Musk the Martian?

Mars, the Red Planet, the Roman God of War, the place men hail from and an aggressor in The War of the Worlds that Orson Welles utilised to great effect when he terrified Americans on the radio in 1938. Our obsession with our russet-coloured neighbour fuels most of our fantasies about inhabiting another world or other life existing beyond our planet. Unlike Venus, the surface of Mars remains completely unobscured by an atmosphere, so the more efficient that telescopes grew over the years, so did astronomer's fascination with viewing a different world so near but achingly out of reach. By 2017, since NASA's first attempts in 1960, twenty-five missions to the planet have resulted in success, not just for NASA, but for the Soviet Union/Russia, The European Space Agency and China respectively, even music has blasted across the barren vistas of Mars.

Although the march of progress and the plethora of footage space missions brought to our marvelled selves does not equal the sense of reaching out and touching the surface of Mars like we have with the moon. Rovers such as Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity will not equal the thrill humanity will experience by watching humans explore Mars and much like the Industrial Revolution when great industrialists like Isambard Kingdom Brunel pioneered breakthroughs, Elon Musk in the 21st century delivers the same. The jack-of-all-trades from South Africa and venture capitalist has broken ground in recent years with a raft of new developments that could soon change the world. Beginning with his involvement in PayPal, Musk went on to develop his Tesla range of electric cars, which expanded into batteries. Solar City aims to provide green solar roofs for houses, but perhaps most ambitious is his Hyperloop technology. Hyperloop seeks to build tubes of transportation that Musk hopes to reach speeds of up to 700 miles per hour, potentially making a journey between Los Angeles and San Francisco in around 35 minutes. A plan that the billionaire maybe intends to include in his underground roadway idea, but all eyes are more on his private rocket and space venture, SpaceX.

Elon Musk made no secret of the fact that he intends to send humans to Mars and now he has set a date on the day our species will set out for the Red Planet. A mission to Mars is an exciting prospect for all of humanity, and just as the Moon Landings broadcast across the world, in modernity's zeitgeist, ruled by interaction, our mission to Mars will have streams, hashtags and social media saturation. When the arrival on the Red Planet comes around, an estimated seven years hence, maybe Augmented Reality's progress will reach a point where it is so efficient that coupled with 5G internet technology, added to GoPro style cameras, audiences could have an Astronaut's-Eye-View around the Martian surface. In less than a decade, humans could have achieved the feat if inhabiting another planet, the heady "Musk" of progress indeed hangs heavy in the air!

#Minds, #News.

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