Why Elon Musk’s Plans to Go to Mars Look Unrealistic
Elon Musk is known for his dreams of conquering space. One of his latest projects involves building a permanent colony on Mars with regular flights of the Starship spacecraft. But how realistic are such goals?
As reported by Mail Online, the head of SpaceX recently stated that next year the company plans to send its Starship to the Red Planet together with the robotic passenger Optimus. According to Musk, this flight will be the first step towards the exploration of Mars by humans.
In a couple of years, he wants to organize regular flights to Mars, delivering the first colonists, whom he prefers to call “settlers”. In the future, the number of ships built should grow so much that dozens of flights will be sent to Mars every day.
Musk claims that SpaceX’s Texas facility will build 1,000 Starships a year to transport millions of people to Mars and create an extraterrestrial civilization.
However, the reality is far from these optimistic statements. Firstly, the testing of Starship itself is far from smooth: prototypes of the rocket regularly fail and are destroyed during test flights. Despite the confidence of the SpaceX team, it is unlikely that the technical difficulties will be resolved quickly.
Secondly, the task of settling the Red Planet is much more complicated than simply building bases.
There is no necessary infrastructure, no production facilities to ensure the survival of future Martians, no means of protection against radiation and no other critical elements of life support.
Even launching one ship requires solving many problems, not to mention creating an entire civilization far from Earth.
While the idea of establishing a human colony on Mars is indeed inspiring, the current situation shows that Musk’s stated timeframe seems overly ambitious. Humanity will probably reach Mars one day, but not anytime soon and certainly not as quickly as one of the richest people in the world promises.
