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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has ambitious plans to turn humanity into a multiplanetary species.
With the help of a fleet of Starship spacecraft, the intrepid billionaire wants to establish a permanent foothold on the million-strong Mars by 2050.
Now Musk is publicly fleshing out his vision.
“Life in the early glass domes” Musk wrote in a tweet from Thursday, responding to a question about what life will be like on Mars from the start. “Eventually terraformed to support life, like Earth.”
Scientists and science fiction writers have long suggested that terraforming could allow humans to breathe on the open Martian surface. But that vision is still a distant dream – far beyond the first Martian bases, according to Musk.
“Terraforming will be too slow to be relevant in our life,” Musk wrote in a follow-up tweet. “However, we can establish a human base there in our lifetime. At least one future space civilization – discovering our ruins – will be impressed by humans.
Terraforming Mars is indeed a massive undertaking. An analysis last year concluded that it would take maybe 3,500 nuclear warheads every day to raise Mars’ air pressure to breathable levels and melt the planet’s ice caps to release carbon dioxide, which will then be trapped in the form of greenhouse gases.
But there is a big problem with this plan. The ensuing radiation would also make the surface completely habitable.
And a 2018 study also concluded that there simply wasn’t enough carbon dioxide trapped on the red planet to raise atmospheric pressure enough to support humans on the surface.
But these limitations won’t stop Musk from pursuing his dream of establishing a permanent presence there.
Musk has previously claimed that with the help of “a thousand” Starship spacecraft, massive rockets, he says, will be able to carry up to 100 tonnes of cargo or 100 passengers between planets, “a sustainable Mars city” could. be established. About 100 vehicles are each expected to carry 100 tonnes of cargo every two years, according to Musk’s calculations.
The first establishments can seem a little rough around the edges.
“Getting to Mars, I think, is not the fundamental question,” he said at a Humans to Mars virtual summit in September. “The fundamental problem is to build a base, to build a city on Mars that is self-sufficient.”
“I want to stress that this is a very hard and dangerous and difficult thing,” he added at the time. “Not for the faint of heart. Good luck that you die. And it’s gonna be tough, tough, but it’ll be pretty glorious if it works.
Ambition is very dear to the heart of the entrepreneur – or at least to his marketing strategy.
“If we don’t improve our rate of progress, I will definitely be dead before I go to Mars,” Musk said at the Satellite 2020 conference in Washington in March.
His space business has come a long way to make Starship a reality. Several early prototypes have already taken off, but only at a height of about 500 feet. In the following weeks, the first prototype will attempt to fly at an altitude of nine miles.
If all goes according to Musk’s ambitious plan, the first Starship will arrive on Mars as early as 2024.
READ MORE: Terraform Mars: Elon Musk says Martian city of ‘glass domes’ comes first [Inverse]
Learn more about Musk and Mars: SpaceX to build Starlink-like constellation around Mars
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