Source: http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectu...

Musk isn’t the only one dreaming of a human colony on Mars. NASA has its own plans, “with human missions to the surface of Mars as the driving goal.” Another private spaceflight project called Mars One, funded by Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp, wants to put humans on Mars by 2025 and film the entire process as a reality TV show, meaning we might be in the midst of a new space race that pits privately owned companies against public ones for the rights to the title of “first Martian.” According to Mars One, more than 200,000 people applied for the one-way trip to Mars it is hoping to eventually execute. (Isn’t that the plot of Total Recall?)

But not so fast on the Mars race, everyone. MIT concluded last year that humans could only live on Mars for 68 days, tops, and that a permanent settlement on Mars is “not feasible” with current technology. It used damning facts to poke holes in a number of Mars One’s assertions about Mars colonization. Oxygen extraction would be necessary in greenhouses on Mars to prevent the overly oxygenated air from catching fire. While oxygen extraction is possible, it’s never been tested in space. If astronauts are sent to colonize with no plans to return, as put forth in Mars to Stayplans that include Mars One, the worst-case scenario is a MartianJamestown.1

Conceptualizing notions straight out of science fiction — rockets to the moon, human colonies on Mars — and actually executing them takes absurd amounts of chutzpah. Musk seems like the most serious candidate to really try to make his vision happen, and he has chutzpah to burn. He said the Falcon 9’s drone-ship landing had a 50 percent chance of success, and then later admitted, “I pretty much made that up. I have no idea.”