The emotional support for expending billions of dollars to colonize a planet being blasted with cosmic radiation flummoxes me (Mars has no magnetic field to protect humans on the surface, to say nothing of any other life).
I support a space program, but not this Mars BS, and certainly not Musk’s grand fleecing of the taxpayers...
I’ll give him credit for trying, but I don’t think it will happen until a new form of propulsion is figured out. Modern rockets are heavy and don’t provide the thrust necessary for what he wants to do, hence 40 rockets in a bundle...
Gotta come up with a different way to push the thing.
Isn’t colonizing Mars from Earth kinda like leaving the Pacific NW to go live in the “greener pastures” of Death Valley?