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| Strata at Base of Mount Sharp - NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS (All images: click to enlarge,) |
"Dying to go to Mars? You soon might have the option.
As early as 2025, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, plans to get humans to Mars. Mission “Heart of Gold,” (in honor of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), could carry up to 100 people — with a “high” chance that participants could die.
The Guardian, a British publication, asked readers if they would be willing to risk their lives for this Martian outer-space adventure. Those who said yes were young, male and mostly American, and offered varied reasons, from taking out-of-this-world photos to dressing like a Jedi."
- From the Forbes article: Would You Risk Your Life To Travel To Mars? Elon Musk Offers The Chance -- & Many Are Ready
"Why go to Mars? Life on Mars has potential life-saving possibilities for everyone on earth. Depleting water supplies, overwhelming climate change, and a host of other disasters—from terrorist attacks to meteor strikes—all loom large. We must become a space-faring species to survive. We have the technology not only to get humans to Mars, but to convert Mars into another habitable planet. It will likely take 300 years to “terraform” Mars, as the jargon goes, but we can turn it into a veritable second Garden of Eden. And we can live there, in specially designed habitations, within the next twenty years."
- From the Simon and Schuster (TED Books) page for How We'll Live on Mars by Stephen Petranek. (see video below)
"The elegance of this mission, from a financial perspective at least, is that I wouldn't necessarily be coming back, sparing mission planners the need for a return vehicle. I'd wander the landscape and keep myself alive and healthy for as long as possible, awaiting eventual relief from a more robust crewed mission. It's quite possible I could "live off the land" indefinitely, giving me enough time to really take in the sights: the soaring slopes of Olympus Mons, the labyrinthine fractures of Valles Marineris, the enigmatic massifs of Cydonia."
- Mac Tonnies from a 4/25/06 Posthuman Blues post reposted here.
***
Sorry for such a long absence. I intended to post a few times in the past 2 months, notably on Mac's birthday (August 20), but, truthfully, nothing moved me very much... no news inspired me, and life had a bad habit of getting in my way. (Come to think of it, it still does!)
I had started to gather information about Tabby's Star and Dyson's Spheres (my own interpretation, inset, right), but despite loads of hype, hoopla, and Kickstarter campaigns... well, no real joy there. When it comes to massive artificial structures, I'm more inclined to reconsider the reality of our Moon (and this, from Red Ice).
And, then, there's Proxima Centauri b - a possibly habitable planet - discovered in August of this year. Pretty exciting, right? Um, well, as Space.com (soberly) reminds us: Is the Nearest Alien Planet Proxima b Habitable? 'It's Complicated'. In other words, no real joy there, either.
Instead, what drew me back to Mac's memorial was... well, what else (?)... Mars! Yes, thanks to NASA (!) - and tech hero (and, rightly so) Elon Musk - I finally found some news I could sink my tiny vampiric teeth into...
