In order to understand the future of human space travel and how the eventual colonization of Mars might unfold, we must first understand the history of one of the biggest players in the market, SpaceX. SpaceX was founded with the stated mission to “revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.”
In September of 2016, SpaceX founder and CEO, Elon Musk explained his rationale behind risking hundreds of millions of dollars in his own money to build SpaceX from the ground. He remarked, “If the objective was to achieve the best risk-adjusted return, starting a rocket company is insane. But that was not my objective. I had certainly come to the conclusion that if something didn’t happen to improve rocket technology we would be stuck on earth forever. And the big aerospace companies had no interest in radical innovation. All they wanted to do was make their old technology slightly better every year, and sometimes it would actually get worse.”
Musk invested 100 million of his own money to make one dream come true—make the human species a multi-planetary species. While Musk has always dreamed of going to Mars, he understands the inherent risks in flying such a mission and feels a personal responsibility to keep SpaceX on track to deliver humans to Mars in the near future. When asked about traveling to the red planet he responded, “I’d like to go [to mars], but if there is a high risk of death, I wouldn’t want to put the company in jeopardy. I only want to go when I could be confident that my death wouldn’t result in the primary mission of the company falling away.”
In the private space industry, there is a fine line between the lofty goals of space travel and the financial realities. While SpaceX is currently a privately-owned corporation, it may soon be publicly traded, opening the floodgates for investors to voice their opinions on what the company leadership should do.
Elon Musk understands one cold hard fact about trips to Mars—such missions would be incredibly expensive and there is very little profit to be made in the business for the foreseeable future. If money hungry investors do not share in the selfless goal of expanding human’s presence in the universe, the company could easily shift resources to win more lucrative contracts launching satellites into low earth orbit and providing smaller contract work.
Right now, SpaceX has billions worth of contracts set up and is investing tens of millions in research and development for the Mars mission. In addition, if NASA decides to invest in SpaceX’s manned mission to Mars, the timescale for human travel will shorten and within our lifetimes perhaps thousands of people will have the opportunity to live on Mars.
The goal is to create a sustainable colony on Mars that is 100% independent of civilization on Earth. Next week, we will explore SpaceX’s proposed methods for transporting massive numbers of people and supplies to Mars.
Watch Elon Musk’s latest idea for revolutionizing our world and attracting further revenue to fund travel to Mars.
Reading your article made me think of one ethical reason that might be questioned later on in the process of colonization of Mars. Like the discovery of the Americas, in the beginning the Europeans still proclaimed their allegiance to their motherland, but slowly over time they formed a new identity and decided to split away. Fast forwarding to the future, what will stop the people of Mars from doing the exact same.
The most interesting part of your article is that SpaceX is a privately owned company. I’m curious about the outcome of their mission when compared to feats of NASA. I think it would be interesting to see whether or not the private sector can produce more reliable technologies, even when their is no profit to be gained. Also, I know this is a stretch, but wouldn’t it be cool if there was another space race between NASA and SpaceX.