Elon Musk provides new details on his ‘mind blowing’ mission to Mars

[Zorro]

Ever since Elon Musk founded a start-up space company 14 years ago, the goal has always been the same: Establishing a colony on Mars. Now he’s finally beginning to reveal how he plans to get there.

Starting as soon as 2018, Musk’s SpaceX plans to fly an unmanned spacecraft to Mars. The unmanned flights would continue about every two years, timed for when Earth and Mars are closest in orbit, and, if everything goes according to plan, build toward the first human mission to Mars with the goal of landing in 2025, Musk has said.

But in an interview with The Post this week, Musk laid out additional details for the first time, equating the spirit of the missions with the settlement of the New World by the colonists who crossed the Atlantic Ocean centuries ago. And he acknowledged the immense difficulties of getting to a planet that is, on average, 140 million miles from Earth.

The months-long journey is sure to be “hard, risky, dangerous, difficult,” Musk said, but he was confident people would sign up to go because “just as with the establishment of the English colonies, there are people who love that. They want to be the pioneers.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/10/elon-musk-provides-new-details-on-his-mind-blowing-mission-to-mars/

Not for me. It's a one-way ticket.

[WheelWalker]

1. Life is a one way ticket.

[flying rabbit]

2. +1 nt

[Marrah_G]

3. I would love to be one.

[RichGirl]

4. Do we know if Mars has breathable oxygen?

[subterranean]

5. Yes, we do. It doesn't.

However, NASA scientists are working on a process that may enable breathable oxygen to be produced from the Martian atmosphere.

[Fumesucker]

6. The air on Mars is too thin, too cold and has no appreciable oxygen

There is oxygen on Mars but it's chemically bound up in one sort or another of rock or combined with hydrogen to make water. The oxygen will have to be cracked from the water or the rocks before it can be used for breathing.