Elon Musk: people may die on early Mars missions

As a big proponent for a manned mission to Mars and the colonisation of the red planet, you might expect Elon Musk to wrap up his ideas in PR positivism, but that's not the case. In a recent interview, he claimed that the first missions to Mars will be very dangerous for astronauts and could even lead to some of them dying.

Musk has been ratcheting up the Mars rhetoric in recent months in the lead up to his planned revelation in September, where he is expected to detail Space X's plans to get humans to Mars in the next few years – rather than the decades that NASA has planned.

That will involved the construction of a conceptual Mars Colonial Transporter, which could ferry hundreds of people to the red planet. However as the number of people goes up danger inherently follows and there are so many unknowns about a manned mission to Mars, Musk believes that ultimately people could die on the expedition.

He said as such during an interview with the Washington Post, where he talked up his plans for Mars colonisation, but promised far more details later this year. On the subject of danger, he said that he simply hopes there will be enough people like the early explorers of new land and seas on Earth, who will be willing to do what's necessary to take humanity to new worlds.

While the technology necessary for such a large scale colonising mission to Mars is developed, the private company will first send unmanned rovers, robots and other materials to the planet to seed it for humanity's arrival. It will also test equipment like the Dragon lander, to make sure it can get humans to the surface of the planet safely.

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KitGuru Says: Would you be willing to leave it all behind and become one of the first Martian explorers ever to set foot on the world?

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