Huge Mars Colony Eyed by SpaceX Founder Elon Musk

SPACE.com ^ | Date: 23 November 2012 Time: 07:00 AM ET | Rob Coppinger,

[BenLurkin]

In Musk's vision, the ambitious Mars settlement program would start with a pioneering group of fewer than 10 people, who would journey to the Red Planet aboard a huge reusable rocket powered by liquid oxygen and methane.

"At Mars, you can start a self-sustaining civilization and grow it into something really big," Musk told an audience at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London on Friday (Nov. 16). Musk was there to talk about his business plans, and to receive the Society’s gold medal for his contribution to the commercialization of space.

[montag813]

All we need are some Hortas and we’re set!!!

Now THAT'S what Musk should be investing in: bioengineering a Horta. That and finding dilithium crystals.

[rfreedom4u]

rocket powered by liquid oxygen and methane.

I suggest they take plenty of beans to eat on the way there. Then they can produce some of their own fuel.

[BenLurkin]

There’s a plan for that...http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2962433/posts

[Jack Hydrazine]

“Just don’t let him have any dogs up there.”

Will the solar system police show up and shoot it?

[Jack Hydrazine]

“who would journey to the Red Planet aboard a huge reusable rocket powered by liquid oxygen and methane.”

Does SpaceX plan to use all that non-existent methane on Mars that Curiosity can’t detect?

[faithhopecharity]

For his dinner, yes

[calex59]

If the prospect of using such chemical means to produce large amounts of water is deemed to be too impractical, it would not be unreasonable to redirect the orbital path of a comet or water rich asteroid to impact on Mars and thereby resupply Mars with seas of water.

You really think we have the ability to divert the path of a comet? And even if we could the reason Mars has no surface water is the fact the atmosphere is so thin that the water has either frozen or evaporated at a high rate. New water would evaporate just as fast as the old water did.

To make Mars livable, truly livable, we would have to somehow reinstate a liquid core(molten of course)in the center of the planet thereby re-establishing the magnetic field that would allow the atmosphere to become heavier. With our present technology I don't think this is feasible.