“It just comes down to making the effort. In the 1960s, it was all about world politics—that’s what drove us to get to the moon,” said Vasavada. “With Mars, we’ve struggled to find the driver that’s going to make it worth the investment.”
A lot of space enthusiasts are looking to Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002. The company makes rockets at its headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and currently flies the Falcon 9. It makes money, thanks to contracts to launch commercial satellites as well as fly missions for NASA and the U.S. military. SpaceX has NASA contracts worth $4.2 billion to resupply the International Space Station orbiting the Earth via its unmanned Dragon spacecraft and eventually ferry astronauts to the ISS. The closely held company has about 5,000 employees.
Human colonization of Mars won’t be a cake walk. Getting to the Red Planet will take at least eight months with unknown risks to the human body and psyche. Even if space explorers survived the 155 million-mile journey and subsequent first-ever manned landing, they would need to get to work immediately making the place habitable and producing the fuel needed to propel the rocket ship homeward.
Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, has said she’d gladly go to Mars but wouldn’t be among the first. “I’m not a camper, and it would be like camping,” said Shotwell in 2014. “Extreme camping.”
SpaceX plans to fly an unmanned spacecraft to Mars as early 2018. The flights would continue about every two years and, if all goes according to plan, would culminate with the first human mission to Mars in 2025, Musk told the Washington Post in June.
“Mars is the closest planet that we can realistically settle,” said Robert Zubrin, author of “The Case for Mars” and founder of the Mars Society, where Musk once served on the board. “Musk doesn’t just want fame, or money. He wants eternal glory for doing great deeds.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.