Elon Musk is many things. He blabbers off on Twitter, he slave drives his employees, but there is no doubting his genius and intensity in making things happen. And boy did things happen. On 30 May, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launched 2 astronauts into space for the first time since the end of the space program in 2011. This successful launch has re-ignited the imaginations of everyone, and suddenly (not so sudden for Elon), we’re talking about colonising Mars by 2050, and in fact, starting to terraform Mars as early as 2025?!
Here’s the crew entering into the ISS, for the first time in history from a commercially made spacecraft.
This is the first time in human history @NASA_Astronauts have entered the @Space_Station from a commercially-made spacecraft. @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug have finally arrived to the orbiting laboratory in @SpaceX's Dragon Endeavour spacecraft. pic.twitter.com/3t9Ogtpik4
— NASA (@NASA) May 31, 2020
A city on Mars, starting with the SpaceX Starship
The SpaceX Starship will be the jewel in Elon’s plan to conquer Mars. It is designed to hold up to 150 tons of material or up to 100 people into space. They are currently building Starship as I type, and has reiterated his bold plans on Twitter (obviously).
He plans to send the first ships to Mars (assuming only with cargo) by 2022, with crew by 2024. He reckons it will take about 20 years for the teams to be able to create a sustainable city on Mars, and to start sending people to Mars to live by 2050.
All in all, he plans to build 1,000 Starships carrying 100 people each, making for an initial colony of 100,000 people. Of course, the ships will all be reusable, making it a lot more cost effective for space travel for the masses.
This is all very exciting for me, because if his timelines match his ambitions, and humans take Mars, this all happens in my lifetime! I’ll be 71 and still kicking (hopefully!). I may not personally be on Mars, but maybe friends or even my kids will be, and how cool would it be to “Zoom” with human martians?!
What does this have to do with Personal Finance?
Only tangentially, but hear me out. It’s definitely important for humans to move beyond Earth as our only home (I believe we’re parasites, and more often than not, the villains in the eyes of a lot of species, but that’s a post for another time) for sustainability reasons, and also as an insurance policy against an extinction event on Earth.
We’ve been lucky thus far, but lightning only needs to strike once.
So.. in a way, if we’re dead, then there’s no point talking about personal finance or FIRE right?
Also, from an investment perspective, if Mars were to happen in our lifetimes, what would the impact be to real estate, will certain industries die off, and other new industries emerge? How will jobs look in the face of interplanetary travel and communications?
Property
You don’t want to amass a bunch of property believing that in the long term, property always goes up because the population always goes up, and Earth is finite. That may have been true in all of humanity, until Mars became a reality.
All of a sudden, we have 2 planets to build homes. Your highly congested, likely highly polluted shoebox of a home will be lucky to fetch half the price you paid for?
As an aside, Elon Musk has recently pedged to sell off all his properties (valued at roughly $100M. Coincidence?
Gold
With spacing becoming a thing, space mining and the speculation that precious materials such as gold is not so precious after all, could send prices plummeting, and terrestrial mining companies into bankruptcy.
Education / Jobs
A masters in STEM may no longer be as desirable, nor pay as much as a degree in spacewalking, and jobs in orbit might be the norm. Fly-through McDonald’s, anyone?
Sci-fi Inspiration
I’m sure from a popular culture perspective, this launch will definitely inspire future sci-fi films in referencing this event as a trigger of sorts.
In fact, I’m right now inspired to write this story!
Imagine this:
Crew Dragon Launch in 2020 by SpaceX triggers the aggressive deployment of resources and budget into making Mars colonisation a near future reality.
SpaceX starts terraforming Martian surface and sends the first 100,000 humans to colonise Mars. This triggers subterranean Martians pouring out from Olympus Mons, decimating the human population and experimenting on them to learn more about us.
This sets up a race against time for humanity to find a way to fight back against an enemy we don’t know much about, but which the enemy has access to learn about human frailties and weaknesses.
Think of it as Starship Troopers meets Prometheus meets Edge of Tomorrow with a dash of Avengers. Boom.
Hello Marvel? Buy the rights?
Anyway, this is just me thinking of random scenarios. What are your thoughts on the impact of this?
Interesting thoughts but in my humble opinion it would take a few generations for the economy of scale for it to be worth settling in Mars. If you’re into this, i really highly recommend that you check out the TV Show The Expanse which are based on novels. Its set 200 years in the future when they are 24 billion humans on Earth and 9 million on Mars.
Oh wow, 24 billion humans on Earth! I can’t imagine that at all.. will check it out, thanks Gaddy.
Yes, it will take a while for Mars to get going, if ever. Definitely going to be an interesting time for sure!