Monday, October 17, 2016

Kim Stanley Robinson on Elon Musk's Mars plan: "this scenario is not believable, which makes it a hard exercise to think about further"

From an interview at Bloomberg:
There is no Planet B, and it’s very likely that we require the conditions here on earth for our long-term health.

...

My feeling now is that faced with the extreme expense, technical challenge, and danger of going to Mars, interest is going to shift to the moon as a destination that can actually be reached and occupied during some of our lifetimes. Planning for Mars is always very enthusiastic up until the moment of realization that the project’s unavoidable realities means it is going to take decades.