NASA has been a household name for Americans since the '60s when it achieved the seemingly impossible, landing humans on the Moon.

Since then, NASA has explored other alien surfaces like, Mars and Saturn's moon Titan, as well as flown by every planet in our solar system. 

It has achieved so much on a budget that is so small. Imagine if we gave NASA hundreds of billions of dollars a year like what we give the US military. What more could NASA have achieved over the years?

This is one example where the sky is not the limit — it's the starting line. Following is a transcript of the video.

The US spends more on space exploration than any other country in the world. A big chunk of this investment goes to NASA, the country's leading agency for space exploration. 

But that’s still a pittance compared to the overall US Federal budget. Since NASA landed the first man on the Moon in 1969, its budget has plummeted from 4.5% of  the Federal budget to less than 0.5%.

But what if NASA’s budget hadn’t shrunk? What if, instead, its funding was comparable to the US military’s?

How close would we be to actually colonizing Mars or visiting another star system? 

It’s impossible to know for sure, but here’s a look at how NASA’s budget compared to the US military’s in 2016.

Put another way, the military’s budget for 2016 would pay for a crewed mission to Mars with tens of billions to spare. NASA estimates it would cost $450 billion to land the first humans on Mars by the late 2030s or early 2040s.

What else might NASA do with $600 billion? Let’s look at how NASA allocated its funds in 2016. That would easily meet current costs for NASA’s biggest ongoing projects including:

• Construction and launch costs for the most powerful rocket in history, the Space Launch System.
• The most powerful space telescope ever built, the James Webb Space Telescope.
• Partner with SpaceX on its first mission to Mars in 2018, the Red Dragon Mission.
• Pay for NASA operations on board the ISS through 2024.

So, how would you have NASA spend the rest?

We can think of some ideas.

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• A group affiliated with the United Nations is launching a fake Mars and moon colony.
• Called M.A.R.S., the faux habitat is located in the remote countryside of southern Poland.
• Six volunteer astronauts will work and live inside M.A.R.S. for two weeks, starting on July 31.
• Organizers hope to use the data and lessons they learn to support real missions to the moon and Mars.

Atop a forested ridge in southern Poland, a mission on the surfaces of both Mars and the moon is about to launch.

The two-week mission is just a simulation, of course, since no entity on Earth is prepared to inhabit deep space. But the experiment — called the Poland Mars Analogue Simulation 2017 — will study a group of six volunteer "analogue" astronauts as they work through a realistic schedule of space exploration, then provide those findings to anyone who's drawing up crewed missions beyond Earth.

"This mission will be one of the most comprehensive Mars analogue missions ever conducted in Europe," Mina Takla, spokesperson for the PMAS 2017 mission, said in a YouTube video promoting the project.

The experiment, which Business Insider first learned about through the Dawn of Private Space Science Symposium on June 4, is being spearheaded by a subgroup of the United Nations Programme on Space Applications, specifically the Space Exploration Project Group. More than a dozen partners are involved, including The Mars Society, European Space Agency, and European Space Foundation.

The project's central feature is a four-armed, domed habitat in the countryside of Rzepiennik Biskupi, Poland (and near the Queen Jadwiga Astronomical Observatory, no less).

Step inside M.A.R.S.

To build the habitat, PMAS rounded up material donations and money from corporate sponsors, and raised tens of thousands of dollars through crowdfundingsites.

Organizers have dubbed their faux habitat the Martian Modular Analog Research Station, or M.A.R.S.

As Marta Bellon of Business Insider Poland has previously reported, the central dome of M.A.R.S. is being built by Freedomes — the same company that built the fictional Mars habitats for the blockbuster movie "The Martian".

The entire base was designed by British architect Scott Porter, according to Bellon.

The dome will be the headquarters, and each arm will house different groups of facilities: One is dedicated to scientific research, another to personal quarters (including a gym), a third to storage and systems, and another to an airlock.

This 360-degree, wrap-around video lets you explore the domed headquarters (click and drag the video to look around):

Six analogue astronauts will "land" in the habitat on July 31, then work and live and work inside it through August 13.

The volunteers hail from Puerto Rico, Israel, Spain, France, the US, and Nigeria. Meanwhile, a larger support team will operate as mission control in the northern Polish city of Torun, including psychologists to monitor the astronauts.

"[PMAS 2017] will be one of the most international, multicultural, and interdisciplinary analogue missions ever conducted, with members from over 28 different countries and representing scientific disciplines ranging from engineering to astrophysics, psychology, geology, and biology," Takla said.

In addition to following a strict schedule of experiments, maintenance, and personal time, mission managers will simulate other realities for a far-off planetary mission, including spacesuits to leave M.A.R.S., a rover to ride around on, and annoying communications delays.

"[T]he first three days of the 14 days of the simulation will be in 'Lunar mode' with a real-time communication between habitat and Mission Control, before we go for the remaining 11 days into the Martian mode," Tajana Lučić, a co-leader of the project, told Business Insider in an email.

When the Martian mode starts, Lučić said, "the time delay will be 15 minutes, and simulates the long distance between Earth and Mars and the related communication delay."

Fake Mars missions galore

The PMAS 2017 mission isn't the only project trying to figure out how to run a tightly operated lunar or Martian base.

HI-SEAS in Hawaii, for example — which former Business Insider reporter Kelly Dickerson visited — has astronauts who live and work inside a habitat built on the side of a barren volcano.

Russia, China, and the ESA have also run six willing "astronauts" through a psychological gauntlet with its $15 million Mars500 experiment.

That project, which ended a few years ago, had the astronauts stay inside for 520 days, or nearly a year and a half, to see what challenges they faced — and how to prevent or solve them when real Mars colonization missions actually begin. (Boredom, concluded an exhaustive study of the project, is one of the greatest hurdles to overcome.)

