Elon Musk, the SpaceX originator, has lowered expectations of when a human colony can be established on Mars. In his speech at the Satellite 2020 conference, Musk admitted self-critically that he might not live long enough to witness living, breathing Martians despite such notable achievements as Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy successes.
Musk’s statement stresses the massive roadblocks that are being faced in this book, “SpaceX: Elon Musk and the Final Frontier” (Motorbooks) by Brad Bergan. Achieving this within years is possible but making a colony sustainable is still far in future.
Reported by Parami News “If we don’t improve our pace of progress, I’m definitely going to be dead before we go to Mars,” said Elon Musk at the Satellite 2020 conference held in Washington D.C. “If it’s taken us 18 years just to get ready to do the first people in orbit, we’ve got to improve our rate of innovation or based on past trends I am definitely going to be dead before Mars.”
According to Livescience.com’s reportage however, Musk had previously estimated that moving to Mars would cost between $100k (roughly Rs 8.4m) and $500k (roughly Rs 42m), with those figures dependent upon game-changing technological breakthroughs and sizable drops from current launch costs.
There are huge financial and logistic obstacles for colonizing Mars. This was higher than Musk’s estimate in 2017 that sending materials over there would cost around USD140k per tonne (about Rs 12m), which could actually rise on account of inflation or other causes.
Setting up a working settlement could demand more than $100 billion (roughly Rs 8.4 trillion) highlighting how daunting a task it would be. These exorbitant expenses coupled with the requirement for significant technological breakthroughs contribute significantly to uncertainty about whether colonies could be built on this Red Planet.
Therefore, it may be necessary to prioritize exploration of closer celestial bodies due to these impediments. By so doing, insights can be gained and the basis laid for future Mars missions from developing a sustainable human presence on the moon or prospecting asteroids for resources.
While dealing with the technical and financial difficulties of Mars colonization these interim targets might represent a more pragmatic option.
