Today, we watch with interest as a SpaceX rocket lands vertically on a floating platform. Tomorrow we already look out the window of the Martian dome (will there be windows in it?) To admire the blooming tomatoes. Between today and tomorrow there is a gap of … theoretically - 10-20 years. In practice, mankind has not seen such progress in the last 50 years.
The incredible mass colonization of Mars
The goal of 1 million inhabitants on Mars is unrealistic. With the Mars Colonial Transporter, which will carry 100 passengers at a time, it would take 10,000 flights to simply take people to the Red Planet.
But there will be 10 times more material support. Elon Musk himself admits that the system will need 110,000 flights.
Even with one flight a day it will take 301 years. And if the flights are daily, and it takes more than a year to travel back and forth (because when Mars is farther, travel will be longer), 425 reusable spacecraft would be required. This is more than any company or even country can afford.
With 24 flights a year, 110,000 flights will stretch for 4583 years.
To finance passenger transport, Musk will have to find a million people willing to pay $ 200,000 for a voluntary life in hell. Only the poor and needy could dare and try their luck to make money. But they won't have $ 200,000.
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Musk could find a million people willing to go there and find a good job, but then someone else would have to pay for the trip and pay people their salaries.
The sale of tourist trips will not be able to pay for flights. SpaceX is unlikely to be able to find many 20-person groups willing to pay $ 1 million to pay for 80 others, especially when space travel becomes quite common.
It won't be a month on the moon or on the tourist space station. People will spend about two years living in hell, plus free radiation for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Do you see anyone volunteering to live in Antarctica, which is a bit like Mars in terms of conditions? Me not.
Therefore, unless Mars is rich in minerals or other very valuable resources that will pay for travel (people and resources will go to Mars, and minerals to Earth), with our current space travel technologies, Mars will be very dependent on Earth, and will there are several hundred settlers.
We will be a two-planetary species, but the second planet will have a bad time if the first planet feels bad. Only with new technologies for space travel can Mars become autonomous.
The goal is to make humanity a species living on two planets, very worthy in terms of ensuring our survival for millions of years. But ordinary people who worry more about how to pay utility bills and taxes, do only feasible practical things and hope for the best. They will not put their lives on the line to go to Mars and contribute to the survival of humans as a species.
And since mass colonization of Mars is economically impractical, this will not happen.
SpaceX deserves respect for its capabilities
In any case, it should be given credit, even if plans to colonize Mars seem overly optimistic, SpaceX has already proven that it can very well get to Mars. Musk looks like a man possessed. He will not rest until he brings people to the Red Planet.
Until now, he was paid by NASA to send and return cargo to the International Space Station with excellent results.
After some delays, SpaceX will launch its Falcon Heavy rocket this summer and may start sending NASA astronauts to the International Space Station in 2018 (or 2019). They also promise the first unmanned flight to Mars in 2020 (although it was originally scheduled for 2018).
Of course, if some NASA astronauts (or the announced tourists who will fly to the Moon in 2018) end up dying in the disaster, we will have another delay, for many years. Do not interfere with SpaceX with all those dreamers who dream of big plans, not a dime a name to heart.
If SpaceX can send humans to Mars faster than NASA (SpaceX talks about 2025, but the recent delay in the first unmanned flight suggests that these dates are unrealistic), even with the help of NASA (if NASA realizes that Musk is really ready to do this, the agency will also join), Musk will take a worthy place in history, next to von Braun and Korolev (and not at all with Gagarin or Armstrong, these are worthy people, but their merit is provided by other people - many could have been in their place).
Even Trump could help. He chose Musk as one of his advisers. Musk could have harnessed Trump's huge ego by whispering to him that Trump would share historical glory if he ordered NASA to join SpaceX on the Martian epic (and forget about the Space Launch System).
Of course, Trump will no longer be able to solemnly announce: "We conquered Mars: I made America great again!", Because he will not be in office. History will not remember him.
Why should we fly to Mars?
It would be utterly fantastic in terms of pride and self-respect for humanity to get to Mars and establish a permanent station there for exploration and a little tourism, but until we find economic reasons to do more, we cannot do more.
You could say, damn it, we're going to spend billions to indulge our feelings (have fun), when could we spend this money on poverty alleviation and disease treatment?
Well, we spend a lot more (trillions) just like that, on millions of different things.
Just think about how much the film industry is spending on making films. Many of them are already worth more than $ 300 million. The Martian's budget was 108 million. The Mars Semi-direct mission, a very low-cost human-powered mission to Mars, would cost $ 55 billion.
But Elon Musk says he could build a $ 10 billion Mars rocket. You can even increase this amount to 20 billion by including the cost of other possible things. Yes, it may cost more, but let's just take that number. That's the cost of 66 films with a budget of 300 million each. Is it worth it?
Obviously, the challenge of making humanity a multi-planetary species is still scientifically and economically viable, so we must have other reasons not to.
We can say that the future of humans is inextricably linked with space, since the Sun will burn out and destroy all life on Earth in 3-4 billion years.
But it will be so far in the future that our chances of ending existence before that are much higher.
Let's not argue, the trip and the creation of a Martian base will improve our technology and, perhaps, even lead to scientific breakthroughs. But we don't want to go to Mars for other reasons.
We could go for it even if there were no technological advantages. There isn't even life there.
We do a lot of expensive things for no particular reason. Economics is just a tool for achieving our goals, and they are all purely psychological.
For example, we want to make money not for the sake of money, but for the sake of positive emotions, including safety, independence, freedom of action, and not just for the sake of goods that we can buy.
In the 60s of the last century, the USA and the USSR spent billions on the race for the moon, simply trying to show the world a better political system.
Musk insists that we must become a multi-planetary species in order to rationalize our aspirations, but he will not see this in his lifetime (unless he starts investing in the study of immortality).
He sometimes admits that the real goal is to do things that inspire. He is referring to historical events. He is looking for his place in history, trying to earn his own immortality. And there is nothing wrong with that. It was people like him who took us out of the caves of the Stone Age, since most of us have not done and will not do anything really important during our entire life.
We want to go to Mars because it will make us proud to be human like nothing else. And therefore, we want to get to Mars earlier than to any asteroid, even if the asteroid has more valuable minerals.
Of course, if you wait another 50 years, you can do it for less money and less risk, but why give all the glory to our children and grandchildren?
Since our fathers and grandfathers missed their opportunity, we can do it. And just because I say "we" does not mean that I will play any part in this journey. This is how people talk about sports success: they never say that their club or country won - they say "we won."
It is this collective appropriation of other people's successes that gives such great psychological significance to events that actually have little to do with our lives (at least in the short term), like the same visit to Mars.
We will all play a role in this historic success for humanity. It doesn't matter if it is the USA, Russia, Madagascar or an individual. We will go to Mars for psychological reasons, because this is the meaning of life.
ILYA KHEL