Such information could prove extremely valuable to the first nation (or private company, like SpaceX) to land people on Mars. Whoever is spending tens of billions of dollars to get the job done, they'll not only want a crew to survive to tell the tale, but also make the best use of their time some 140 million miles from Earth.

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NASA has been talking about getting humans to Mars for years, and continues to provide updated plans for getting there. Unfortunately, though, NASA’s chief of human spaceflight, William H. Gerstenmaier, just announced that the agency can’t achieve the Mars goal on its current budget.

“I can’t put a date on humans on Mars, and the reason really is the other piece is, at the budget levels we described, this roughly 2 percent increase, we don’t have the surface systems available for Mars,” Gerstenmaier said during a propulsion meeting of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics on Wednesday. “And that entry, descent, and landing is a huge challenge for us for Mars.”

Essentially, the SLS rocket and Orion craft have cost the agency a lot. As a result, NASA hasn’t even been able to begin designing vehicles to land on Mars or ascend from the surface.

NASA’s next moves will depend on funding. Gerstenmaier indicated the agency might be interested in a Moon exploration mission – one that is more extensive than the current plan to build the Deep Space Gateway in the Moon’s orbit. Beyond just being a launching pad for further space exploration, the gateway could “support an extensive moon surface program,” says Gerstenmaier.

Fortunately for our Red Planet dreams, it isn’t just up to NASA. Getting humans to Mars is a team effort. Agencies like NASA are really at the mercy of political moods and budgetary restraints, so they need to do as much as they can with what resources are there. One way they can maximize impact is to partner with private companies.

This month Elon Musk announced we might be getting an update about the SpaceX Mars mission in September at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Australia. For now, though, SpaceX has set a deadline of 2018 for an unmanned Mars mission and 2025 for a manned mission. Both Boeing and Blue Origin are also planning to put humans on Mars. It may turn out that the “we” in Vice President Pence’s remarks about putting American boots on Mars is the larger American “we,” and not the government or NASA.

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NOW WATCH: NASA has been exploring Mars every day for the last 20 years — here's what's happened

At the ISS R&D conference Thursday, Elon Musk provided some much-anticipated updates on SpaceX's upcoming manned mission to the Red Planet, explaining that the trip hinges on the success of the company's Falcon Heavy.

Once it launches this year, the Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world. It will be able to lift more than 54 metric tons (119,000 lbs), which is twice the payload of the Delta IV Heavy at one-third the cost.

Developing the rocket wasn't easy. In fact, Musk says it was "way, way more difficult" than SpaceX originally anticipated.

"[Falcon Heavy] requires the simultaneous ignition of 27 orbit class rockets," he explained. Because of this, Musk says there is a "lot of risk associated with Falcon Heavy," which is why he is setting the bar for success rather low for initial launches: "There's a real good chance that it does not make it to orbit. I hope it gets far enough away from the launch pad that it does not cause pad damage — I would consider that a win."

Problems with initial launches won't be due to any inherent flaws with the rocket itself, however; they're just part of the process. "Falcon Heavy's going to be a great vehicle. [There] just isn't a lot you can test on the ground," Musk noted.

SpaceX has experienced a fair share of (fiery) failures in the past, and the potential for problems with early Falcon Heavy launches had the SpaceX CEO joking about the character of the crew members aboard the first manned missions: "No question, whoever's on the first flight… brave. Brave."

Releasing the Dragon

Other "brave" SpaceX explorers will eventually be able to enjoy a trip aboard the company's Crew Dragon, also known as Dragon 2. Thus far, the Dragon spacecraft has only been used to transport cargo, but the design is being modified to support crewed mission.

In fact, the Dragon 2 could even eventually carry Musk, who replied, "I would like to at some point. Assuming things work out, yeah, maybe in three or four years," when asked whether he'd like to take a ride to the International Space Station (ISS) and back aboard the craft.

Also in the works for the Crew Dragon are orbital launches and testing of its automatic docking abilities. Currently, in order for the Dragon to attach to the ISS, the space station's robotic arm has to be used.

Not of much importance, according to a comment by Musk, is refining the Dragon's 2 propulsive landing capability (i.e., descending using retrorockets vs. a parachute) as he claims it's no longer a requirement for landing on Mars.

The real public excitement lies beyond the ISS and Mars missions, though, according to Musk. "If you want to get the public real fired up, we gotta have a base on the Moon. Having some permanent presence on another heavenly body," he said. "That's the continuance of the dream of Apollo."

Some of the biggest players already in the race to build a Moon base hail from China and Europe, and their respective space agencies have announced that they are engaging in international collaboration to realize a "Moon Village" vision. Whether Musk will beat them to it remains to be seen.

This trickle of small updates will do little to pacify those eager for more details on Musk's mission to Mars. That information is likely to arrive in September in the form of a revision to his detailed plan for making humanity a multi-planetary species.

The efforts of SpaceXare now more vital than ever, given NASA's recent admission that they won't be the ones to get us to the Red Planet, but perhaps the plan will include the announcement of a NASA/SpaceX collaboration?

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It may seem that Mars was once a much more exciting planet. True, there are dust storms and possible water-seeps occurring today, but billions of years ago it was a dramatic place with huge volcanoes, a giant canyon system and branching river valleys being formed.

But now planetary scientists have identified what looks like more recently formed volcanoes, in geological terms. Excitingly, they may have once provided the perfect environment for microbial lifeforms to thrive.

Mars’ Olympus Mons is the solar system’s largest volcano – 22km high and more than 500km across its base. It began to grow over 3 billion years ago, but some lava flows high on its flanks appear to be as young as 2m years, judging from the relative lack of overlapping impact craters. Craters caused by asteroid impacts show how old a surface in the solar system is – the more craters the longer it has been around. However, fresh lava from a volcano can bury former craters, resetting this clock.

