It sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, but there are many people who think Mars will be the next frontier for human life.
One of the highest profile believers, billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, revealed an on Tuesday, to start colonizing the Red Planet in the next 10 years.
Musk, who operates electric car company Tesla Motors, is also the founder and lead designer of aerospace company SpaceX, which is now focused on satellite deliveries and unmanned cargo runs to the International Space Station. But, the company is also working on an unmanned Dragon capsule launch for Mars in 2018.
The timeline for Mars missions that Musk unveiled at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, may seem staggeringly ambitious. But Paul Delaney, a professor of physics and astronomy at York University in Toronto, says Musk鈥檚 goals actually appear to be credible.
鈥淗e鈥檚 got the family of SpaceX rockets that have had such success over the last few years,鈥� Delaney said in an interview on CTV鈥檚 Your Morning on Wednesday. 鈥淗e鈥檚 got the hardware to back it up, and that is something which has been lacking from a lot of the other proposals to go to Mars. It鈥檚 all been very wishful thinking.鈥�
Delaney said Musk has already delivered on a lot of his promises, including delivering satellites to geo-stationary orbit and working with NASA to bring cargo to the ISS.
鈥淗e鈥檚 built the infrastructure, and now he is saying, two years from now, we want to be able to do the same sort of thing on Mars. Not with people, but initially with hardware,鈥� Delaney said. 鈥淚 for one, think he can do it.鈥�
Delaney said, in the meantime, there鈥檚 a lot of attention being paid to how SpaceX recovers from a recent setback. In September, the Falcon 9 rocket exploded on a SpaceX launch site in Florida. The company has said they hope to resume launches in November.
鈥淎nd then what we want to be able to see (Musk) do, is two years from now, take his Red Dragon (capsule) and propulsively soft-land on Mars.鈥�
If SpaceX pulls it off, it will be a pivotal moment, 鈥渨ith respect to his long-range plan of taking you, me and the hardware to Mars over the next 10 years,鈥� Delaney said, adding 鈥� that timeline is probably very ambitious, but Elon Musk is an ambitious kind of guy.鈥�
Delaney acknowledges that the notion of ferrying thousands of people to Mars, and ultimately creating a self-sustaining city there, is still within the 鈥渟cience fiction鈥� realm.
The idea also raises many questions over ethics and the extreme cost of funding the trips, Delaney said. 鈥淲e can tell you about how we should go about doing it, but should we go about doing it?鈥�
Time is another consideration.
鈥淲e鈥檙e talking thousands, if not potentially tens of thousands of years, to turn a barren desert-like environment, which once was very hospitable, back into a hospitable environment,鈥� Delaney said.
Musk has said that it could take 40 to 100 years to achieve a self-sustaining civilization on Mars.
