Musk is one of the very few big businesspeople I would trust with a claim as seemingly insane as this one. And assuming that we do get to Mars in a dozen years, I'm wondering what would happen to the land there if settled. Would it be like Antarctica and not really belong to anyone? Will we see a new round of colonialism? Maybe this is megacorporations' first opportunity for a land grab?
Hopefully Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars will turn out to have been prophetic, and a core group of scientists will be able to dig into the regolith before big business can claim it without a fight. If Musk is right, then Robinson was only off by a few years on the date of our initial arrival.
Yes to both. The way I see it private corporations are the only entities with the resources available to make something like that happen. Not on their own, but with joint ventures and operations a couple big'uns can make it happen. Once they do, they'll have nations slobbering over the acre trying to get a piece of the pie now that it's been baked.
edit: to clarify on the joint ventures, notice that SpaceX does not at this time actually have the capital, but every investment bank and their cackling executives will not hesitate to pull out the stops once they have something close to a guarantee of a payoff.Will we see a new round of colonialism? Maybe this is megacorporations' first opportunity for a land grab?
In my head I have this image of a giant neon sign hanging off a satellite that says "Welcome to Mars, by Tesla Motors." With that said I believe that it will turn into something out of science fiction, where we are given the money and orders to colonize a certain way and along the way new political factions happen and we end up with a world of new nations. Like something out of the old PC game "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri." If anyone can try and get it done it's probably Musk, I think it's a lofty goal that neither NASA nor Musk will make before my time is up sometime in the next 40-60 years. I'm not really holding out hope for more than probes and rovers at this time of budget crunching.