Re:SpaceX hits $100B valuation after secondary share sale
by Ajedi32 on Friday October 08, 2021 @03:14PM
(#28802956)
What rewards though? Even with rapidly reusable rockets, I can't think of any resources on Mars which would be worth the cost of transporting back to Earth.
Maybe if asteroid mining becomes a viable business, Mars' shallower gravity well and higher orbit around the sun might give it a significant enough competitive advantage for bulk goods like fuel and water that may be needed in the asteroid belt. Still, that's a lot of "ifs" and "mights", for what is, even in the best-case scenario, very long-term venture.
I don't know, I find that very unlikely to be the case. If ever there was value in "being first", this is the mother load.
The closest analogy I can think of is the arrival of European powers in the New World. Sure, it's strange, inhospitable and downright dangerous, but even if you fuck everything up along the way and thousands of people die, you're still reaping outsized rewards.
Space is an order of magnitude more inhospitable than the Americas, but (a) so is our understanding of the technology and the universe and (b) humans don't actually need to be in Mars for humanity to effectively reach mars.