Man on Mars - now!

                    SpaceX Red Dragon landing on MARS sometime in 2018. Credit: Space X Well, not quite now, but if a few futuristic thinker...

                SpaceX Red Dragon landing on MARS sometime in 2018. Credit: Space X

Well, not quite now, but if a few futuristic thinkers have their way – very, very, soon. Last year ended with Charles Bolden, head NASA Administrator, saying that the United States would have men on Mars around 2030, a mere 14 years from now. Then just last month Elon Musk, president and founder of SpaceX, upped the ante declaring that SpaceX would put a lander on Mars by 2018 and hinted at putting men on Mars by 2025. How will they do this? With their little Red Dragon spacecraft of course. Measuring about 20 feet tall and 12 feet wide, the Red Dragon will not carry astronauts when it lands on Mars in 2018, a short two years from now.

It will land on Mars to show the new capsule’s ability to reach far-flung destinations throughout our solar system, SpaceX said. Musk plans to unveil SpaceX’s concept for sending humans to Mars this September at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Red Dragon landed on Mars. Credit: SpaceX

Sounds like the place to be if you want a front row seat on how humankind will begin expanding out into the vast universe starting with our solar system and the colonization of Mars. One can only hope that space tourism can’t be far behind.

It’s been more than 45 years since men walked on another surface other than Earth (the last moon landing was December 1972) and yet now, in less than a decade, we will be wandering around another planet in our solar system.

We of course won’t be wandering.

We’ll be building the first settlement on another planet in our solar system.

My money is on Musk and his private space company SpaceX to meet their goals and have men on Mars in less than a decade with the purpose to colonize it.

Wouldn’t that be something?

To put this into perspective, if there were intelligent life on Mars, then that would make us the Aliens.

How’s that for a change of pace?

We have found the aliens and they are us. Something to think about.

Conceptual Drawing of a Mars Colony. Credit: Newscientist.com

 

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