I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact.
Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket – half a million dollars. It can be done.
Mars has been flown by, orbited, smacked into, radar examined, and rocketed onto, as well as bounced upon, rolled over, shoveled, drilled into, baked and even blasted. Still to come: Mars being stepped on.
Mars is there, waiting to be reached.
The planet’s famous red color is from iron oxide coating everything. So it’s not just a desert. It’s a desert so old it’s literally rusting.
I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.
It’s a fixer-upper of a planet but we could make it work.
To our knowledge, life exists on only one planet, Earth. If something bad happens, it’s gone. I think we should establish life on another planet – Mars in particular – but we ’re not making very good progress. SpaceX is intended to make that happen.
It’s really incumbent upon us as life’s agents to extend life to another planet. I think that being a multi-planet species will significantly increase the richness and scope of the human experience.
The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that are fully and rapidly reusable. We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It’ll be too expensive. The American colonies would never have been pioneered if the ships that crossed the ocean hadn’t been reusable.