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UnHerd’s Flo Read meets Mars Society Founder, Robert Zubrin.
Renowned aerospace engineer and President of the Mars Society – which advocates for human exploration and colonisation of Mars – gives us his case for a manned mission to Mars, and all the challenges that getting to the Red Planet may entail. Is Elon Musk one of them?
Watch the full interview above.
That was a really interesting interview, imo. The guest has clearly spent many years thinking about the practical challenges of colonizing Mars. He convinced me Mars colonization is now almost possible. I’m not quite so clear on why anyone, apart from temporary workers mining minerals, etc, would want to live there.
It is an interesting interview, but I am not convinced. Mars colonization is indeed possible, but I think it will be in the far future, if at all. As in, no one alive today will see it.
Ours is an improbably dominant species. Something much bigger, and endowed with fangs, or claws, or talons, or venom, or what have you, should have seen us off long you. Yet we are still here, and we alone have been to the Moon. Within two generations of that, though, we are afraid of words. Either we go to Mars, and then beyond, or we accept that we have entered our decline, the endpoint of which could only be extinction.
The simple question to ask is what would be the GDP per head of the Martian colonists.
As desert dwelling subsistance farmers it would be less than $500 dollars a year. Given the immense distace for supplies to travel that woud be about $5 at purchasing parity exchange rates.
Once these intrepid adventurers had grown heartily sick of a sparse undergroung vegetarian existance who will keep control? What is the politics? Certainly not a democracy. Maybe Elon the First of Mars?