Astronomer Royal calls Elon Musk's plan for Mars a “dangerous illusion”

Space X CEO and Certified Brain Genius Elon Musk He has claimed in the past that he aims to load a million people into spaceships and launch them onto them Mars before 2050. The space company run by the world's second-richest man says colonizing Mars is “essential to the long-term survival of the human race.” Musk claimed that a manned mission to Mars would take place within just five years. Taking into account that Earth and Mars only align for thirty days every 26 months, All this is just a pipe dreamand it detracts from the problems that are already solvable here on the planet we live on.

in A recent episode of The Lord Speaker's Cornera podcast from the British House of Lords, Lord Rees of Ludlow had a lot to say about Musk's plan.

“I think there might be a few crazy astronauts living on Mars, just as people live at the South Pole, although it is much less hospitable than the South Pole,” he said. “But the idea of ​​a mass migration to avoid Earth’s problems, which he and a few other space enthusiasts espouse, I think is a dangerous illusion.”

There are many reasons to avoid sending humans to Mars in the short term, the most important of which is cost. Rees points out that human space exploration should be privately funded, with public funding directed toward much less risky robotic exploration methods. “Only people with a high risk appetite should go into space, and it should be privately funded, not the rest of us,” he says.

Mars, as you probably know, does not have a breathable atmosphere or protective magnetosphere. Human bodies are ill-equipped to handle the low gravity, cosmic radiation, and long space travel needed to colonize Mars. Current-generation spaceships are ill-equipped to transport the heavy construction equipment and resources needed to keep a million people alive on the Red Planet.

If you think it would be easier to move a million people to another planet and somehow rehabilitate the planet than to emit fewer carbon oxides into the atmosphere here on Earth, then Elon Musk certainly has something to sell you. And really, that's the point.