Elon Musk imagines Martian cities beneath glass domes, at least until the terraforming takes – SYFY WIRE

Tesla Motors CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk is mesmerized by Mars, and envisions mankind as a multi-planetary species whose ultimate future lies beyond theBig Blue Marble that we currently all call home.

SpaceX's Starship transportation system has been designed to eventuallylaunch each of its reusable Starship rockets on missions an average ofthree times per day, with everysleek shiploaded with a100-ton payload perflight.A fleet of1,000 Starships would forseeably be capable of sending up to 100,000 people to Mars every Earth-Mars orbital synch, or every 26 months.

In Musk's vision, food for aself-sustaining Martian city would be cultivatedon solar-powered hydroponic farms, bothunderground and inenclosed structures, and jobs would be plentifulin the settlement's"outdoorsy, fun atmosphere,"as heonce told Popular Mechanics.

To that end, he intends on blasting the first SpaceX rocket to Mars by 2022 on a cargo-only mission, before a crewed excursion is attempted sometime around the year 2024.

But before a true civilization can flourish under the harsh Red Planet's conditions, safe accommodations and protection for the initial round of scientists, biologists, and engineers must be installed well before Musk's ultimate goal of colonizing Mars with one million people by 2050.

In a series of Mars-related tweets this week, the visionary billionaire explained what early, baby steps would be needed to realize his dream, and it includes living within the relative comfort of giant glass domes.

The idea of a permanent, self-sustaining base of operations is essential for Musk's lofty plans to come to fruition generations from now.

Using a wild idea Musk tossed out back in 2015, the overwhelming notion of terraforming Mars would needthousands of nuclear warheads launched once a day for seven weeks straight. This would supposedly affect the polar caps and ultimately boost the planet's atmospheric pressure to levels that allow humans to breathe, melting Mars' ice to free carbon dioxide, which would be contained in the resulting greenhouses gases.

The problem, as calculated out by mathematician Robert Walker last year, is that those exploding minisuns would emit enough devastating radiation to make the Red Planet an uninhabitable,Fallout-like wasteland. Even if it succeeded, it would only raise Mars atmospheric pressure to seven percent of Earths.

Thank you, but let's just stick with a Martian landscape of glittering glass domes instead!

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Elon Musk imagines Martian cities beneath glass domes, at least until the terraforming takes - SYFY WIRE

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