NASA's new shocking discovery on Mars, and it could stop Elon Musk’s colony

Mars has always been Elon Musk's top priority, dream, and goal, which he always mentions anywhere and at any time. To achieve said goal, Elon and his company SpaceX are building the Starship system to send humans to colonize the Red Planet in the coming decades. However, recently, several NASA studies have shown that previous discoveries about Mars were inaccurate. They contain many extremist dangerous problems that could affect and even end the Martian colonization project in which Musk and SpaceX are so eagerly preparing for. Does this mean that the shared goal by Musk and SpaceX is in danger? And how could the new discoveries put an end to the Martian colonization effort? Let's find out in today's episode of Great SpaceX. Among the celestial bodies that humans are currently aiming for, Mars is also the planet receiving a lot of attention. After discovering the planet, many people believed this was a potential home away from home that humans could migrate to in the future. It's quite understandable. Mars is one of the planets closest to Earth. It has many characteristics similar to our planet. In particular, there are areas of prominent white ice at the poles of Mars, which is believed to contain water. It's an important resource for building any new civilization. But in order to ensure living on this planet is possible, research will need to be done beforehand. Currently, agencies have many research missions working on this planet. However, many studies have shown that this planet is not as peaceful as we may have thought. In fact, many problems have been presented that could even affect the plans involving settling on Mars, including the one that Musk and SpaceX are carrying out. The problem was first discovered by NASA's InSight lander. In November of 2018, InSight launched a mission to explore the geology of Mars. After it arrived on Mars, it conducted studies and seemed to successfully determine the planet's internal structure. However, during its work, InSight detected many large earthquakes. In just its first eight months of work, it recorded more than 170 earthquakes. By 2022, InSight had recorded more than a thousand more earthquakes. These earthquakes, or marsquakes I should say, are strong, creating large vibrations that can cause landslides. Earthquakes are one of the most dangerous natural disasters in the world. On Earth, they also happen regularly. Each earthquake can cause huge damage to people and property. Although technology has now become more developed, allowing us to predict earthquakes, the damage they cause has not been completely resolved yet. This causes difficulties for SpaceX's settlement plans on the planet. If we want to avoid the effects of this natural disaster, we must choose spacious and flat areas to build our bases. However, such places have another danger. The Martian atmosphere is much thinner than Earth's, and it also does not have an ozone layer to prevent dangerous radiation from the sun. Radiation rays are very dangerous agents that can cause effects on human health as well as physical facilities. If we want to avoid those effects, we must choose higher and more enclosed places, such as canyons and valleys. But this is a dangerous place if earthquakes and landslides do occur. Once an earthquake or landslide happens, all bases and people can be buried. More importantly, our facilities are still not enough to accurately collect and predict this disaster on Mars. Therefore, Mars colonization missions will probably be extremely risky. The second discovery is related to the mission of the Curiosity rover. Recently, Curiosity has collected important discoveries about the planet. These are erosion marks near craters on Mars. They're believed to be traces of ancient rivers on the planet. This is a sign that life may have existed on the planet. If this is the case, then why is it an issue? It's mainly because when we go to Mars, we will certainly also find safe places to live. This is also probably also where those, those lives exist. Our appearance may unintentionally affect the habitat of those extraterrestrial beings. More vigorous activities like exploitation and construction can cause negative impacts on life that may exist on Mars, even causing them to disappear. Additionally, those life particles can also directly endanger our lives. These can be just small entities like bacteria or even viruses, but we cannot ignore this. If they still exist today, it means they have lived for millions of years under the harshness of Mars and evolved into extremely dangerous entities. When establishing a settlement here, we will often come into contact with them. Gradually, they can cause damage to our health. Bacteria and viruses are very dangerous entities. They are the agents that cause many pandemics in human history. And now, we don't know anything about those strange entities and it's a danger that we cannot control or resolve immediately if it actually occurs. Those are the problems with the current Mars colonization plan that SpaceX is pursuing. But besides the two aforementioned dangerous new challenges, SpaceX also has to deal with many other problems. First of which is the Starship's current capability. Even though Starship is the world's largest and most powerful rocket, reaching Mars will still be a challenge for it right now. It still needs to prove its capabilities in orbital test launches first. But this is not an easy task and SpaceX is still struggling to find a way to solve it. And even if it succeeds, it will still have to do it many times in order to prove its reliability before being allowed to operate, at least with humans. But if those problems are resolved, SpaceX will deal with new challenges. The road to Mars is indeed very long. The closest distance between Earth and Mars is also up to 33.9 million miles or 546 million kilometers. According to Elon Musk, Starship will take about six months at least to reach Mars. To serve that journey, SpaceX will need to build many support systems like fuel and cargo supply depots. SpaceX also needs to prepare a construction support system to build the first infrastructure on Mars. And because the orbits of Mars and Earth are different, it will take more than a year and a half at least for them to get close to each other again, the best time for us to conduct the next missions. Thus, SpaceX needs to prepare many things like food, water, and so on for astronauts to live on Mars during that time. This will all take a lot of time and money to create and maintain. It will also require the solidarity of all of humanity. If only Musk and SpaceX attempted this, it would probably be very difficult. SpaceX needs help and support from other people and organizations. But now, there are still many people who oppose the crazy plan that Musk and SpaceX have initiated. Additionally, since SpaceX started the Starship project, we have seen them often encounter barriers from government agencies. This is one of these challenges that SpaceX and other agencies will need to solve before thinking about any further effort. Of course, dreams and scenarios that Musk and SpaceX have created are beautiful and optimistic. But in order to get those things into the realm of reality, it will be quite the undertaking. There are still many things to consider for Musk and his company. It will not be a task that can be solved in just a few days or months, but will be counted in years. However, we all have to admit that one day in the future, we will have to leave our beautiful home. History has recounted many lives being destroyed simply because they could not leave Earth to find respite. But for us humans, we're going to be different because we can actually pull this off. And although Musk's desires and plans seem crazy and have many obstacles, we should still respect what he and his company are doing. It all just comes from the goal of helping humans continue to survive in the universe. Hopefully, Musk and his talented crew of engineers and researchers, along with those around the globe, can come up with solutions to solve these problems that I've presented to you today, soon, in order to help us be more confident about what Musk and his company are doing. And for you, how do you feel about the problems that the Mars colonization plan presents? Do you believe that Musk and SpaceX are able to solve them in the future? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section down below. Otherwise, folks, that's about it for today's episode. 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