This is exactly what’s happened at Olympus Mons, and indeed several of its neighbors, which means these volcanoes are unlikely to be extinct. They may even be able to squeeze out some lava again in the future, although we might have to wait a few million years to see it happen.

In search of small volcanoes

But are there still volcanoes forming on Mars? Where are the youngest ones, the volcanoes that sprang into life most recently? Researchers have previously spotted various clusters of small and evidently quite young “cones” – symmetrical hills with summit craters – but their origin has always been controversial. They could be true sites of volcanic eruption, but they could equally well be “mud volcanoes” formed by expulsion of mud from below ground or “rootless cones” formed by explosions caused by lava flowing across wet or icy ground.

Now a study by a Czech-German-American team led by Petr Brož presents convincing new evidence convincing new evidence that at least some of these are genuine volcanoes. Brož and his team studied cones in Coprates Chasma, the deepest part of Mars’s Valles Marineris canyon system. This is far removed from any of Mars’s main volcanic provinces, and suggest magma has erupted from the interior though ancient but reactivated fractures in the canyon system.

The researchers are convinced that these are true volcanic cones, similar to common volcanoes on Earth known as scoria cones and tuff cones. They base this on the fine layers visible on the inside of the crater walls on images from the HiRISE (High resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and other evidence. The detail in the images is sufficient to reveal that the cone is built of layers in a similar way as in tuff cones on Earth.

The cones themselves are too small to date by counting impact craters, but crater-dating of the surrounding terrain (which would be similar in age) comes out at about 200 to 400 million**** years – around the time giant amphibians and early dinosaurs roamed the Earth. On our planet, cones like these are built in a single episode of eruption (which may last weeks or months), so this date almost certainly pinpoints the birth of these small volcanoes as well as their demise.

The cones must have been built by explosive eruption of clots of lava, from the size of a grain to that of a brick, from a central vent, growing the cone layer by layer until reaching its final height. Each cone’s surface may be “armor-plated” because these clots hit ground still hot enough to partially weld together and protect it. This could account for their fresh appearance, in contrast to mud volcanoes, which would be more vulnerable to erosion.

The findings are exciting for many reasons. Volcanism this young on Mars suggests there’s still some volcanic action on the planet – and there could still be volcanoes forming today.

Astrobiological potential

So far, the team have obtained compositional information from just one of the cones using MRO’s Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM). This reveals the presence of a mineral called opaline silica as well as sulfate minerals, which suggests that the hot rocks, whether before or after after eruption, reacted with martian ground water.

If so, there could have been, even if only briefly at each volcano, a suitable mixture of water, warmth and chemical energy to support microbial life of the kind that inhabits hot springson Earth. Given that the cones in this study are at least 200 million-year-old, they are unlikely to host life today, but they would be good targets to search for fossilized microbes with minimal risk of contaminating an active ecosystem.

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On July 25, NASA tested one of its RS-25 engines. The RS-25 engine isn't just any engine — it's a rocket engine that will launch the most powerful rocket in history — the Space Launch System (SLS) — in 2019.

This was the third successful test of the RS-25 engines. When SLS launches, there will be four RS-25 engines helping it lift off — as well as two solid rocket boosters.

In total, the rocket will generate 8 million pounds of thrust, enabling it to lift a payload weighing the equivalent of 11 African elephants into space.

That might sound like a lot, but this is the rocket that NASA might one day use to send the first astronauts to Mars. If that mission comes, it will require a lot of supplies. Suffice it say, this rocket was built to get the job done right.

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China is to build its first base to simulate conditions living on Mars in a desert area deep in the country's northwest, state media reported.

An agreement to build a "Mars village" at Haixi prefecture in Qinghai province was signed on Tuesday, according to the China News Service.

The region on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau is known for its sharp ridges and mounds of rock – known as yardangs – formed over centuries by wind erosion. They mirror similar features found on the arid surface of the Red Planet.

The project will incorporate education, tourism, scientific research and simulation training, according to a December statement on the website of the Haixi government.

The base might also include a set for shooting films and TV shows, the statement said.

Liu Xiaoqun, an official involved in space exploration at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the base would contribute to local tourism in Qinghai.

The facility, composed of a "Mars community" and a "Mars camp," will provide tourists with a unique scientific and cultural experience, according to the report.

China's ambitious space programme includes plans to launch a Mars probe in 2020.

The government showed off images last year depicting its future orbiter, lander and rover – designed to explore the surface of the Red Planet.

Other countries have set up bases to simulate living on Mars, or the journey to the Red Planet.

A study funded by Nasa allowed six researchers to live in a mockup Mars habitat in Hawaii for a year from August 2015.

A group of volunteers, including a Chinese citizen, lived in a mock spaceship in Moscow for 520 days beginning in 2010, the estimated time needed to travel from Earth to Mars and back.

SEE ALSO: Six volunteer 'astronauts' are about to lock themselves inside a simulated Mars colony

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• NASA is hiring a planetary protection officer with a salary of up to $187,000.
• The job was created after the signing of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.
• Planetary protection officers are tasked with making sure humans don't contaminate planets, moons, and other objects in space.
• They're also supposed to help prevent any alien microbes from spreading to Earth.

US government scientists work hard to protect the public.

Some study infectious diseases and effective treatments. Others ensure that drugs, food, vehicles, or consumer products live up to their claims and don't harm anyone.

But the concerns at NASA's headquarters are, quite literally, extraterrestrial — which is why the space agency now has a job opening for "planetary protection officer."

The gig? Help defend Earth from alien contamination, and help Earth avoid contaminating alien worlds it's trying to explore.

The pay? A six-figure salary, from $124,406 to $187,000 a year, plus benefits.

A rare and cosmically important position

While many space agencies hire planetary protection officers, they're often shared or part-time roles.

