According to british media reported on December 14, local time, Tesla CEO Musk said that SpaceX starship will land on Mars in the next five years, and then build a self-sufficient city on Mars and bring animals and creatures on Earth there.
Musk said: "As Earth's resources dwindle and the climate deteriorates, I hope to help humans travel to Mars." SpaceX Starship is a bit like noah's Ark of the future, but we'll build more than two. Our overall goal is for life on Earth to survive on multiple planets and for humanity to be part of a space civilization. ”
(Imaginary illustration: SpaceX starship on Mars)
As soon as this statement came out, scientists laughed at it, saying that Musk was just saying nice things, in fact, it would take centuries to achieve this goal, and it would be extremely difficult. Roger Wiens, a New Mexico scientist currently in charge of managing the SuperCam instrument on the Perseverance rover, said the main component of the Martian atmosphere is carbon dioxide, which could be a good place to grow plants if maintained at enough temperature and plenty of moisture, but would be a terrible thing if animals were allowed to survive there because they need oxygen to breathe. "Humans may be smart enough to put on oxygen breathing devices, but what if it's animals," he said. Will they be smart enough to tune this device? I don't think so, we'll end up seeing a lot of animal carcasses. ”
(New Mexico scientist Roger Wiens)
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is equally skeptical. "Humans can only exist as part of the biosphere [a complex ecosystem of many species]." he said. If one day we were to build a self-sufficient human civilization on Mars, then at some point we would have to resort to the power of Noah's Ark. ”
(Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
"Is Musk still far from achieving that goal? Not exactly. It is not excluded that early Martian settlers at the end of the century will take their pets to Mars", but McDowell stressed that the idea of raising livestock or wild animals in large numbers still has a long way to go in the future, and human exploration of space has only just begun.
Robert Lillis, deputy director of the Space Science Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, joked: "Scientists are unlikely to bring African anteaters, marmosets or mountain lions to Mars." Not in the short term anyway, and we don't know what to do with them. ”
(Musk's SpaceX facility on Merritt Island, Florida)
While some have questioned Musk, others have endorsed the bold idea. Robert Zublin, president of the Mars Society, said Musk was "on the right path." "We're going to bring a variety of animals and plants to Mars, and once on Mars, they'll evolve new forms, for example, they'll be better adapted to the gravity of Mars," he said. That's what happens when species migrate to new environments. So what we have to do is not only to protect the existing life forms of living things, but also to open the way for new forms. ”
Compile: wzx
Review: cmy
Proofreader: Liu Jun