Elon Musk wants to send the first humans to Mars in 2026,
but his real goals are far more ambitious
as he wants humans even to colonize Mars.
Musk said
which means that humans can survive on Mars
even if the resupply ships from Earth stop coming.
But why Mars? Why not just colonize the Moon?
The Moon is much closer.
On average the moon is 384,000 kilometers
or 239,000 miles away from the Earth.
Mars on the other hand is at its closest 38.6 million kilometers
or 23.9 million miles away from the Earth!
That is more than 100 times as far!
Humans already accomplished to go to the Moon
with the Apollo missions.
In 1969 the Saturn V was launched…
And less than 5 days later they landed on the Moon.
Nowadays going to the Moon would take only about 3 days.
SpaceX is planning to land humans on the Moon with Starship in 2024.
Meanwhile going to Mars will take much…
much longer.
To get to Mars will take about 6 months!
Yea.. There better not be a crying baby onboard…
But that’s not all.
The distance between the Earth and Mars constantly changes.
It takes Earth about 365 days or 1 year to orbit the sun,
while it takes Mars 687 days.
That’s almost 2 years to orbit the sun.
This means that humans have to wait for the right opportunity to go to Mars,
which can take more than a year.
So Mars is much further away
and we have to wait for the right moment.
What then are the reasons why SpaceX
doesn’t want to colonize the Moon?
"We could conceivably go to our moon.
And I totally have leaning against going to the moon.
But I think it's challenging to become multiplanetary on the Moon
because it's much smaller than a planet.
It doesn't have any atmosphere.
It's not as resource rich as Mars.
It's got a 28 day,
whereas the Mars days 24 and a half hours.
And in general, Mars is far better suited
to ultimately scale up to be a selfsustaining civilization."
Let’s start with size.
The Moon is much smaller than Mars,
but it would definitely be big enough to built a city there.
A really significant reason not to want to colonize the moon is the daylength.
On Earth our days last 24 hours,
Mars has days of 24 hours and 37 minutes,
so that’s almost similar.
The Moon, however, has days that last as many as 656 hours!
In other words, one day on the moon takes 27 Earth days and, 7 hours and 43 minutes.
One night lasts for more than 13 days!
Humans may not like to live in darkness for so long,
but more importantly solar panels would not be able to generate enough electricity,
making it difficult to be self-sustainable.
Other major problems derive from the fact that the moon,
in contrast to Mars, does not have an atmosphere.
As a result the temperatures on the moon are also very extreme.
At night temperatures can reach -173 degrees Celsius or -279 Fahrenheit,
which is much colder than the coldest temperature ever measured on Earth,
namely -89 degrees Celsius or -128 Fahrenheit in Antarctica.
And during the day the temperatures on the Moon get extremely hot.
In fact, it can get as high as 127 degrees Celsius or 261 Fahrenheit!
While the highest official temperature on Earth ever recorded was
57 degrees Celsius or 135 Fahrenheit in Death Valley.
Well the temperatures on Mars are not much better.
In fact, they’re far from ideal too.
The average temperature on Mars is -60 degrees Celsius or -76 Fahrenheit,
but it can range from -140 to 30 degrees Celsius.
"It's a little cold
but we can warm it up."
Another consequence of not having an atmosphere is that there is no air or wind on the moon.
This means there is no erosion.
If we would use a microscope to compare Lunar dust to sand,
we would see that sand is round,
while the Lunar dust is very sharp.
That’s why I like to call it “Evil Sand”,
which may cause significant problems for people living there.
The lunar surface also makes it impossible to grow plants,
which would of course be very important for a self-sustaining civilization.
On Mars though it is possible,
since the soil there does have the nutrients plants would need to survive!
The Moon is also really dry.
While NASA has confirmed that there is water on the Moon,
it is not much at all.
As a comparison, the Sahara Desert has 100 times the amount of water
than what the SOFIA mission detected in the lunar soil.
Mars does have water, and lots of it,
but almost all water today exist as ice.
More than 5 million cubic kilometers have been detected at
or near the surface of Mars.
That is enough to cover the whole planet to a depth of 35 meters!
Not having an atmosphere on the Moon also means,
there is no protection from meteorites and solar radiation.
Meaning if humans would have built a beautiful trillion dollar city
it could be destroyed in seconds at any time…
There is also the issue of gravity.
The Moon has a gravity of about 17% compared to Earth,
while Mars has a gravity of about 38%.
This may lead to an acceleration of bone and muscle loss
and may create other health problems.
Living long-term in any environment with reduced gravity
could be detrimental to human health.
While the gravity on Mars is better,
it will definitely be an issue there too.
Now you know why colonizing the Moon may not be such a good idea as it might seem.
But luckily Mars seems to be possible
and SpaceX is currently building the Starship,
the largest and biggest rocket ever,
which we already discussed in the Evolution of Starship.
And to colonize Mars, SpaceX is aiming to produce a whopping 1,000 Starships!
But for now let’s just see if SpaceX can send the first humans to Mars in 2026.
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