For all his grand talk the fact is Elon Musk’s grand plans to establish a colony on Mars was never going to happen. Not in any of our lifetimes at least. To be fair when it comes to space exploration it’s not like bold, seemingly impossible dreams have come true. We went to the moon and back multiple times. We’ve sent incredible spacecraft on journey’s thought to be impossible and have often succeeded. However for more than one reason sending humans to Mars simply isn’t in the realm of possibility now, or for decades to come and Elon Musk has finally had to admit it.
When a brash young JFK promised to send American astronauts to the moon and return them safely to earth by the end of the 1960s one American (Alan Shepard) had spent a grand total of fifteen minutes in space. In a suborbital flight. We couldn’t even get a manned spacecraft into low earth orbit. It seemed impossible but one by one the challenges were overcome. The thing is, the moon is only a quarter million miles away and launch windows are relatively frequent. Mars is millions of miles away and the respective orbits of the Earth and Mars only make it possible to get a mission there every 26 months. Then there’s the amount of time humans would have to endure in space, a problem few in the public ever think of. NASA of course does, and what we’ve learned from extended stays on the ISS there are plenty of problems to overcome for humans to attempt a Mars mission.
My point with all that is that Musk got Trump’s ear and convinced him to send a bunch of money Space X’s way for his Mars dream. Money and engineering talent that instead could have been used for what’s now the goal – returning humans to the moon and even establishing a small colony there. Still a daunting task to be sure. But we might already have at least send crewed missions to the lunar surface if not for Musk’s fantasy. Personally, I’d have loved to have his smug ass tens of millions of miles away. Oh well. As this article from The Mirror US tells us Musk has given up.
Elon Musk has revealed he’s stepping away from SpaceX’s long-term goal of sending humans to Mars to build a settlement on the moon.
He revealed his plans in a statement on Sunday, just minutes after the start of the Super Bowl. The South African-born billionaire’s plans for colonizing Mars have been criticized as overly ambitious for years.
He wrote on his social media platform: “For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years.
20 plus years is as much a fantasy as Musk’s original plans for going to Mars. He went on to explain the issue of orbits and how frequently we can go to the moon and how limited our ability to go to Mars, even using unmanned spacecraft/probes is. Don’t be fooled by his new bravado – he knew this all along! His ‘bigly’ talk about focusing on a moon colony is just him trying to save face. Frankly, I always thought his pronouncements about sending people (including himself I think) were a rich guy with some engineering knowledge who knew how to pick truly talented engineers misusing all that talent. Musk had about as much a chance of getting to Mars as he would have strapping on a set of homemade wings, jumping from the roof and trying to flap his arms hard enough to make a soft landing.
Elon has a sad tonight. Ok, so he’s talking bigly about a moon colony but again it’s just rationalizing. Musk has admitted defeat on his grandest ambition. He bet, hundreds of billions in fact and LOST. We all know how Trump feels about LOSERS so it will be interesting to see how the dynamic between the two of them works out moving forward. Trump was convinced by Musk to spend a lot of taxpayer dollars on Mars, and shift a lot of NASA focus to that when the goal could have and should have remained on the moon.
You just KNOW Trump was looking forward to Americans landing on the moon about now, even hoping NASA wouldn’t get it done while Biden was still President. Trumpty wanted to be the one in the Oval Office talking to them like Nixon did with Armstrong and Aldrin. The difference of course would be Trump would demand the live image going out would be HIM instead of the astronauts. If you’re an old far like me and watched it live as it happened, the image on TV screens was the astronauts on the moon and only Nixon’s voice. I recall a tiny picture of him at times.
Anyway the point is that due to lost time, wasted on Musk’s Mars dream even a landing in 2028 is questionable. NASA is already gambling astronaut’s lives with an upcoming Artemis mission that will make a circumlunar flight – go around the moon and return to earth without going into lunar orbit. Issues with the maneuvering system on the crew capsule are being brushed aside. I fear a repeat of Challenger when some engineers tried to sound warnings about how the cold might affect the launch and were brushed off. Reagan wanted to talk to the teacher during her ‘school lesson from space’ on a certain day and time and delaying the launch would have prevented his ‘moment.’ Which he didn’t get because the damned rocket blew up during launch, killing the entire crew.
That gets me into an entirely new topic so I’ll let it go. For now. My point is that if not for Musk ALL the talent would have been focused on getting back to the moon and we’d probably be ready with the kind of safety margin such an undertaking demands. But to have any chance of making a landing while Trump is still in the Oval Office NASA is forced to cut corners. Sometimes they’ve gotten away with it. Sometimes not. If engineering problems can’t be brushed aside and it becomes clear there won’t be a landing in 2028 Trump will know Musk is the reason. I don’t think it will go well for Musk if things work out that way.
Friends, I know everyone begs you for money. I promise, among all those asking for spare change, we are the smallest and the hardest working. We’re a group of old, disabled people, except for one writer in his mid-50s. The rest of us are in our sixties and seventies, and this is a labor of love. All we’re asking for is the chance to keep telling the truth about Trump and help ensure democracy survives. If you can help, please do. Thank you. Ursula
Paraphrasing…”We don’t need no stinkin’ colony on the moon.” How about we fix problems here on earth? Where to put the garbage, addressing climate change, etc. And how can we get billionaires to stop being such maniacs.