It’s time for the next giant leap in our exploration of the final frontier, and it looks like Elon Musk is going to be our leader.
Elon Musk is the CEO, CTO and founder of the organization SpaceX. SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company. He’s essentially the Steve Jobs of space travel. For the last few years, Musk has been talking about his plans to take the human race to Mars in an effort to start a colony there. Musk is claiming that we could be a multi-planet species sometime in the next decade.
There are, of course, numerous complications to take into consideration when planning out a trip of this scale. In addition to the amount of resources and power it would take just to get a crew there safely, there’s also the issues that come with building a city on a new planet. Will the planet be stable enough to withstand colonization by a foreign species? Will its resources be useful to us? The red planet doesn’t seem very plentiful but it’s our closest neighbor and beggars can’t be choosers.
Many early science fiction writers warned us about the potential dangers of landing on Mars, whereas the new wave writers of the sixties seemed more open to the idea, as they feared impending global overpopulation. Now, fifty years later, with the population steadily increasing and resources becoming scarce, our options are looking bleak. Either expand human colonies to other planets or risk the dangers of living on a dying one. Unless Weinbaum and Bradbury were right, Mars might be our next step to avoid extinction.
Just in case extinction doesn’t convince you that colonization might be a good idea, Musk is also modeling his Mars expedition spacesuits after the design of the superhero Iron Man’s suit.