In fact, only two such full-time roles exist in the world: one at NASA and the other at the European Space Agency.

That's according to Catharine Conley, NASA's only planetary protection officer since 2014. Business Insider interviewed Conley most recently in March.

"This new job ad is a result of relocating the position I currently hold to the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, which is an independent technical authority within NASA," Conley told Business Insider in an email on Tuesday. (She did not say whether she planned to reapply for the position, which is held for at least three years but may be extended to five years.)

The position was created after the US ratified the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, specifically to support Article IX of the document:

"States Parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter and, where necessary, shall adopt appropriate measures for this purpose."

Part of the international agreement is that any space mission must have a less than 1-in-10,000 chance of contaminating an alien world.

"It's a moderate level," Conley previously told Business Insider. "It's not extremely careful, but it's not extremely lax."

This is why NASA's planetary protection officer occasionally gets to travel to space centers around the world and analyze planet-bound robots. The officer helps ensure we don't accidentally contaminate a pristine world that a probe is landing on — or, more often, is zooming by and photographing.

For example, Congress and the president have given NASA the green light to explore Europa, an icy, ocean-hiding, and potentially habitable moon of Jupiter. The goal of the initial $2.7 billion Europa Clipper mission is not to land on the moon, though, but to map its surface and look for clues about its hidden ocean and habitability.

Still, there's a chance the robot could crash-land — so someone like Conley comes in to mitigate risk.

Conversely, the officer helps ensure something from another world, most imminently Mars, doesn't contaminate Earth.

The red planet is a frequent target for NASA because it's similar to Earth. It may have once been covered in water and able to support life, which is why many scientists are pushing hard for a Mars sample return mission, ostensibly to seek out signs of aliens.

While the expectation is not to scoop up freeze-dried Martian microbes — only ancient, microscopic fossils— there's always the chance of contamination once those samples are in earthbound labs.

Again, this is where the planetary protection officer and her team come in. They help establish the equipment, protocols, and procedures to reduce such risks.

"The phrase that we use is 'Break the chain of contact with Mars,'" Conley previously said.

No one ever said defending Earth had to be glorious all the time, though — Conley said a typical week mostly involved a lot of emails and reading studies, proposals, and other materials.

Who qualifies as a candidate

An out-of-this-world job like Conley's requires some equally extraordinary qualifications.

A candidate must have at least one year of experience as a top-level civilian government employee, plus have "advanced knowledge" of planetary protection and all it entails.

If you don't have "demonstrated experience planning, executing, or overseeing elements of space programs of national significance," you may be wasting your time by applying.

The job involves a lot of international coordination — space exploration is expensive, and the costs are frequently shared by multiple nations — so NASA needs someone with "demonstrated skills in diplomacy that resulted in win-win solutions during extremely difficult and complex multilateral discussions."

Did we mention the advanced degree in physical science, engineering, or mathematics? You should have that on your résumé, too.

The job comes with a "secret" security clearance, and noncitizens aren't technically eligible, thanks to an executive order signed by President Gerald Ford in 1976.

NASA is accepting applications at USAJobs.gov from July 13 through August 14.

This story was updated to include an emailed comment from NASA's Catharine Conley.

Kelly Dickerson contributed reporting to this story.

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On August 6, 2012, NASA landed its Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. In the last 5 years, Curiosity has captured our hearts with its selfies and first-hand accounts of Mars' Gale Crater.

To celebrate Curiosity's 5-year anniversary, NASA released amazing time-lapse footage that spans Curiosity's time on Mars, so far. We can't wait to see what Curiosity finds next.

Video courtesy: NASA

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This year, 2017, marks the 60th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit Earth. In those 60 years, we've gone much further, reaching new planets and even the edge of the solar system. Watch as the human race explores the galaxy around us.

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According to a new study published by Nature Geoscience, it's highly likely that extreme temperature changes on Mars trigger snow storms at night on the planet's surface. These storms aren't as violent as blizzards on Earth but are much more intense than previously thought.

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• Mars pledges to spend $1 billion on 'Sustainability in a Generation' plan.
• Aims to tackle climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emission and promoting sustainable farming.
• Mars wants big companies around the world to follow its lead.
• Warns of "more extreme weather events... causing significant challenges and hardships" unless more action is taken.

LONDON — Chocolate giant Mars is promising to spend close to $1 billion over the next few years fighting climate change.

The $35 billion food giant behind brands like M&Ms, Skittles, and Twix on Wednesday launched its "Sustainability in a Generation" plan, aiming to reduce the carbon footprint of its business and supply chain by more than 60% by 2050.

Barry Parkin, Mars' chief sustainability officer, told Business Insider: "We've been increasingly worried about overall progress on the big issues, whether that's climate change or solving poverty.

"There are obviously commitments the world is leaning into but, frankly, we don't think we're getting there fast enough collectively. We're trying to go all in here."

'We believe in the scientific view of climate science and the need for collective action'

The huge investment commitment comes ahead of a UN General Assembly and Climate Week in New York later this month and the timing is meant to spur other companies around the world to make similar environmental commitments.

CEO Grant F. Reid said in a statement released on Wednesday that "the engine of global business — its supply chain — is broken, and requires transformational, cross-industry collaboration to fix it."

Parkin warned that the consequences of inaction are "the planet warming, more extreme weather events, and that causing significant challenges and hardships in specific places around the world, whether that's oceans rising or crops not growing successfully."

"We're a food business, which is based on agriculture so we care a lot about the farmers who supply us around the world. It's towards 1 million farmers around the world who produce raw materials for us," he said.

"Climate science says many of those are going to be challenged as the world gets warmer. We care about this both on a societal level but also on a business level."

He added: "It's time for companies to accelerate their game and work together, and work together with governments and civil society. This is a world issue and it requires all actors to work together."

