elon musk's vision for life on mars is easily the most ambitious plan set out by any modern leader one million people living and working happily on another planet within the next 50 years a second home for the human race it's a crazy idea to think about and obviously elon musk isn't the first person to have this idea but he is the only person so far with the money and the resources and the determination to actually get this thing done we are in the very early days right now but the seeds for life on mars have
already been sown but what exactly are we going to do when we get there and what will living on mars really look like well we've never done this before so no one can really say for sure but there are some really cool ideas out there and it's all pretty fun to think about so that's what we're doing today let's talk about life on mars hey elon knights and musketeers welcome to the tesla space where we share the latest news rumors and insights into all things tesla spacex and elon musk so the basic premise for getting
people and stuff to mars is actually pretty simple and i say that only because elon and spacex have already got that mostly figured out we're using the spacex starship as our mode of transportation between earth and mars that's the same rocket that just completed a successful takeoff and landing test the sn15 prototype that we watched nail the landing is pretty close to what the final starship product will actually be it's just a really big stainless steel rocket ship that can take off from a planet fly through space and come back down again fully intact and
it can do that over and over again with only a pause to refuel in between flights no rocket like this has ever been successfully done before this is a true game changer the starship will act as a ferry between earth and mars some will carry people but even more flights will carry supplies the starship can carry 100 metric tons of cargo on each flight that's about 50 tesla model 3 cars for comparison once every two years when earth and mars reach their closest point in space fleets of starships will make the seven month journey between
the two planets the first crossing will be a few ships just to test the waters but after a few of these cycles we'll be sending thousands of ships from earth to mars we've got a full length video that goes into all the details of the journey between the two planets you can check that out for even more details but today we're going to move right into what it will be like to actually live on mars obviously no one thinks that mars is going to be a nice comfortable place to live on day one but just
how rough is it going to be well the average temperature is around negative 60 degrees celsius which is stupid cold even by canadian standards though in the peak of summer at the equator of the planet mars can reach a maximum temperature of around 20 degrees celsius which is pretty nice i'd say like pretty solid tanning weather up here in the great white north so that's pretty nice but it doesn't mean you'll be kicking it on a lounge chair with a nice beverage every day the atmosphere on mars is pretty much non-existent and what is there
is mostly carbon dioxide the volume of atmospheric gas on mars is less than one percent of what we have on earth so there's really not much to work with and in addition to there being nothing there to breathe there is also nothing there to protect the surface of mars from cosmic radiation that's bad you see as much as the sun sustains our life here on earth that's only because our atmosphere is able to block out all of the bad radiation that would just kill us if we were exposed to it or it might turn us
into superheroes but somebody would have to be willing to find out the gravity is also much lighter on mars mars is much smaller than the earth so the gravity is only about one-third as strong there that's actually a really good thing for us because after seven months of weightless space flight the human body is going to be significantly weakened so regaining strength on mars will be easier than on earth trying to come back home after an extended stay though that is going to be very challenging to overcome then there are these epic dust storms that
can cover the entire planet in some cases dust is going to be a huge issue on mars that's what got matt damon into trouble when he was on mars he got caught in a dust storm and all his stuff blew over and he got stranded luckily i'm being told that that was just a movie and didn't actually happen it's hard to tell these days which is which they're just so good at that now so in real life the wind on mars wouldn't be that big of a deal like we said the atmosphere is so much
thinner over there than it is on earth so even in a crazy 100 kilometer high dust storm on mars the wind is only blowing like 60 kilometers an hour it's the dust that's really going to be the problem it gets everywhere all of our equipment is going to have to be thoroughly sealed against dust getting inside and ruining everything solar panels are going to be a pain in the ass to keep clean so overall the dust storms are going to be bad but it's not going to be like that scene in mad max where everyone
gets wrecked they'll be pretty tame in comparison so mars is definitely not going to be a safe place and like elon has said people will probably die probably not so much in the way that pete davidson's chad died on snl but more like accidents happening to people the margin for error with everything on mars will be so slim any little mistakes or equipment failure can cost a person their life i saw elon tell an interviewer on cnn that he would only ever go to mars personally if he knew that spacex would continue after his death
so even as the boss elon isn't super optimistic about his chances of survival but is there anything we can do to make mars a more hospitable place for human beings to live maybe hopefully there are a couple of theories about terraforming mars elon has an idea in mind that is kind of insane so let's talk about that nuke mars elon tweeted in august 2019 in support of his idea for terraforming the red planet we should just nuke it i know that's an extreme solution but there is some science behind it though opinions are split the
idea is that if you detonated a bunch of nuclear bombs over top of the polar regions of mars that heat produced could melt the frozen water and release vast amounts of stored carbon dioxide and water vapor into the martian atmosphere in theory all of this newly released gas would increase the density of the atmosphere on mars and possibly start a greenhouse effect that would begin to warm the planet that does make sense on a basic scale it's not totally insane but it's hard to be sure whether elon is serious about this idea he's probably just
having some fun there was a proper study released in 2018 in the journal for nature astronomy that concluded that there just isn't enough carbon dioxide stored on mars at least not that we know about to actually cause any significant warming of the planet if it were released other scientists have said that even if there was enough gas for this idea to work the whole thing could actually backfire and cause a nuclear winter event to happen if the explosion kicked up enough of the martian dust it could just cover the entire planet and block out the
sun for years hey by the way did you know that we have our very own tesla space newsletter yeah it's great link is in the description to sign up so we're probably just going to have to deal with mars being an inhospitable wasteland for the foreseeable future and if that's the case then how do we actually live there best anyone can tell we either live in domes in dirt eggs or underground so we could all live under a series of domes on mars just like in that stephen king book we could create miniature atmospheres within
