Elon Musk provides new details on his ‘mind blowing’ mission to Mars

Re:Elon Musk provides new details on his ‘mind blowing’ miss... by sago on Saturday June 11, 2016 @10:08AM (#11883480)

Doesn't that argue for doing the moon first? If you say "yeah we've not climbed any hills yet, but we're totally gonna try Everest" that might not show much common sense.

And if the aim is to just try to do the hardest possible thing we can think of, why Mars and not, say Venus?

I think difficulty is a red herring. The other suggested reasons (atmosphere, gravity, water) seem much better reasons.

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Re:Elon Musk provides new details on his ‘mind blowing’ miss... by danielvf on Saturday June 11, 2016 @11:32AM (#11883784)

We've already been to the moon first though, several times. Mars is the next (huge) step forward in difficulty.

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Re:Elon Musk provides new details on his ‘mind blowing’ miss... by sago on Saturday June 11, 2016 @11:57AM (#11883902)

We've visited for a few hours, this is about putting a colony on it. That's orders of magnitude more difficult. Why do something orders of magnitude more difficult on a planet orders of magnitude more difficult to reach?

As I said, the other answers seemed to give credible suggestions.

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