For decades, Mars has fascinated and attracted people. The last one to surrender was, for example, Matt Damon. Our space neighbor, the distance to which at different times can be from 55.8 to 401 million kilometers, is of great interest to us primarily due to its mysterious history. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that recently, announcements of plans to colonize the Red Planet appear almost every month.
So this month, just a few days ago, Vice President of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Mohammed ibn Rashid Al Maktoum announced the Mars 2117 project, according to which the UAE is going to build the “first inhabited Martian settlement” by 2117. Building a city on Mars even in 100 years sounds like science fiction, especially when you consider that the UAE has never even launched unmanned spacecraft there.
But this is just one of the over-ambitious desires that have been voiced. The plans for the construction of Martian colonies have already accumulated by now for a wagon and a small cart. And today we will take a quick look at some of them. From the least questionable to the most delusional.
Travel to Mars NASA
Still, it is worth giving credit - the American aerospace agency NASA successfully landed four ground rovers on the Red Planet. And if anyone is the first to step onto the surface of our space neighbor, then, most likely, it will be these guys. Fans of Elon Musk can beat themselves in the chest as much as they want and say that we have a real incarnation of Tony Stark, who, as you know, has no barriers, but NASA has something better: a whole set of successful space missions to Mars which includes both the sending of Martian orbital probes and the dispatch of landing modules with autonomous rovers. And if anyone is the first to send astronauts into Mars orbit by 2030, it will be them.
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Next year, NASA will take a big step forward towards that goal by launching the Space Launch System (SLS) for the first time, a super-heavy launch vehicle that the agency plans to one day send humans to Mars. NASA is currently considering whether this first launch will be manned or not.
Elon Musk Martian Water Park
For those who do not yet know, Elon Musk is such a very rich Canadian-American engineer, entrepreneur, inventor, investor and billionaire of African descent, who is often compared to a fictional character in the superhero comic book about Tony Stark (or "Iron Man"). It is not surprising, these two people have one thing in common: they are both capable of generating new ambitious and innovative ideas at the speed of a machine gun burst. And sometimes these ideas can be extremely ambitious. While his company SpaceX - which has met with a series of major problems and setbacks, but is nevertheless cured - plans to send an unmanned lander to Mars in the coming years (and this plan seems quite feasible), Musk is dreaming on a larger scale and seems to be running. ahead of the locomotive. Within the next 10 years, he is going to begin to carry out manned missions to the Red Planet.
And if this seems fantastic to you, what can you say about Musk's most important goal - the daily sending of thousands of people to Mars on a rocket that has not even been invented yet? Will Musk be able to implement this plan by the 2060s? Considering that no less incredible things have happened in the last few months alone, guessing here is the most useless exercise. Musk is so confident in his plan that even an audacious advertising campaign that says openly that "people will have to die for this idea" probably won't be able to scare away potential candidates for the first flight.
Project "Mars 2117" from the UAE
During the World Government Summit, Prime Minister of the UAE and Emir of Dubai Mohammed ibn Rashid Al Maktoum and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces Zayed Al Nahyan announced the beginning of cooperation of the UAE with leading international organizations and research institutions to build the first Martian city of the Mars 2117 project.
The program is designed for 100 years and includes the training of scientific personnel from the Emirates, the creation of the necessary specialized equipment and the delivery of all the necessary equipment for construction to the Red Planet. In addition, the project will include research on rocketry and energy industries required for implementation.
“Landing people on other planets has been an old dream of humanity. Our goal is for the UAE to lead the international effort to make this dream a reality,”said Mohammed Ibn Rashid Al Maktoum.
These are very loud words, especially if we consider that until now the UAE could not boast of significant success in the field of astronautics.
Dennis Tito's dream
For those who don't know, Dennis Tito is the world's first space tourist to visit the International Space Station. He orbited the Earth 128 times, paying 20 million dollars for this (it turns out almost 150 thousand for one orbit). He does not regret the money spent at all, but, on the contrary, after that, he caught fire even more with space.
It turns out that the American multimillionaire founded the non-profit organization Inspiration Mars in 2013, whose task was to send an expedition around Mars (in the form of a married couple of a man and a woman) in 2018. The estimated cost of the project was $ 1-2 billion, which is lower than NASA spends on the Mars Science Laboratory program ($ 2.5 billion).
To raise funds "from industry, individuals and others willing to donate," Tito founded the Inspiration Mars Foundation, during the first two years of which he personally intended to invest $ 100 million. However, the project received no further support. The official website Inspirationmars.org has been closed for a long time. The further fate of the project remains unknown.
Richard Branson, or Not a Mask Alone
It was impossible not to include such a shocking character in this list (I think many have already seen him in women's clothes and in a mermaid costume or, rather, a "Rusala"?), As a British entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson, who is also planning his mission to Mars.
“Mars is a big place. When we colonize Mars, Musk can take the western part, and we can take the eastern part, "- either jokingly or seriously, Branson said in an interview with Mashable last year, adding that he had found a solution to the question of how East and West Mars" will share the water."
History is silent about whether Elon Musk agrees with this.
For the past decade, Branson has been promising fast, affordable space travel by his Virgin Galactic company. True, there is still no real progress in this direction, with the exception of very expensive incidents. One of the largest, for example, happened in 2014, when the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo spacecraft made a test flight. One pilot died as a result of the accident. The second was seriously injured.
DiCaprio is going to Mars
In October last year, at a meeting at the White House, the 42-year-old actor mentioned that he had signed an agreement to fly to Mars, without giving any details. Of course, this news shocked many, and especially the fans of the Oscar-winning actor. Later, representatives of DiCaprio clarified that the actor said jokingly about his Martian vacation, in the wake of what many people said about how good it would be to send him there.
Mars one
From what is now known, the best description for "Project Mars One" is "scam". In short, the Dutch company of the same name promises to send people to Mars by 2031, and the key goal of the program is to create a human colony on the Red Planet. However, despite high ambitions and rather tight deadlines, the Mars One project is "at an early stage of concept." At least that's what it says on its official website.
One can add to the treasury of doubts the fact of the frank desire of the founders of the Mars One project, which is called to make money on its participants. By purchasing promotional items that accompany the project, participants increase their chances of becoming one of those who will be taken away on a one-way flight. Do you want to die? Did you pay for the ticket?
Why such pessimism? The thing is, the Mars One project was initially doomed to failure, at least according to a 2014 report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to the researchers, the first thing that the Martian colonists will face, if, of course, they survive at least an 8-month flight and the concomitant effects of deadly doses of radiation, will be hunger. The colonists will simply die of hunger.
Do you want to pay to die alone in space? This project is definitely for you.
NIKOLAY KHIZHNYAK
