly researched 2023 book "A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?" the planet is a terrible choice for a settlement.

In fact, they predict, the effort could rapidly devolve into a drawn-out and extremely expensive humanitarian disaster of epic proportions.

In a new interview with CNN, the pair elaborated on their newfound skepticism.

"The more we got into it — by year two out of the four-year research process, we were like, OK, there’s a lot of stuff we don’t know that we still need to figure out," Kelly told the broadcaster. "And if we do this soon, it could be an ethical catastrophe."

"No way that you could scale up to a million people on Mars without something catastrophic happening," she continued, "either in terms of it turns out we can’t have babies up there, and moms and babies are dying or getting cancer."

"If you want to do this, it’s got to be the slow work of generations to build up to a point where we could be self-sustaining on Mars," she added.

/snip

[peregrinus]

1. Mars is just a con

Human space exploration is a money pit and will go no where.

[DFW]

2. Sending a million Republicans to Mars

And Musk pays for it. Sounds OK to me. I certainly would put up no obstacle to that plan.

[Disaffected]

3. A city on Mars is just another

Musk fever fantasy.

It will be a long time in the future before humans living on other celestial bodies makes actual sense.

Who in their right mind would want to live their lives on Mars anyhow??

[applegrove]

4. The astronauts who come back to earth, from being

on the Space Station for months, cannot walk when they hit earth. If they landed on Mars, and were two feet away from their oxygen cannister, they could not get to it.

[GoCubsGo]

7. The solar radiation on Mars, alone, is prohibitive.

They'd be getting cancer left and right within days. Even without all the other issues, such as reduced gravity, and the fact that it's something like -130 degrees F there, that would be enough to stop squash any chance of colonization on Mars.

[LudwigPastorius]

5. It's OK.

Musk is going to put Governor Kodos in charge.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Kodos

[Retrograde]

6. The first English attempts to colonize North America

were disastrous - and they access to breathable air, drinkable water, gravity, and occasionally non-hostile locals who could help if both sides cooperated. Plus, they had knowledge accumulated by the Spanish that could have told them they couldn't just recreate their home country in the Americas. The Roanoke colony of 1585 had disappeared without a trace within three years, Jamestown in the early 1600s came close to starvation (and there is some evidence of cannibalism among the survivors), the Plimouth colony of 1620 managed to escape starvation because of help from the locals.

Now throw in lower gravity, bombardment by cosmic radiation, water and air shortages, a 6 month long supply line at the best of times and you have a number of problems that have to be solved simultaneously for a colony on Mars to have a chance of succeeding. But Mr. Exploding Teslas knows everything, or at least he and his fanbois think he does, and I'm sure he plans to funnel the billions of government "waste" dollars he and Shady are looking for into his pet Mars project. A more realistic but less glamorous mission would be a small settlement on the moon

BTW, I recommend the Weinersmiths' book: they didn't come across as opposed to the idea of colonizing space, but they bring up a lot of practical problems that need to be solved first.

[LeftInTX]

8. Send Trump and Musk

[Baitball Blogger]

9. The most abusive, overreaching arrogant pricks

On Earth must be assuming that they will attract the most congenial, self-sacrificing people on Earth to populate mars. I say, nope. It will never happen.

[Retrograde]

11. Elon and his cronies probably assume

that they will get the bulk of the resources and the peons will scrounge and squabble for what's left, just like on Earth. Surely they, the elite, won't have to sacrifice anything in this brave new world - they deserve everything just for being so lucky at birth.

[El-Capitan]

10. I think of the movie The Martian.

Matt Damon did not look like he was having fun ... but I would go. I really would.

Frankly, I'd hitch a ride on any passing spacecraft, alien or not.

[dalton99a]

12. Did he fix the Tesla software?

[Emrys]

13. Musk talking to one of his offspring in 2040 or so:

A bit of a stretch, of course. I hope Musk shuffles off to alternative astral plains long before that, the chances of his being on speaking terms with any of his progeny by then look slim, and short of intensive hair plug therapy on his jawline, he could only sport such a luxurious beard in his dreams.