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Musk’s Mars obsession is driven by concern that terrestrial civilization may someday be destroyed. He and other would-be pioneers envision self-sustaining, million-resident cities on the planet’s rocky, low-gravity, not-quite-temperate surface within the next forty to one hundred years. This is a refreshingly wide window, but still one unlikely to be passed through. According to Davenport, Musk now intends to deposit the first settlers on Mars by 2025. For this to happen, and for the passengers not to arrive dead, SpaceX would have to surmount the same daunting engineering challenges NASA faces, with considerably fewer resources.
The obvious and mistaken analogy invoked by science fiction and “the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos,” as Davenport’s overblown subtitle puts it, is the European settlement of the Americas, the model for space exploration since human travel beyond the atmosphere was conceived. But the analogy fails to convey the actual reality of space and the actual hostile conditions on other planets. When Columbus “discovered” America, millions of people had already been living there for thousands of years. Its land, rivers, and coastal waters teemed with good things to eat. America had breathable air.
Space enthusiasts speak of humanity being saved by interplanetary colonization, but it wouldn’t be the whole of humanity going to Mars, of course, even if Musk charges no more than $200,000, the figure cited by Davenport for a ticket. The rest of us, and our children, will still have to face potential terrestrial catastrophe. Would we really care that other people (and their genetic material) were saved? Meanwhile, a Mars colony would demand Earth’s resources for decades or centuries to come. A new kind of built-in inequality is likely to be the natural consequence of a space settlement program established by a Silicon Valley billionaire.
full: https://www.bookforum.com/inprint/025_01/19409 _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
