EDITORIAL: An important step on long journey to Mars – Sentinel & Enterprise

The fantasy of humans living on Mars is a step closer to reality after Elon Musk, the founder-CEO of California-based SpaceX, put his space-travel vision on paper this month.

Musk's article in the journal New Space has a fittingly lofty title: "Making humans a multi-planetary species." But it has an appropriately down-to-Earth goal: Musk begins by saying he's writing "to make Mars seem possible -- make it see it is something that we can do in our lifetimes. There really is a way that anyone can go if they wanted to."

What follows is 16 pages, mostly understandable for the layman, of plans and illustrations that are both inspiring and practical-looking.

Perhaps this exhortation to put heart and mind behind further exploration of outer space is just what Americans need at a time when public life is dominated by self-interest, narrow-mindedness and insularity.

Or maybe it's just a good investment opportunity and a hedge against whatever disaster could someday -- as Musk thinks might happen -- leave Earth uninhabitable.

Musk, whose SpaceX is the world's largest private producer of rocket engines, says it's possible to colonize Mars with as many as 1 million men and women over the next 50 to 100 years.

The key is affordability; he thinks the per-person cost of a Mars trip can be shrunk from an estimated $10 billion using conventional ways of space travel to $200,000 or less.

The key to such cost-cutting is having reusable, refuelable rockets, and hundreds of spaceships that could live in Earth orbit before beginning 80-day flights to Mars when the planets align properly every 26 months.

Musk, a South Africa native who founded Tesla and SolarCity, is estimated to be worth $15 billion. But even he can't personally fund sustained travel to Mars and a human base there.

Ultimately, Musk wants to encourage investment by other billionaires, and perhaps a public-private partnership.

That's why making the plans public and plausible is a step in the right direction.

But judge for yourself. See Musk's article at: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/space.2017.29009.emu

-- By the L.A. Daily News editorial board, Digital First Media

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EDITORIAL: An important step on long journey to Mars - Sentinel & Enterprise