Fox News host Jesse Watters did an interview this week with Trump whisperer, businessman and social media owner/addict Elon Musk about Musk’s fascination with colonizing Mars.
Musk told Watters it’s paramount for humanity to leave the planet, because the sun will eventually incinerate the Earth.
Despite the massive amounts of misinformation and spin out there today, it is true that the sun will eventually run out of its natural fuel, expanding to a red giant that will swallow Mercury, Venus and, possibly, the Earth, according to NASA.
Watters said he’d never heard such a thing, which is a bit odd, because anyone who has been through a science class at some point in their K-12 education process should know that the sun is not eternal.
Musk seemed to sense Watters’ alarm that this might be an impending event, and added the important context that the sun won’t become a dying star for a long time. (Musk said it will take hundreds of millions of years, when it’s actually estimated to take about 5 billion years, but, for the sake of argument, he’s close enough.)
Musk, who donated $250 million to President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, has had his mind on colonizing Mars for a long time, and Trump seems to be a convert to the cause.
While there’s nothing wrong with that goal, Musk’s primary motivation — that the sun will eventually die — seems flawed.
Mars is one planet back from Earth in the Solar System. The sun’s expansion during the red giant phase won’t just be a problem for the Earth. Mars would be in trouble, too. In fact, the planet will be stripped of its atmosphere, before becoming a freezing rock when the sun eventually contracts.
Another problem with Musk’s motivation is that all of this is billions — or hundreds of millions, according to Musk — of years away. Will humanity still exist then? Will humans have learned to travel well beyond Mars? Is it important to get to Mars in the more immediate future as a first step or is it the end goal?
Of course, the biggest flaw with Musk’s plan, as many have pointed out, is that it ignores the problems on Earth now. It suggests escape, instead of addressing issues like climate change (something Musk used to at least pretend to be passionate about). The Earth is doomed, and the uber wealthy want to get off this rock.
Mars has never been reached by humans and is uninhabitable, which means technology would have to advance over several generations before living there becomes a reality. What will happen to the Earth during that time? More unseasonable baking heat and extreme polar vortices. Worse and more frequent tropical storms and hurricanes. More frequent floods of heightened intensity. Broader spreading of disease due to upset ecosystems. These are already immediate threats.
It’s OK to dream about, or even work toward, planetary exploration and colonization, but it shouldn’t be pursued because of the faulty notion that nothing can be done to salvage the planet humans currently occupy.
