The Mars Question: SpaceX and the New Space Pioneers

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Originally I was going to make a post about Elon Musk and all the things he's accomplished/is accomplishing with Space X.... but what's the point? It's been done as well as it ever will here and here.

So instead I wanted to take a little time to speculate on what the future will look like given a moderately positive trajectory of events.

Before we begin, a summary of events as they stand is as follows:

This guy isn't full of it. If you have any doubt then take a look at the space ship he and his company managed to land vertically.... in the middle of the ocean.

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We're currently at the beginning of a new commercial Space Age. It's being spear headed by Elon Musk and his company Space X, but other companies such as Boeing and Blue Origin (founded by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and CEO) have their foot in the door, too.

Elon Musk plans to launch the first commercial vehicle to Mars around 2018, or in less than two years (since it's almost 2017 as of this article). People who aren't paying attention now will be then.

Of course, there won't be humans on the first few rounds of ships. They'll all be cargo to prepare for the first human flight, which will be around 2025 or so. That's in less than 10 years.

The same way our parents (and some people here as kids) huddled around televisions in the 60's to watch man step foot on the moon, we'll gather and tear up, tensing as the first humans step foot onto the third planet and mark a new epoch for humanity.

But most of this is covered in the links in the above material. The questions this article aims to speculate on is...

What happens after that?

If we apply the ideas established in this article, then we can make a fair assumption: technology will be significantly advanced by the year 2025, probably in ways we haven't yet fully considered and don't really expect. And in 2025, technology will be advancing at an even more rapid pace than today.

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Assuming everything happens more or less on time according to Elon's timeline, it's not unreasonable to expect relatively open and available space travel for all in around 20 years from 2025, or 2045 (the year that, coincidentally, Ray Kurzweil predicts that The Singularity.

If/When this occurs.... would you go if you were able?

Before you answer, consider this: Elon wants Mars and the journey there to be cool. He wants people to be excited to go, and to be envious of people who do go. He fully envisions restaurants, various forms of entertainment, basically all the eminities available on Earth at the time humans leave (which will likely include advanced forms of VR, etc.).

So again: would you go?

If you're anything like me the answer is 110% yes. By then the cost will, again, have gone down dramatically and it'll be far safer to go than it was in 2025.

Alright, pretty easy for many of you. But how about this: WOULD YOU GO ON THE FIRST FLIGHT?

This is the real question. Elon and SpaceX have promised that there will be a return flight from the Red Planet a month after arrival but there are, of course, no guarantees. All bets are off on the first flight and Elon himself has made it clear that those who go "should be willing to die."

But for a chance to be one of the first people on another planet. Who knows, maybe even involved in Mars Colony cryptocurrency (or maybe Steemit holo-networking)... It's tough to say no to the idea automatically. If you're answer is no, what would make it a yes?

Thanks for reading! Hope you learned something and enjoyed doing so to boot.

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