Mars, which had close to $35 billion in sales last year, was one of the companies that signed a letter urging President Trump not to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement in June. Parkin denied that Mars' investment was motivated by Trump, saying: "We're not interested in the politics here — this is about policy. We believe in the scientific view of climate science and the need for collective action."

But he added: "We're clearly disappointed that the US administration has chosen to withdraw from the Paris Agreement."

Mars will meet the environmental commitments set out in the Paris Agreement as part of its sustainability plan.

'You have to completely change the way you operate your business'

Mars' $1 billion sustainability drive will include investments in:

• Renewable energy: Mars' US and UK operations are already powered by huge wind farms built over the last decade but it plans to have totally wind-powered operations in 11 countries around the world by next year, with plans for Russia, China, Australia, and India.
• Food sourcing: The company, which also makes pet food under brands like Whiskas and Pedigree, will invest in sustainable sourcing for ingredients like fish.
• Cross-industry action groups: Mars has set up groups like the Cocoa Action, an industry coalition aimed at making cocoa growing more sustainable, and Livelihoods Fund for Family Farming, which invests in small holder farming across the world.
• Farmers: "A huge amount of it will go upstream in working with farmers and helping farmers transform the way they grow crops to be both more environmentally sound but also in ways that dramatically increase the income of farmers," Parkin says.

Parkin said: "This is not just a little bit better. The science says we need to reduce our carbon footprint by two-thirds and we're going to do that. You have to completely change the way you operate your business and you have to completely change how you source your products."

He added: "The billion is a good start and a very clear investment but we fundamentally have to make the business more sustainable. Everything we invest over the next few years has to be in pursuit of becoming a truly sustainable business.

"We care about our business being successful over the next 100 years."

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LONDON — Chocolate brand M&Ms will promote wind power in a global advertising campaign set to run later this year and into 2018.

Chocolate and pet food giant Mars Inc this week announced a $1 billion sustainability drive, aiming to do its bit to tackle climate change and improve conditions for farmers in its supply chain.

As part of the plan, Mars' M&Ms brand will "champion the power of renewable energy and highlight the need for action in addressing climate change."

Barry Parkin, Mars' chief sustainability officer, told Business Insider: "We're going to be using red and yellow. They're going to be enthusiastic advocates of wind power energy. Hopefully, it will continue to engage consumers in this important topic. We know consumers care about the planet and we're trying to do our part to help."

Mars plans to launch the campaign during the UN General Assembly in New York later this month when world leaders will be gathering to discuss climate change.

Mars CEO Grant F. Reid said in a release announcing Mars' $1 billion sustainability drive: "Through our much-loved M&M’s brand, we can inspire consumers on this important topic and shine the spotlight on renewable energy – one of the solutions that will help us to tackle climate change and meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals."

Over the last decade, Mars has built two massive wind farms in Scotland and Texas to provide 100% renewable energy to its operations in the UK and US. The company plans to build similar wind farms in 11 more major markets around the world, such as Russia and India.

Parkin said: "We're doing this at cost parity or better than fossil fuel. We're at an absolute tipping point here. Any company can switch to renewables without cost penalty if you do it in a smart way. This is absolutely the time for us and everyone else to accelerate."

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SpaceX released video of their most powerful rocket engine being tested in McGregor, TX. This is the rocket engine that SpaceX plans to use to go to Mars. It will launch for the first time by December.

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HONOLULU (AP) — Six NASA-backed research subjects who have been cooped up in a Mars-like habitat on a remote Hawaii volcano since January emerged from isolation Sunday. They devoured fresh-picked tropical fruits, vegetables and a fluffy egg strata after eating mostly freeze-dried food during their isolation.

The crew of four men and two women are part of a study designed to better understand the psychological impacts a long-term space mission would have on astronauts.

The data they produced will help NASA select individuals and groups with the right mix of traits to best cope with the stress, isolation and danger of a two-to-three year trip to Mars. The U.S. space agency hopes to send humans to the red planet by the 2030s.

The crew was quarantined for eight months on a vast plain below the summit of the Big Island's Mauna Loa, the world's largest active volcano. After finishing their stint, they feasted on pineapple, mango and papaya.

While isolated, the crew members wore space suits and travelled in teams whenever they left their small dome living structure. They ate mostly freeze-dried or canned food on their simulated voyage to Mars.

All of their communications with the outside world were subjected to a 20-minute delay — the time it takes for signals to get from Mars to Earth. The crew was tasked with conducting geological surveys, mapping studies and maintaining their self-sufficient habitat as if they were actually living on Mars.

The team's information technology specialist, Laura Lark, thinks a manned voyage to Mars is a reasonable goal for NASA. The project is the fifth in a series of six NASA-funded studies at the University of Hawaii facility called the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, or HI-SEAS. NASA has dedicated about $2.5 million for research at the facility.

"There are certainly human factors to be figured out, that's part of what HI-SEAS is for," Lark said in a video message recorded within the dome. "But I think that overcoming those challenges is just a matter of effort. We are absolutely capable of it."

The crew played games designed to measure their compatibility and stress levels and maintained logs about how they were feeling.

To gauge their moods they also wore specially-designed sensors that measured voice levels and proximity to other people in the, 1,200 square-foot (111-square meter) living space.

The devices could sense if people were avoiding one another, or if they were "toe-to-toe" in an argument, said the project's lead investigator, University of Hawaii professor Kim Binsted.

"We've learned, for one thing, that conflict, even in the best of teams, is going to arise," Binsted said. "So what's really important is to have a crew that, both as individuals and a group, is really resilient, is able to look at that conflict and come back from it."

The study also tested ways to help the crew cope with stress. When they became overwhelmed, they could use virtual reality devices to take them away to a tropical beach or other familiar landscapes.

