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SPACEX Founder, multi-billionaire Musk: says human beings must become a space faring civilisation and multiplanetary species
SPACEX FOUNDER, MULTI-BILLIONAIRE ELON MUSK: says human beings must become a space faring civilisation and multiplanetary species.
Musk says he plans to send 100 people on his space craft to mars planet on a trip estimated to initially cost US$10 billion per passenger by the year
The astronomous cost of the 2024 mars trip is expected to be eventually lowered for passengers to US US$100,00 a high figure, but certainly massively lower than the cost for the first 100 passengers.
MUSK vision of sending a space craft with 100 people to Mars by 2024 is driven by his belief that people must begin living in space or face extinction . Such a vision is, to him achievable with the first 100 passengers who are expected to set up a colony on mars and develop a livable space for themselves and future visitors and generations.
Mars trips to a planet which has shown evidence of holding water at one time is a feasible project but NASA has warned that, the trip has a lot of unknowns.
The unknowns include the risk of loss of muscle tone, exposure to radiation and therefore high cancer risk to those who will travel to Mars initially. This advice is also on the basis that Mars journeys are through hostile space zones where no one knows how to protect passengers from radiation and other unknowns.
It is also viewed as great challenge, that there is no evidence of how the passengers will be fed once on the planet and how the craft can be refuelled for a return journey back to earth, hence clearly a mission in which participants are fully aware they may never return to earth. For scientists, it is also a major challenge, not to expose Mars to microbes or germs from earth.
This announcement comes when another space development, a 12 yeear old mission for Rossetta will come to an end in afew hours time in a ontrolled crash into a 30 metre crater seen to have been spewing gas during studies.
Rossetta is not expected to be functional any further after it lands in the crater but the data that the probe has sent, over the 12 year mission is expected to shed light on the evolution and development of the planetary system More news to follow… By Sibusiso Ngwenya
Photo-multibillionaire Elon Musk