The Elon Musk interview on Mars colonization

[bananas]

http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/the-elon-musk-interview-on-mars/

Exodus

Elon Musk argues that we must put a million people on Mars if we are to ensure that humanity has a future

by Ross Andersen
30 September 2014

‘Fuck Earth!’ Elon Musk said to me, laughing. ‘Who cares about Earth?’ We were sitting in his cubicle, in the front corner of a large open-plan office at SpaceX headquarters in Los Angeles. It was a sunny afternoon, a Thursday, one of three designated weekdays Musk spends at SpaceX. Musk was laughing because he was joking: he cares a great deal about Earth. When he is not here at SpaceX, he is running an electric car company. But this is his manner. On television Musk can seem solemn, but in person he tells jokes. He giggles. He says things that surprise you.

<snip>

‘I think there is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multi-planetary,’ he told me, ‘in order to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen, in which case being poor or having a disease would be irrelevant, because humanity would be extinct. It would be like, “Good news, the problems of poverty and disease have been solved, but the bad news is there aren’t any humans left.”’

Musk has been pushing this line – Mars colonisation as extinction insurance – for more than a decade now, but not without pushback. ‘It’s funny,’ he told me. ‘Not everyone loves humanity. Either explicitly or implicitly, some people seem to think that humans are a blight on the Earth’s surface. They say things like, “Nature is so wonderful; things are always better in the countryside where there are no people around.” They imply that humanity and civilisation are less good than their absence. But I’m not in that school,’ he said. ‘I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness, to make sure it continues into the future.’

People have been likening light to consciousness since the days of Plato and his cave because, like light, consciousness illuminates. It makes the world manifest. It is, in the formulation of the great Carl Sagan, the Universe knowing itself. But the metaphor is not perfect. Unlike light, whose photons permeate the entire cosmos, human-grade consciousness appears to be rare in our Universe. It appears to be something akin to a single candle flame, flickering weakly in a vast and drafty void.

<snip>

[pscot]

1. People may think you're a damned fool

but they can't prove a thing if you keep your mouth closed.

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. Exactly.

I wish he'd put his considerable cachet and intellect to the challenge of a space elevator.

[Basic LA]

3. Gravitation

We have the rocketry & closed environment technology. All we lack is the ability to simulate Earth's gravity, the illusive 1G necessary to survive long term.

[bemildred]

5. Oh they can do it, centrifugal force will do it, it's just very expensive

to build a big wheel (like in 2001 Space Oddysey for example) and set it spinning. And the physics can get ugly if you try to accelerate a large, spinning object, so they don't make good spaceships, they make good orbiters.

And the other problem (which Mr. Clark mentions) is to create a closed earth-based ecology for the staff to live in long term in good health, we don't know how to do that.

[Basic LA]

6. 1G on the surface

You're right. That would work in space. But to colonize on any surface, we need 1G. I think the closed-system ecology poses far less a challenge to colonies in the solar system than does the 1G problem. I could be wrong, but if a Nobel Prize type breakthrough in gravitronics ever occurred, it would open the door to a new future in space, at least in our solar system.

[bemildred]

7. Well, at least some substantial fraction of "earth normal" anyway, yeah.

We will see about the ecological problem. I don't claim to know what the minimal needs of healthy humans in space will prove to be. But I do think we understand the gravitational problem a lot better than we do the ecological problem, so I tend to think that will take longer to solve.

[PeterClark]

4. Surviving on Mars

The development of rockets (to get to Mars) can be supported by uses of rockets for other purposes. How could the development of a closed-cycle ecology be supported? How can the technologies needed to survive on Mars actually be developed to the point where we can rely on them?

[bemildred]

8. It would allow us to live in orbit.

There is a lot of free solar energy to be had up there, if you can just figure out what to do with it.

[Odin2005]

9. Can't come soon enough, I'm done with this God-forsaken world.

[jakeXT]

10. Is he talking to the Mars Underground guys ?