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If I died today it'd be a holiday... on Mars. Elon Musk has suggested that the first Martian settlers should be prepared to die:
The first people who fly with SpaceX to Mars should be OK with the possibility that the decision could cost them their lives, company founder and CEO Elon Musk said. SpaceX aims to ferry 1 million people to the Red Planet over the next 50 to 100 years using the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), a rocket-spaceship combo that Musk unveiled Tuesday (Sept. 27) during a talk at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Guadalajara, Mexico. (Well, he unveiled the ITS in concept; neither vehicle has been built yet.)
Musk painted a picture of a not-too-distant future in which 1,000 or more ITS spaceships, each loaded up with 100 or 200 settlers, zoom off toward Mars simultaneously from Earth orbit. But it's naïve to expect that everything will work perfectly from the start, he said. "I think the first journeys to Mars are going to be really very dangerous. The risk of fatality will be high; there's just no way around it," Musk said at the IAC, adding that, for this reason, he would not suggest sending children on these flights. "It would be, basically, 'Are you prepared to die?' If that's OK, then, you know, you're a candidate for going," he said. Musk said he'd like to go to Mars, but it's unclear if he'll be among the Red Planet vanguard.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Monday October 03 2016, @02:03AM
Mars launch windows occurs every 780 days with a 6-8 month trip. So, over a course of 40 years you'll get around 20 launch windows. That's 50 ships per window.
Assuming a more gradual start (first time sending a single ship, then, say, 5 ships...), we can throw in another decade for a minimal 50 years.
So, a year and a half to prepare and fuel 50 ships first time. 100 ships the second time. 150 ships the third time... 5000 to 15000 to 30000 all needing safe and surveyed landing sites close to mineral deposits that produce enough fuel, air and water for the next batch... Half of these colonies are expected to fail (i.e. die) and so many ships won't make it back.
So, all you have to do now is find a million people willing to pay $500-200K for the privilege of a 50/50 chance to die a horrible space death or working as potato farmers in a dome separating them from instantaneous and certain death.
Oh, and the radiation in-route is likely sterilizing and cancerous.
Yeah... I'm sticking to my nit-picking. Even 100k colonialists is crazy let alone a million. I'm not saying people aren't stupid enough... I'm saying there's not enough people with both the money and the death wish.
compiling...