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Musk Really Wants a Mars City, Danger of Death Pales Compared to Shot at Glory

Many many years from now, history books would label Elon Musk either as a founding father of whatever society will exist then, or as a mad man who bit off more than he could chew.
First to Mars, then God knows where to 6 photos
Photo: SpaceX
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The man made electric vehicles a thing our days with Tesla and forever changed space exploration with SpaceX. His contribution to these fields cannot be denied, no matter how much you hate the guy. But Musk does have a habit of sabotaging his own image by blurting out crazy ideas and then acting on them.

A fine example of that is the cyber-pig that supposedly showed an incipient version of the direct brain-to-computer interface called Neuralink. Although the idea is not new and has been talked about at length in science fiction literature, the way in which the presentation was made, and the end result announced by Musk, make him look more like a madman.

The same can be said about his plans for Mars. Musk has been talking for years about plans to be the first to colonize the Red Planet, or at least contribute greatly to such an achievement. At a time when NASA doesn’t even plan seriously for a crewed mission to Mars, Musk already envisions cities on the neighboring planet, ready to go by the middle of the century.

In an appearance on Monday on a Twitch stream hosted by ExploreMars, Musk said "we've got to build the city and get to the point where it's self-sustaining." Getting to that point would of course be extremely dangerous, and there would be a good chance for those involved to die.

"I want to emphasize, this is a very hard and dangerous and difficult thing. Not for the faint of heart. Good chance you'll die. And it's going to be tough, tough going, but it'll be pretty glorious if it works out," the billionaire said according to Inverse.

Musk’s main tool of getting to Mars is called Starship. Currently testing as a scaled down version in Texas, it is still a good number of years away from completion, but that doesn’t stop it from fueling Musk’s dreams.

A few years back, Musk hinted that the first human base on Mars, aptly called Alpha, should be up and running by 2030. That probably won’t happen, but we should eventually be getting big SpaceX ships ready to hurtle up to 100 people at a time to Mars, where they would already find supplies brought by previous, automated missions.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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