I ask Musk how often he actually thinks about colonizing Mars. Musk gave a small insight into the minutiae involved in negotiating design details for manned spacecraft with NASA earlier this year: "There were small disagreements here and there…like, it seems like the amount of mass and volume reserved for poop is too high… We're like, well, are they really going to do that much poop?" The more practical present-day focus at SpaceX is on the crew vehicle that will take astronauts to the International Space Station. There's not been any architecture like this described that I'm aware of." Just because it's so far beyond what people would imagine? In Musk's mind, becoming multi-planetary is just good common sense, a prudent move that he has likened to backing up a computer: "You back up your hard drive. If a calamity, self-made or otherwise, destroyed life on Earth, as long as a human colony was established elsewhere, the species could endure. The other is the long-term survival of humankind. One is that it would be an inspiring adventure and we need such goals. Musk has said that he feels this is imperative for two reasons. But the most remarkable fact about SpaceX is that-right from the start, before the first rocket had lifted an inch off the ground-it was explicitly intended as the means to another, far more grandiose and idealistic end: colonizing Mars. There are many remarkable aspects to SpaceX: for instance, the way it has challenged accepted rocket manufacture by making rockets for a fraction of the cost the way it has become the first private entity-rather than a country-to successfully launch spacecraft into orbit and then return the way it went from an idea in Musk's head to a company that resupplies the International Space Station and that hopes to soon ferry astronauts back and forth. Musk starts most workweeks here at his rocket company, SpaceX, in an industrial suburb of Los Angeles, and each Monday, he explains to me, there is a brainstorm about "Mars colonial transport architecture." He says these words as though most people could look through their Monday schedule and find something similar. While rather unique, I question how many people would be up for the experience.1. From what I understand riding a rocket makes riding a bucking Brahma bull seem mild. You can catch the red-eye flight, catch some zzzz, and be back the following workday if you choose.Īdd to all of this the whole not-so-smooth rocket ride experience. Supersonic air travel has a much better shot of becoming a viable way of rapidly getting from here to there (such as ). Unless SpaceX is going to somehow control the weather I can’t see travelers being willing to put up with unreliable service. I don’t think the same could be accomplished with a rocket launch. While it was a little unnerving, the plane did fly and I did get to where I was supposed to go, on time (well, mostly). I’ve experienced having an airplane de-iced during a mild snowfall. Unlike airplane travel, weather conditions for rocket launches have to be almost pristine. I can foresee no reason why this might change. Rocket launches are held up and delayed because of weather on a regular basis. It’s a factor that SpaceX has no control over. There is still another big reason why point-to-point rocket travel won’t fly (literally). The landings are perfect 99.999% of the time and regular launches to and from Tokyo happen on a regular basis. Ok, let's just suppose that SpaceX does figure things out.
It’s hardly the thing to risk the lives of hundreds of people on. There are so many pieces and so many factors that can go wrong.
Making rockets launch and land is complicated. There’s a reason that the phrase “rocket science” is batted about.
I don’t see that happening with rocket launches. So much so that during peak times over one million people are in the skies at a given moment. Travel by airplane has become very common today. Even at the unprecedented rate of three launches a day that would mean many years before point-to-point rocket travel could possibly be allowed. Regulators would be remiss if they did not require many thousands of successful landings before approving mass transit by rocket.
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