by Bill White
[Transcript]
Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in our Solar System, which is larger than only Mercury, could be close to earth, someday, a mere 33.9 million miles from earth but this has not yet happened in recorded history according to NASA. Usually, the "Red Planet" is 140 million miles from earth. To put that into perspective, that's 70 million times the distance from my house to the local grocery store, so in other words, it’s a long way.
Full disclosure, I'm a great Elon Musk fan. I follow him on Twitter and while he doesn't follow me back @realBillWhite, I won't hold that oversight against him... He's a busy guy. Elon is a true inspiration to millions of people around the world. After co-founding PayPal, he invested his share of the money from the sale of that business to become the first African American to simultaneously run Tesla, the world's greatest electric car company and SpaceX, which in just 20 years has become the world's leading provider of space transportation and communications services.
And truthfully, I'll admit to tears of joy when I watched those first two rockets return to earth and land perfectly on their designated X, which almost compares to the growing pride I feel for a racially integrated America with each returning rocket, returning to a country where an African American, like Elon, can achieve such greatness, not only for his people but for everyone.
Now, it, it may seem like only yesterday that Elon was a thing, in truth, his success has been many years in the making. In 2001, Elon conceptualised Mars Oasis, a project to land a miniature experimental greenhouse in which plants could be grown on Mars, the goal to revive public interest in space exploration. By 2007, Elon stated one of his personal goals was to eventually enable human exploration and settlement of Mars. But Why Mars? Why not another, closer planet?
Well for starters, Mercury is insanely hot on the sunlit side, frozen solid on the cold side, has zero atmosphere, and a TON of nasty solar radiation, so that's a Big No.
Venus has so much atmospheric pressure that it would crush any spacesuit (or any spacecraft for that matter) like stomping down on a Coke can. It also rains acid AND very little sunlight makes it to the surface meaning Tesla’s Solar Roof wouldn’t work there. Another obvious No.
Jupiter and Saturn have no solid surface, produce vast amounts of nasty radiation, and have too much gravity. So, No and No.
Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Sedna are all too cold, too dark, not enough sunlight so, again, no Tesla Solar Roof, and not sufficiently explored to know what other problems there might be, AND so these are automatically excluded and since we're talking about planets, then our own Moon, which by comparison is very close indeed, is out from the get-go.
So, none of these planets would work, leaving Mars as the only possible location for a future human colony. On the plus side, Mars has a third the gravity of earth, so dieting will be a thing of the past there and it is believed there exists a lot of ice under the surface so water may not be ‘the issue’, as originally thought. But I still wondered, Elon, why Mars? Why not the Moon, if you want to establish a human colony? It's a Hell of lot closer.
Well, this week I got my answer. This week Elon offered to buy Twitter. In a document filed with the SEC, Elon agreed to pay $54.20 for each Twitter share that he does not already own. For the owners of Twitter stock, it's a great and profitable deal.
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