Elon Musk says ‘bunch of people will
probably die’ during Mars mission

Way to motivate people Elon!! Or are you just doing a CYA?

Great leaders and great men lead the way. I guess that does not define Musk.

On the other hand, the same thing could have been said with absolute certainty to wagon trains filled with our ancestor pioneers of the American west. Death and hardship were a given ingredient in any migration of people. Reward belonged to the courageous, strong and lucky. Anyone who would have hidden in their house for a year, socially distanced and worn masks to avoid sickness would have been distained as weak and unworthy of leadership.

Will you have to wear a mask?

#1 and #2 If you understood Musk you might have a different opinion. First of all Hollywood won't go. They can't even make it to Canada. Musk is being honest and he's right about the lousy food. There will be no crunchy food while in space. (that's the one thing astronauts say they miss) This is a larger step than crossing the Atlantic on the Mayflower. One third died. At Jamestown 440 out of 500 died by the first year. This mission to Mars will be many times harder. Let's hope Musk is wrong, but the best thing that makes a leader is honesty. Do you want a Joe or a Trump?

They will die for nothing. No reason to go there.

He's right. No protective magnetic field either on the journey or on Mars; no or low gravity - even with routine exercise, muscles atrophy and bones become brittle; we can't grow our own food on Mars - the soil is saturated with perchlorates; cosmic radiation would compromise the crew's immune system. In short, with today's technology, you will die enroute or shortly after getting there. We "grew up" on this planet with a specific set of planetary conditions. We just can't cancel them out. One other thing. The last experiment having about eight people live together for 18 months was a dismal failure.

All the more reason to let the lefties by the first to make the trip.

People who get to Mars, if any, are going to soon wish they are dead.

Several years ago, I was at a function where our guest was a space shuttle astronaut. Said the major problem going to Mars was the radiation level in space for the journey of several months. And that it probably would be a one-way trip.

We have done well with most unmanned missions. I'd rather see more emphasis on those. Like others, I suspect a mission to Mars would be not be survivable.

I never left anything on Mars and see no reason to go back.

He sounds so excited at that prospect.

Just stating the obvious.

There will be a lot of one way tickets to Mars. First we should figure out how to have a permanent presence on the Moon. Currently we're just working on preliminary steps in space with the ISS. This will take decades if not longer.

that's one way to populate the planet, maybe it will prove that the dead can come back to life.

#15, At our present level of commitment, it would take decades. If we had the national will to persevere (and not necessarily at crash-project intensity, we could do it much sooner.

The main reason to ultimately colonize the Moon and Mars is free resources. All important resources on Earth are already claimed by somebody, sometimes many somebodies. Up there riches await, if you can get to those resources first AND defend them against thieves and socialists (but I repeat myself). There are significant barriers to entry. Like no atmosphere and surface radiation, on the Moon. And very little atmosphere and surface radiation on Mars. But these can be overcome by building structures underground by robotic construction using native materials. Once the starter set of structures is built and tested, colonization could begin. Then humans could start growing food locally, eventually exporting some of it to Earth. We'll need it, if Earth is then run by Obama the Fourth and the CCP. Mining using sophisticated equipment will unearth "free" resources that can be sold to Earth, for a tidy profit.

#18, let me know how we're going to transport several tons of topsoil to our Mars colony to grow food, because that is the only way it has a remote chance of happening.

Hmmm. Very dangerous. You go first.

Make sure prominent Libs get tickets first!

#18, your fantasies are showing. The primary problem on Mars is a massive, planetary shortage of water. And a huge Mars-wide shortage of hydrogen so it will be nearly impossible to even MAKE water. Mars will never, ever export food. And as far as mining....an asteroid makes a million times more sense. A small sized asteroid, say 1 mile in diameter could be relatively simple moved into an orbit which would make it comparatively cheap to shuttle between Earth and the asteroid. A one mile sphere has a volume of roughly 25 billion cubic feet. There are known to be meteors that have hit earth that are pure nickel-iron alloy. If you found one of those a mile in diameter, and if you had a (easy to calculate) 50-50 alloy, you have 500 lbs per cubic foot, or 1/4 ton. So 25 billion cubic feet would be right at 6+ billion tons of nickel-iron alloy. Nickel is worth around $16,000 per ton, iron roughly $150/ton. At 50-50 avg is roughly $8,000/ ton. So that asteroid would be worth about $50 trillion delivered on Earth. $50,000,000,000,000..... THAT is worth doing. If your costs were even $2 or even $5 trillion....the profit margin is HUGE. More by far than the top 5 richest folks in the world, put together. ONE asteroid. And there are MILLIONS of them, free for the taking. Not any kind of easy, but no gravity well to launch up out of like from a planet, so the energy to move the metal is comparatively tiny versus to launching to orbit from a planet. Interplanetary shipment of food....give me a break. Never even remotely cost effective, impossible on the energy costs of boosting to orbit, never mind the lack of water, and a million other problems competing with free air and water which falls from the sky. Dirt at $5,000 an acre, and shipping by diesel truck.

Could we take up a collection to pay for AOC and Mad Max to go ?

I understand where Musk is coming from. The planetary environment on Mars is definitely not like that found in the South Pacific. It will be the harshest of conditions. No food, no water, no fuel, no shelter. You'd have to take it all with you and even then there's no guarantee you'll live an existence similar to that on Earth.