each dome village that would allow us to just relax and walk around and do our thing without the need for spacesuits obviously it wouldn't be one big seamless dome there'd be no way to get that transported to mars it would have to be modular like a honeycomb pattern you could just stack round sections of dome up in a starship like a can of pringles when it gets to mars just pop the top and start building domes yo elon get at me for more genius engineering ideas like that one i've got tons they'll work i promise
now here's a real life genius idea martian buildings could be 3d printed eggs made from dirt seriously this is a real thing this company called ai space factory has come up with an automated process that would 3d print an egg-shaped building using materials harvested on mars the idea is to use basalt in combination with bioplastic to create a durable building material the basalt fibers would be extracted from martian rock and the polylactic acid binding material that would make both workable and solid would be extracted from plants that could be grown in greenhouses on mars the
result would be a super strong stable and insulating shell that would be built by a 3d printing robot martian conditions require a structure optimized to handle internal atmospheric pressure and thermal stresses and ai space factory are thinking that an egg shape would be the ideal to meet those needs everything would be built up vertically so there would be no hallways just multiple levels remember that wind and gravity are significantly less of an issue on mars so there's no problem at all with building upwards this is definitely the more practical idea than trying to build a
humongous dome with materials that we shipped from earth like potato chips it's not the fancy sci-fi martian city that we are all probably imagining but such is life nasa has already shown their support for ai space factory they awarded the company a 500 000 prize in their 2015 competition to find the most promising martian architecture now we know how much elon musk loves tunnels so if he has his way then we're sure to see some level of subterranean activity on mars this could be really useful as a transportation network for moving people and supplies around
the colony especially if we go with the egg city idea and not the giant dome transporting people and stuff underground would keep them sheltered from dust storms and we could have a whole network of automated robot vehicles constantly moving under the surface as for people living underground permanently it might sound good in theory but realistically the idea of living underground on another planet for years on end that's enough to make a person go insane and it's probably not going to be sustainable from a mental health perspective powering a martian colony is going to be a
very tricky situation the best idea we have so far is solar power but that comes in with some extra challenges the energy available from the sun on mars is about 40 percent less than what it gives us on earth so that's a big problem to begin with and even in the best case scenario we would need a staggering amount of solar panels to power any reasonably sized colony on mars then we throw in the extra complication of dust if the colony is caught in a dust storm then that energy from the sun is reduced even
more even on days with no storms dust will still build up on top of the panels regularly and reduce their effectiveness so we would need to deal with that either an automated system that would eat up even more of that precious electricity or by having people do it manually clearing dust off solar panels could become the number one occupation on mars we could also extract hydrogen from the frozen waters on mars that's a little more tricky we're going to need electricity to power the mining operation to begin with so it's maybe an energy solution in
the long term but it's not doing us any good in the early days of life on mars so getting enough energy to power our technology will be a struggle or will it so much of our tech right now is moving towards a lower power consumption model it's possible that we can just innovate our way out of this problem within the next few years take the new apple m1 chip for example apple has figured out how to combine the cpu gpu and ram all into one little chip and it's crazy powerful the m1 chip can perform
just as well or better than most desktop pc systems and it takes minimal energy to operate and requires no cooling system at all there's no fan in the current macbook air the m1 is even going into the new ipad pro this year so if we can cram a full-size computer from 2019 into a tablet in 2021 then i'm pretty optimistic that by 2030 we can figure something out for running a mars colony off of minimal solar power now the next big question is who gets to go does this mean that you and i could be
living on mars someday yeah it's definitely a possibility the first people to land on mars are obviously going to be scientists and engineers they'll have a lot of very complicated work cut out for them and elon wants to start landing uncrewed starships on mars by as early as 2024 and they won't just be doing that for fun the ships are going to be loaded with supplies that people will need to get started on building a mars base we might even have automated systems that have already gotten started on the work for them by the time
that people do arrive i think elon is still optimistic that crude flights could reach mars by 2026 but more realistically it probably happens around 2030 but nothing wrong with being hopeful for the rest of us average folks there should be opportunities opening up in the 2040s for mass migration to begin from earth to mars elon wants to incentivize people to move planets by offering them good jobs on mars once the really smart people get things set up then you won't need to be a genius to be useful on mars there should be plenty of opportunities
for farmers tradespeople mechanics youtubers hey the people are going to want to see some vlogs from mars you know that's going to be a huge a huge thing when it happens your boy will probably be way too damn old to be relevant at that point but i can hope maybe a mars family vlog or something there are going to be a couple of opportunities over the next few decades where earth and mars will come even closer together than normal it would cut the trip down from seven months to five months and people are eyeing these
windows as opportunities for a great crossing where huge groups of people could all migrate at one time the big one is probably going to fall in the year 2051. by that time spacex should have built thousands of starship vehicles maybe they've even invented something way better by that point who knows and there should be a legit city on mars ready for us to live in so 30 years from now could be the time when tens of thousands of people all pack up and leave earth to go live on mars probably forever i imagine you don't
factor in a return ticket to that kind of trip and at the same time there would be people born on mars that have never seen earth which is a crazy thing to think about i don't know if they could even come to earth a person born on mars would be so much weaker the earth's gravity might crush their feeble martian body which is sad as hell but it's so crazy to think about all of this stuff so let's end the video here because we can go off on all kinds of different topics and daydream about
mars but let us know about your theories for life on mars in the comments below i'm curious to see what you all come up with tell me how wrong i am about any of the science that was all talked about in this video be sure to sign up for our newsletter for more tesla news and speculation we send out one email per week and it's a really fun and easy read to catch up on all things elon musk related there's a link down below when you do sign up be sure to check your various inboxes
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