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Elon Discusses Colonizing Mars with Ice-Mining Droids

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Elon Discusses Colonizing Mars with Ice-Mining Droids

Elon Musk is well-known for his memes, crazy ideas, and massively successful companies. In a recent interview on the Full Send Podcast, Musk talks about everything from his insane house parties to his mission to colonize Mars (plus a TON of other stuff).

Let’s hear him discuss his plan to colonize Mars using unique technology: ice-mining droids!

Why Does Elon Musk Want to Colonize Mars?

About 50 minutes into the interview, the conversation begins to move towards space colonization. As is well-known, Musk has a plan to send people to Mars with the hopes of colonizing it one day. Besides being cool and sounding like something from a movie, the reasons behind it seem valid. When asked why he wants to colonize Mars in the first place, Musk’s answer seems simple: preservation.

Essentially, we never know what event could mean the end of humans. As is mentioned in the clip, the dinosaurs had no idea that a meteor was going to end all large life on earth. In the same way, we don’t know what could end humanity, whether that be something as scary as nuclear war and disease, or more sudden, like a meteor.

Regardless, Musk wants to be prepared for that inevitability. With humanity spread out across the solar system, the odds of our species going extinct is much less.

Elon Musk discusses all things aliens, Mars, and what it would take to colonize the red planet in this interview.

How Does Elon Musk Plan to Melt the Ice on Mars?

Part of the process of colonizing Mars is terraforming. Terraforming is the process of turning a planet into something that more closely resembles Earth. In the case of Mars, that looks like heating it up and allowing water to run freely. The planet has a lot of frozen water on it, and if it was melted, it would be an ocean that could be a mile deep across 40% of the planet.

Turning that ice into liquid water is where some crazy ideas come into play. Some of the options that Musk lists out include launching missiles every 10 seconds across the planet’s surface, creating an artificial sun (temporarily), or using solar mirrors to reflect heat onto the surface.

Elon Talks About His House Parties
Elon Musk has been discussing his proposal to begin sending humans to Mars in order to colonize it in the event of a humanity-destroying event.

What are Ice-Mining Droids?

Before you bomb the surface of Mars, you need to have a base of operations. This is where the ice-mining droids come in. One of the hosts asks Musk what the first step to colonizing the planet would be, and Musk’s response is pretty simple: build a base of operations.

Once you have a base of operations, you need to have water (and lots of it). Using robots to mine and purify the ice is an essential step to establishing a base, at least that’s what Musk claims. Once you have enough water, you can use it, in combination with the C02 in the air, to create oxygen and methane. What uses those two gases? Rockets!

Elon Musk

Elon Musk

With enough water, you can have a stable food source, rocket fuel, and more. Better get those droids to mining!

“For the first people who go to Mars, it’s going to be dangerous, you might die, the food’s probably not good, it’s going to be a long and difficult trip, probably a lot of pain and danger. That’s the ad. But, it’s going to be a glorious adventure.”

Elon Musk

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