Other Mars simulation projects exist around the world, but Hawaii researchers say one of the chief advantages of their project is the area's rugged, Mars-like landscape, on a rocky, red plain below the summit of Mauna Loa.

The crew's vinyl-covered shelter is about the size of a small two-bedroom home, has small sleeping quarters for each member plus a kitchen, laboratory and bathroom. The group shared one shower and has two composting toilets.

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• Cosmic rays are a powerful type of radiation that pose a risk to astronauts.
• Beyond Earth's protective magnetic shield, they increase the risk of cancer and other health effects.
• The first Mars explorers may face a two-fold higher risk than previously thought, according to a recent study in mice.
• However, researchers may soon develop better radiation shielding.

NASA is dead-set on sending astronauts to Mars within the next 15 to 20 years. China has said it hopes to send people there between 2020 and 2030, and even Russia is floating plans to put boots on the red planet.

Meanwhile, SpaceX founder Elon Musk is trying to cut the cost of spaceflight enough to start establishing a permanent Martian colony of 1 million people as soon as possible.

But if a study of radiation exposure in mice has any bearing on humans, going to Mars may be much more dangerous than anyone expected.

The root problem is cosmic rays, as detailed in a May 2017 Nature study and highlighted by a recent Business Insider video.

The danger of cosmic rays

Cosmic rays are high-energy atomic and subatomic particles that get blasted out from exploding stars, black holes, and other powerful sources in space. The rays can damage DNA, increase the risk of cancer, lead to vision-impairing cataracts, cause nervous system damage, and give rise to blood circulation issues, among other health effects in astronauts.

Researchers know that astronauts receive much higher radiation exposure than those of us who remain on Earth, since the planet's atmosphere absorbs a lot of that harmful energy.

Earth's magnetic field also diverts and deflects a lot of space radiation, which helps protect astronauts on the International Space Station — which orbits just 250 miles above the planet.

On a trip to Mars, however, it's open season for cosmic rays. In addition, the planet lost its magnetic field billions of years ago, which will expose the first Mars explorers to extra radiation. 

Health scientist Frank Cucinotta and his colleague Eliedonna Cacao at the University of Nevada Las Vegas researched this problem by reexamining the results of four previous studies of tumors in mice.

In addition of looking for the effects of a cosmic ray's direct hit to cells, which could coax them to develop into cancer, the researchers also looked at how secondary or "non-targeted effects" might play a role.

What they found is a risk of cancer in deep space (at least for mice) that's about two times higher than previous estimates.

Why deep-space travel may be more dangerous than expected

The researchers think this elevated cancer risk comes down to how damaged DNA spreads throughout the body.

When a cell is struck by a cosmic ray, it doesn't simply keep the change to itself. It can give off chemical signals to other cells, which might trigger nearby healthy cells to also mutate into cancer.

Previous models hadn't really accounted for this domino effect. Even more worrisome, the type of radiation responsible for causing the effect was "only modestly decreased by radiation shielding," Cucinotta and Cacao wrote in their study.

Human exploration of Mars need not stop before it starts, though.

Space agencies and private companies are actively working to mitigate space radiation. An Israeli startup is developing a body vest designed to more fully absorb radiation, for example, and one NASA scientist recently pitched the idea of deploying a satellite that'd serve as an artificial magnetic shield to divert harmful radiation around Mars.

And as the researchers noted in their study, "significant differences" exist between mouse-model cancer rates and those actually seen in people. "These differences could limit the applicability of the predictions described in this paper," they wrote.

But the scientists add that this knowledge gap is precisely why future deep-space explorers and their respective agencies should exercise caution.

"[S]tudies ... are urgently needed prior to long-term space missions outside the protection of the Earth’s geomagnetic sphere," they said.

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Update: You can watch a replay of the talk below or read Business Insider's highlights of the presentation.

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX, is about to present an updated plan for colonizing Mars with 1 million people.

The International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia, is hosting Musk's presentation on Friday. SpaceX will stream video of the event via a YouTube Live feed, which we've embedded at the end of this post. Coverage should begin Friday at 12:30 a.m. EDT (2 p.m. ACST), when Musk is scheduled to go on stage.

Musk tweeted on Monday that he'll unveil "major improvements" and "unexpected applications" in the talk.

During his one-hour presentation at last year's IAC in Guadalajara, Mexico, Musk revealed his Mars vehicle design.

It features a two-part, 40-story-tall vehicle called the Interplanetary Transport System that'd vastly outperform NASA's Saturn V moon rocket. Musk refers to the system's spaceship, which is expected to ferry 100-200 people to the red planet, as the "Heart of Gold" (named after the vessel in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy").

Musk commonly calls the system's largest part — a giant reusable booster — the "Big F---ing Rocket" (BFR for short). In a tweet on Tuesday, he said he will "describe [the] new BFR planetary colonizer design in detail" during the talk.

"This should be worth seeing," he said. "Design feels right."

A scientific journal published Musk's full Mars colonization scheme in June, though it mostly covered the same points as his IAC 2016 talk. After the plan was published, Musk noted on Twitter that an update (V2) was "coming soon", and that it'd address the "most fundamental flaw" of the first version: how to pay for the Mars vehicle's development and operation.

SpaceX's goal is to make it cheaper to ride to Mars than to buy a house, with a cost at or below $100,000 per passenger. Making both the booster and spaceship fully reusable is key to vastly reducing the steep costs of launching people and cargo off of Earth. Musk thinks the first colonists could survive and eventually return to Earth by finding a way to harvest carbon dioxide and water in Martian air and soil, then convert that material into breathing air, rocket fuel, and more.

Some spaceflight experts have expressed skepticism about the plan — namely a lack of details about living quarters, life support, food growth schemes, radiation shielding, and related systems. However, few dispute that Musk's Mars transportation concept is feasible with adequate funding.

