John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
“SpaceX successfully tests its planned Mars rocket
“Rocket lifted 150 metres off the ground”
The thing does look just like a prop from a 1950s sci-fi film.
I've never seen the point of sending people to Mars. It requires vast amounts of support - food, water, oxygen, waste disposal, fuel, etc. - all hurled tens of millions of miles, just for being able to say "We've been there, briefly."
We now know to a certainty - from our robots and satellites - that the place is unrelentingly hostile. The surface layer may even be poisonous.
I love the idea of exploring Mars, but our robots now can do ten-times the job of which humans are capable.
And they can do it at a fraction of the cost.
Really, this is comic-book stuff, not science. Fun, maybe, if you're not paying the bills.
And, of course, Musk isn't. Everything he does involves subsidies - the rockets hugely so from NASA and the Pentagon - or manipulation in the stock market to get his hands on new cash.
He's a "dreamer," yes, but, first and foremost, he's the new American P. T. Barnum.
