What gets forgotten here, and something that I keep bringing up, is the lack of a Martian magnetosphere. This means long term human settlements have to be artificially shielded.
This means living underground, which defeats the point of going to Mars in my opinion. Elon mentioned using a local magnetosphere generator, which is one of those ideas that is theoretically possible but whose practicality seems questionable. How powerful a magnetosphere generator is required to deflect ionizing radiation? How much power generation capacity will a Martian colony have to spare? Will this require a Fusion reactor?
The only hope I have for Martian settlement is that Musk and his engineers are some of the most audacious and brilliant people on the planet. I will never bet against their success, and I wish them the best of luck.
I have been a space exploration fan since as long as I can remember, I just worry that humans have a tendency to focus on the wrong goals when ideals and emotion cloud our judgement (e.g. the Space Shuttle).
This means living underground, which defeats the point of going to Mars in my opinion. Elon mentioned using a local magnetosphere generator, which is one of those ideas that is theoretically possible but whose practicality seems questionable. How powerful a magnetosphere generator is required to deflect ionizing radiation? How much power generation capacity will a Martian colony have to spare? Will this require a Fusion reactor?
The only hope I have for Martian settlement is that Musk and his engineers are some of the most audacious and brilliant people on the planet. I will never bet against their success, and I wish them the best of luck.
I have been a space exploration fan since as long as I can remember, I just worry that humans have a tendency to focus on the wrong goals when ideals and emotion cloud our judgement (e.g. the Space Shuttle).