Since Musk's 2016 talk, SpaceX engineers have been actively building and testing core hardware to support the ambitious scheme.

For example, the company has shown off its powerful new Raptor rocket engine— the bottom of the giant Mars rocket booster (or BFR) would have 42 of those engines. The company also unveiled a giant carbon-fiber fuel tank around which the Heart of Gold spaceship would be built and successfully pressure-tested the vessel.

Tune in to Musk's talk below shortly before 12:30 a.m. EDT on Friday (9:30 p.m. PDT on Thursday).

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Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX, has presented an updated plan for colonizing Mars with 1 million people.

The International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia, hosted Musk's presentation on Friday, and SpaceX streamed video of the event via a YouTube Live feed. (You can replay the 42-minute talk here.)

Musk tweeted on Monday that he'd unveil "major improvements" and "unexpected applications" in the talk, which is an update to his one-hour presentation at last year's IAC in Guadalajara, Mexico — where he revealed his initial plans to build gigantic ships to reach Mars.

"The future is vastly more interesting and exciting if we're a space-faring civilization and a multiplanet species than if we're not," Musk said on Friday. "I can't think of anything more exciting than going out there among the stars."

Here are the highlights of Musk's new presentation.

Musk said lower cost was the biggest update

"I think the most important thing I'm going to convey in this presentation is that I think we've figured out how to pay for it," he said, referring to the launch system.

Musk previously called it the Interplanetary Transport System, but this year he readopted an older name: the BFR, which is short for "Big F---ing Rocket."

"We're still sort of searching for the right name," he added.

Musk said the goal of the BFR was to "cannibalize" and replace all of SpaceX's existing launch and spaceflight systems, including its 229-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket, the coming Falcon Heavy rocket, and Dragon (its spaceship for NASA).

"If we can do that, then all the resources that are used on Falcon 9, Heavy, and Dragon ... can be applied to this system," he said.

SpaceX is actively building and testing parts of the BFR

Earlier this year, SpaceX built a 39-foot-tall fuel tank for the spaceship made out of carbon fiber.

Engineers then put it on a barge, towed it into the ocean, and pressure-tested it to see whether it could handle the strain of holding 1,200 tons of liquid oxygen.

The test was successful — but Musk said they pushed it as far as it could go to see when it'd burst.

"It shot about 300 feet into the air and landed in the ocean. Then we fished it out," Musk said.

He added that a working carbon-fiber tank — the core of the BFR spaceship — is essential to keeping the spacecraft lightweight and efficient.

Musk also recapped SpaceX's progress on its giant Raptor rocket engines.

The new plan is to put 31 Raptor engines on the bottom of the BFR's main rocket (not 42 engines, as he said in 2016), giving it extremely powerful lift — enough to push a spaceship and 150 tons of payload into low-Earth orbit, about 250 miles above the planet.

Dozens of tests show the engines appear to work better than expected.

Musk explained how SpaceX had worked out several key technologies required to execute the Mars plan

One key technology he noted was reusable, self-landing rockets. This scheme vastly reduces the steep cost of spaceflight over time, since every other orbital launch system discards the rocket after one use.

"We now have 16 successful landings in a row," Musk said. "I think we can get to a landing reliability that is on par with the safest commercial airliners."

If that happens, Musk said, "you can count on the landing" at Mars.

He also said automated docking of spacecraft was essential, since this would allow easy refueling of the BFR in space. SpaceX has perfected this technique with its Dragon spacecraft at the International Space Station.

Dragon also gave SpaceX a chance to work on heat shields to protect the BFR's spaceship during atmospheric entry.

Musk revisited SpaceX's setbacks and progress that led toward the BFR's development

He said SpaceX almost failed as a company early on because "nobody good would join." This, he said, led to three launch failures of its early Falcon 1 system. The fourth launch worked — though if it hadn't, SpaceX would have gone bankrupt.

"Fate liked us that day," Musk said, adding that Friday was the launch's ninth anniversary.

Where Falcon 1 wasn't reusable, Falcon 9 today is about 70% reusable. Falcon Heavy — SpaceX's largest rocket system so far, and set for a debut launch later this year — is essentially three reusable Falcon 9 boosters strapped together.

The upper stages of all of these rockets aren't yet fully reusable, adding to their long-term cost. But the BFR, Musk said, is designed to be 100% reusable and able to carry five times the payload of a Falcon Heavy rocket.

New illustrations show the updated design of the BFR and its (slightly smaller) spaceship

The two-section BFR will be about 30 feet wide and 348 feet long with a weight of 4,400 tons at launch — nearly 10 times the mass of the International Space Station.

"It's really quite a big vehicle," Musk said.

The spaceship itself will stretch about 157 feet and weigh nearly 1,200 tons fully fueled.

The upper half will be dedicated to payload, where enough cargo could fit to fill an Airbus A380 airplane (which transports hundreds of people on long-distance international flights).

The fin-like delta wing on the spaceship, he added, will help stabilize the craft during launch and landing, no matter where it goes in the solar system — Earth, the moon, Mars, or even more distant worlds.

Inside, there should be room for about 40 crew cabins and 100 crew members (yes, you'd have to share a cabin), as well as a shelter from solar storm radiation, a galley, an entertainment area, and common areas.

The presentation also showed the guts of the new ship and how it'd work

Musk said the internal structure was designed to keep fuel from sloshing around too much and throwing the spaceship off balance during landing.

It will burn methane (CH₄) with oxygen, both of which he hopes to harvest from carbon dioxide in the Martian air and water in the soil.

The Raptor engines have redundant parts, Musk said, so it could continue to land if anything fails. Even if a center engine fails, the spacecraft could get by.

"We want the landing risk to be as close to zero as possible," he said.

When a fully loaded BFR spaceship is launched, it will use most of its fuel to get into orbit around Earth or Mars — so another ship will have to supply a refill of oxygen and methane.

