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SpaceX Founder Envisions Mars Colony
You can’t accuse Elon Musk of not thinking big. He helped found the internet commerce site PayPay and went on to found SpaceX, which has successfully rocketed a supply capsule to the space station. Now Musk is in the early stages of planning a colony on Mars.
As Rob Coppinger reports for Space.com, Musk discussed his plans for Mars November 16 at the Royal Aeronautical Society, where he received the organization’s gold medal for helping to commercialize space. He said, “At Mars, you can start a self-sustaining civilization and grow it into something really big.”
What Musk has in mind is sending people, at first just a few, later as many as 80,000, on one-way trips to the Red Planet. Coppinger elaborates:
Accompanying the founders of the new Mars colony would be large amounts of equipment, including machines to produce fertilizer, methane and oxygen from Mars’ atmospheric nitrogen and carbon dioxide and the planet’s subsurface water ice.
The Red Planet pioneers would also take construction materials to build transparent domes, which when pressurized with Mars’ atmospheric CO2 could grow Earth crops in Martian soil. As the Mars colony became more self sufficient, the big rocket [used for the trips] would start to transport more people and fewer supplies and equipment.
Edith McCrotch
November 29th, 2012
Where do I sign up to freekin’ leave this crap sandwich of a nation we live in now?
Bad Brad
November 29th, 2012
Edith, the hell with that, let’s send them there.
Joe
November 29th, 2012
Would these flights come with an instruction book titled “To Serve Man”???
Unslung Hero
November 29th, 2012
In 1969 I thought that we would be on Mars in MY LIFETIME! I was thrilled, but have since seen the Democrats, mainly, create a welfare state and squander our nations future. Such a shame that we now have obama in office and NASA in starvation!
msq
November 29th, 2012
isnt it pay pal?
or is it something elese?
dont care what it was, can I go to mars?
we gotta leve bama here right?
Xavier
November 29th, 2012
Let’s go. It’ll be easier to start over than to fix this system. Consider it Second Foundation.
Call me when there’s enough O2 to use gunpowder.
Mr.Pinko
November 29th, 2012
When we colonize Mars what will the tax rate be?
AbigailAdams
November 29th, 2012
It’s hip. It’s new. It’s novel. It’s progressive.
It’s Perfect!!