杏吧原创

The SpaceX founder says he鈥檇 like to 鈥渄ie on Mars鈥�. Why the obsession with going to the Red Planet?

Why are you so keen to get humans to Mars?
Because this is the first time in 4 billion years of Earth鈥檚 history that it has been possible. That window may be open for a long time 鈥� and I hope it is 鈥� but it may not be. We should take advantage just in case something bad happens. It wouldn鈥檛 necessarily be that humanity gets eliminated; it could just be a drop in technology.

Why go to Mars, when advances in could give us all the physical sensations of being there?
Maybe I鈥檓 just being romantic but I do think there is some value to being there in person. We can learn a lot from robotics but it is no substitute for being there. And having a base on Mars, where there is a lot of travel to and from Earth, will create a powerful incentive for developing technology that will enable us to travel to other star systems.

Like the exoplanet recently found in Alpha Centauri 4 light years away?
I think you could figure out how to get there. With a nuclear thermal rocket you could definitely reach a tenth of the speed of light. It would take 40 years, though, which is a long time. You鈥檇 have to start off not too old if you wanted to see it.

What could change that?
There are some interesting things I鈥檝e seen lately about warp drives. You can鈥檛 exceed the speed of light but you can warp space and effectively travel many times the speed of light. That鈥檚 kind of exciting. People have found increasingly smarter ways of minimising the energy required [to warp space]. Before, you would need the mass-energy of Jupiter.

Is a warp drive something that , your space exploration company, could use?
Sure we鈥檇 love to have a warp drive. I鈥檓 not going to hold my breath on that one.

As a pioneer, is it nerve-wracking to know that the world is watching you and SpaceX?
I鈥檓 getting more comfortable with it. It was super-white knuckles in the beginning. We made many mistakes. We only made orbit on the fourth flight. We reached the edge of space on flights 2 and 3, but didn鈥檛 have enough velocity. If flight 4 hadn鈥檛 worked, it would have been curtains for SpaceX.

Your . When will you start taking astronauts?
We鈥檙e hoping to do our first flight with people in three years. Actually, if somebody were to stowaway on the present version of Dragon they鈥檇 be able to go to the space station and be fine.

Will you be on the first crewed flight?
It鈥檚 really up to NASA, our customer. I used to do quite dangerous things, like flying a fighter jet at low altitude. Then I had kids and companies and I want to see them grow up, so I鈥檝e curtailed my dangerous activities. I鈥檇 like to go up, but I won鈥檛 be the first. The very first flight will be on automatic pilot, so there will be no people on board.