Harvard Physicist Avi Loeb has opposed SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s idea of occupying Mars. During his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience recently, Loeb said that relocating humans to Mars “is not a great vision,” and provided an alternative to ensure the continuation of human species.
While explaining the controversial interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, Loeb spoke about astronomers who are against his alien theory and what implications their ignorance might eventually have on all of humanity. He also addressed the ultimate existential question – “are we alone?” and how fragile the Earth is, noting that the Sun will consume it after turning into a red giant in a few billion years.
Speaking about the idea of colonising Mars, Loeb said – “Going to Mars is like a group of chimpanzees living in a tree and they have some bananas. And one of the chimpanzees looks far away into the horizon and says ‘Oh look there’s another region that we can go to’ but it’s clear there are no bananas there.”
“Elon says ‘let’s go to Mars to save humanity’ but it is not a great place to be,” he told Rogan adding that a Noah’s Ark-like technology may save us from extinction. “It makes much more sense for us to invest in building a platform in space that can accommodate humans (and) not to rely on another rock which happens to be near us with much worse conditions,” Loeb stated.
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The physicist is the latest in the list of experts who have derided Musk’s Mars ambition. Prior to this, cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, in an opinion piece, called the plan “logistically ludicrous, strategically ill advised, and scientifically and politically divisive and dangerous.”
British Astrophysicist Martin Rees is also against occupying Mars as he believes the idea is a “dangerous illusion.”
Musk, on the other hand, is determined to make humans a multiplanetary species and has plans to land humans on the red planet before 2030. Earlier this year, he even said that SpaceX will launch the first Starship to Mars in 2026 with Tesla’s Optimus robots to lay the groundwork for human exploration.
Regardless of what the aforementioned scientists say, Musk is likely to get tremendous support from NASA as his billionaire friend and aviator Jared Isaacman is set to be the space agency’s next administrator. Isaacman, like Musk, has vowed to plant American flags on Mars soon and possibly even make it habitable. During his US Senate hearing after nomination as next NASA chief in April, Isaacman said he is determined to land astronauts on the Moon while simultaneously launching missions to Mars.
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