Urgent communique from the high council on neurons, neutrons and big nothings.
January 2025
No, we’re going straight to mars. The moon is a distraction.
February 2026
For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years.
The mission of SpaceX remains the same: extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars. [editor: and maybe make a few bucks for the good of humanity]
It is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (six month trip time), whereas we can launch to the Moon every 10 days (2 day trip time). This means we can iterate much faster to complete a Moon city than a Mars city.
Highlighted Comment
“Mars transfer windows aren’t conducive to quarterly earnings meetings. Investors are more likely to tolerate launches each week [on a sub-lunar calendar].”
Those of us who follow this sort of thing already knew that a manned mission to Mars was not feasible. There was a study published a year or so ago that indicated that humans are the problem. Specifically, our kidneys. Astronauts sent to Mars would likely be sick by the time they got there, and in renal failure by the time they got back. A combination of radiation and microgravity would mean that the astronauts would not survive a roundtrip.
Taking serious efforts to address climate change is expensive. Doing nothing will be more so. Trying to turn the Moon or Mars into a hospitable place to live orders of magnitude more than that.