Ship just got real.

Malacandra or bust!

I have been surprised by the continuing audaciousness of one Elon Musk, a fellow with a pretty good approximation of a Bond villain name, with his thoughts on sending human beings to and colonizing Mars. Sounds like fun! In a terrifying, possibly not very fun way.

I'm not sure if this is the result of something he's been smoking, but Mr. Musk said he would like to build one starship a week for the purpose of colonizing Mars. Now, I'm no engineer, nor a scientist of any kind, as pretty much every teacher I've ever had would tell you, but I have always been interested in science fiction, even the hard-science stuff. And based on that, and what I have that passes for common sense, I think he may have a good idea here. Whether the advantages of colonizing Mars are evident is not the point; if you're going to do it, do it right.

Stories throughout the history of the science fiction genre about colonizing near planets have been generally rendered obsolete by the fact that Mars has turned out to be a lot harder to live on than we might have hoped. There was never a reason to expect the temperature to be pleasant, and the atmosphere is not breathable. We knew long ago that the gravity would be lighter than Earth's (38% at the surface), and in recent decades have discovered that human beings suffer over time in anything significantly different than Earth gravity. And despite our best efforts, we've found no water worthy of the name on the Red Planet. Our colonists can't just diddy bop down to the Price Chopper for a case of Poland Spring. That's a 68-million-mile round trip at its closest.

Let's assume, as I guess Mr. Musk has, that in time we would be able to construct means to allow the colony to be at least mostly self-supporting. This is a big assumption. Even the Vikings had to abandon Greenland when things got dicey. But let's say that, without inventing terraforming or some other wild science far beyond our ken, we find Mars land capable of supporting edible crops, a means of providing water and breathable air, a means of dealing with light gravity's effects, a source of reliable power, and whatever else people need. For a long time a steady line of supplies and personnel will still be required, and this is where the Musk plan makes sense.

In the stories I've read, space colonies usually start with a single, small crew on a single ship, or one gigantic crew on a humongous ship. But a fleet sent to provide a means of support during colonial establishment is not typical to the genre. Colonizing across oceans usually worked both ways, with small expeditions and settlements or large investments with multiple ships running back and forth, and yet our science fiction has usually settled on the first as a model. Maybe because it's more dramatic.

The whole thing could be made easier if we could figure out a way to get that space elevator in orbit, but it looks like Musk is not planning to wait that long.

So what do you think of his plan? Crazy? Inspired? Impossible? Inevitable? And if it's so crazy it just might work, would you sign up?