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SpaceX organizes inaugural conference to plan landings on Mars
No one can deny that SpaceX founder Elon Musk has thought a lot about how to transport humans safely to Mars with his Big Falcon Rocket. But when it comes to Musk's highly ambitious plans to settle Mars in the coming decades, some critics say Musk hasn't paid enough attention to what people will do once they get there.
However, SpaceX may be getting more serious about preparing for human landings on Mars, both in terms of how to keep people alive as well as to provide them with something meaningful to do. According to private invitations seen by Ars, the company will host a "Mars Workshop" on Tuesday and Wednesday this week at the University of Colorado Boulder. Although the company would not comment directly, a SpaceX official confirmed the event and said the company regularly meets with a variety of experts concerning its missions to Mars.
This appears to be the first meeting of such magnitude, however, with nearly 60 key scientists and engineers from industry, academia, and government attending the workshop, including a handful of leaders from NASA's Mars exploration program. The invitation for the inaugural Mars meeting encourages participants to contribute to "active discussions regarding what will be needed to make such missions happen." Attendees are being asked to not publicize the workshop or their attendance.
The meeting is expected to include an overview of the spaceflight capabilities that SpaceX is developing with the Big Falcon rocket and spaceship, which Musk has previously outlined at length during international aerospace meetings in 2016 and 2017. Discussion topics will focus on how best to support hundreds of humans living on Mars, such as accessing natural resources there that will lead to a sustainable outpost.
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday August 08 2018, @11:25PM (3 children)
This is the big one. If they can figure out how to grow plants, as has been done on the ISS but at a larger scale, then they could try to feed themselves, and use organic byproducts to create some chemicals, medicine, bioplastics, etc.
But by "they" I mean 5-10 Earth scientists and not a colony of rich people.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @01:18AM
I'd agree if those 5-10 people have a thousand intelligent, fusion-powered positronic robots with them. Then indeed they could sit quietly in a safe room and issue orders to dig here and to smelt there. But today's martian plans are not like that, and we have no smart robots. They can't even take dumb robots with them because they have no fusion, and lifting a fission plant to Mars is a tough job even for extraterrestrials (a million tons of stuff.)
By all indications, if Musk can convince the powers that be, it will be a most dangerous trip of five men in bulky spacesuits. They will spend ten days there and return. Why ten days? Because that's how much oxygen, water, food they can take with them to the surface.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 09 2018, @11:40AM (1 child)
I think even a colony of rich people can look at Earth (which grows all kinds of plants at all kinds of scales) and figure out how to grow plants.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 09 2018, @05:55PM
Grow plants? On Mars? Seems boring. Call the Slaaaveeess!
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