Elon Musk is planning to take you to Mars, but he also wants money for this from you. As SpaceX showed his success recently by launching a used rocket into space. Many people want to go to the Red Planet.
Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, at the 33rd Space Symposium in Colorado Springs this week, said: “I hope you’re all thinking about your tickets to Mars, [reusability is] really a tremendous capability, and I highly recommend it for all of you.”
Musk revealed the expenditures and said at least $200,000 are required for future SpaceX-led trips to Mars on September 2016 at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.
He explained his intentions and said he want to make humans a multiplanetary species.
As SpaceX is using reusable rockets, but even with reusable rockets, it’s probably going to cost considerably more than $200,000 to send humans to live on Mars.
Ella Atkins, a professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan, remains skeptical of that figure, especially if it involves sustaining people once they’ve landed.
She said: “Just from a basic analysis of rockets and gravity, and then doing some back of the envelope calculations on how much you need to take with you to sustain people...200,000 seems very ambitious, but there are some politics here—how many people are going to really going to get behind a company if SpaceX told them, ‘Yeah, it’s going to cost a million dollars to go to Mars.’”
The $200,000 price tag provides people with a sense of hope.
According to Atkins, this price tag will give an idea to the people, about that how many years they need to save for this trip.
Atkins explained: “I think [SpaceX] is doing what they need to do because they want the support of the American people. They want congress to feel pressured to fund companies like SpaceX...so if they go out and say, ‘Yeah, we’re really just going to take billionaires to Mars,’ that’s not going to make the average congressperson—who has to answer to their non-billionaire voters—want to go out and give lots of money to SpaceX.”
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| Image: SpaceX via Flickr |
“I feel like there needs to be more realism in the probability that they’re going to come back alive.”
Atkins noted that there’s another cost involved with traveling to Mars, one a $200,000 price tag may be dramatically underselling: your life.
Atkins said. “The risk of space travel is extremely high, I don’t know that people realize just how high it is.”
Elon Musk has warned all the contenders that they might get die in this mission, and they want it they have to prepare for this.
He said: “The risk of fatality will be high, it would be basically, are you prepared to die? If that’s okay, you’re a candidate for going...the probability of death is quite high on the first mission.”
As it is a year-long trip so the possibility of disaster is very high, like Apollo 13 or the Columbia tragedy.
Early results from NASA’s Twin Study, which analyzed astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly, found that Scott’s famous year in space caused changed in the genetic level as well.
By spending more time on Mars it can affect your health. As in a recent study found that the volume of gray matter in astronauts’ brains, which is responsible for sensory perception, emotions, and other important functions fluctuated across several areas as a result of both short and long duration spaceflight.
Scientists are still working to understand what health impacts these changes might have.
It’s all dangerous but now it’s up to SpaceX how the company is going to handle this. There is a possibility that it could be a one-way trip.
Musk previously told that this idea was “ridiculous,” adding that “being in deep space or Earth orbit for long periods is far worse than Mars.”
Atkins said. “Astronauts want to do it anyway, because they’re explorers, because they feel like that’s part of the value, if it really is the case that we’re just marketing to random people off the streets who expect to come back alive, I feel like there needs to be more realism in the probability that they’re going to come back alive. I feel like that probability is pretty small.”
On some level, we all know that space is risky—shooting a hunk of metal into space, no matter how marvelously designed it is—is inherently bonkers.
If someone can afford this its ok then but no one should their money in Mars retirement account without being completely honest about the ultimate price involved. Because it is very risky.
Atkins said: “There will always be someone who really, really wants to go that much, but the community needs to be honest about what that’s going to mean.”