Musk shared this animation showing how automated docking would link up two ships to refuel the main one.

Despite the BFR's huge size, Musk says it will be surprisingly affordable

Though the BFR could be the largest rocket system ever developed ...

... Musk explained that its full reusability — in the long run — would build in savings and make it the cheapest to launch.

"At first glance, this may seem ridiculous. But it's not," Musk said.

He used commercial aviation as an example. A single-engine turbo-prop aircraft costs $1 million to $2 million, he said, and can't get from Los Angeles to Australia. But a 747 — while initially millions — costs about $500,000 to charter the flight and can carry hundreds of people.

"It's really crazy that we build these sophisticated rockets, and then crash them every time we fly," he said. "This is mad ... reusability is absolutely fundamental."

SpaceX may cover its Mars program's enormous costs by using it around Earth

Musk said the goal was to pour all of SpaceX's revenue, from launching satellites to ferrying astronauts to the space station, into funding the BFR.

But once the system is built and shown to work, he added, it would begin to pay for itself in other ways.

He floated the idea of launching a space telescope with a mirror 10 times the surface area of Hubble's, and "as a single unit, it doesn't have to unfold or anything," Musk said.

And in a crazier but perhaps necessary use, Musk suggested using a BFR's giant fairing and payload bay to scoop up and get rid of old satellites to prevent them from crashing into one another, which creates dangerous space debris.

"If you wanted to ... clean up space debris, you could sort of use this chomper," he said, referring to the retractable fairing at the top of the spaceship.

Musk said it was also designed to service and resupply the space station for NASA.

"I know it looks a little big," Musk said, "but the space shuttle also looked a little big."

BFR might also be good for setting up a permanent moon base

Musk has a plan to use the spaceship to do moon missions without refueling, as a crew would have to if landing on Mars.

"It's 2017. We should have a lunar base by now," Musk said. "I mean, what the hell is going on?"

Mars missions would require much more planning, though

For one BFR spaceship to reach Mars, it'd have to be loaded up with the fuel from four other spaceship launches.

But with a fully expendable vehicle, the cost would be relatively small to do this.

Musk said once the first mission arrives three to six months after leaving Earth, astronauts would have to construct a propellant depot in Mars to create methane fuel and breathable air for the return trip.

SpaceX is pursuing an aggressive timeline to make the BFR a reality

The company is already performing simulations of its Mars spaceship, including slowing down in the planet's atmosphere and sticking the landing.

Musk pulled up a slide that suggests SpaceX will launch and land at least two uncrewed cargo ships on Mars in 2022. The first will seek out the best source of water, and the second will build a propellant plant.

"That's not a typo, although it is aspirational," Musk said. "We've already started building the system. The tooling for the main tanks has been ordered, the facility is being built."

He added that construction on the first ship would begin in six to nine months.

"I feel fairly confident that we can complete the ship and be ready or launch in about five years," Musk said. "Five years seems like a long time to me."

Then, in 2024, Musk said, he wants to fly four ships to Mars — including the first people to visit the red planet. From there, an increasing number of missions could establish and grow a colony.

Ultimately, Musk wants to terraform Mars and "make it a nice place to live."

Rapid transit by spaceship?

For those who think a giant spaceship built for Mars would have little to no relevance to their lives, Musk offered this final vision to his audience: 30-minute flights from almost any point on Earth to another, putting the Concorde jet to shame.

Watch an animation of the proposed travel scheme below.

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Elon Musk wants to build a metropolis on Mars starting in 2024.

At this year's International Astronautical Congress, Musk revealed some of the most detailed plans we've seen yet to achieve this goal. 

It starts with building up a revenue stream using SpaceX's current fleet of reusable Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon spacecraft.

This will provide, Musk said, the funding necessary to build SpaceX's most powerful rocket, dubbed the Big F***ing Rocket (BFR for short). 

Musk has big plans for the BFR. Namely, flying people from one end of the Earth to the other within record times, as well as deploying the stepping stones for his Mars metropolis by 2024. 

But first, SpaceX will send two cargo ships full of supplies to Mars in 2022. Then, if all goes according to plan, in 2024 it will send two more cargo ships plus two crewed ships to the surface. 

If SpaceX can pull this off, it will be the first in history to land humans on Mars. Musk admitted that the new 2022-2024 timeline was aspirational. Plus, the company has yet to test and fly its Falcon Heavy rocket — the precursor to its BFR. 

However, Musk and SpaceX continue to push forward and perfect the advent of reusable rocket technology. So who knows where the future may take us?

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Elon Musk has a plan, and it’s about as audacious as they come. Not content with living on our pale blue dot, Musk and his company SpaceX want to colonize Mars, fast.

They say they’ll send a duo of supply ships to the red planet within five years. By 2024, they’re aiming to send the first humans.

From there they have visions of building a space port, a city and, ultimately, a planet they’d like to “geoengineer” to be as welcoming as a second Earth.

If he succeeds, Musk could thoroughly transform our relationship with our solar system, inspiring a new generation of scientists and engineers along the way. But between here and success, Musk and SpaceX will need to traverse an unbelievably complex risk landscape.

Many will be technical. The rocket that’s going to take Musk’s colonizers to Mars (code named the “BFR” – no prizes for guessing what that stands for) hasn’t even been built yet. No one knows what hidden hurdles will emerge as testing begins. Musk does have a habit of successfully solving complex engineering problems though; and despite the mountainous technical challenges SpaceX faces, there’s a fair chance they’ll succeed.

As a scholar of risk innovation, what I’m not sure about is how SpaceX will handle some of the less obvious social and political hurdles they face. To give Elon Musk a bit of a head start, here are some of the obstacles I think he should have on his mission-to-Mars checklist.

Planetary protection

Imagine there was once life on Mars, but in our haste to set up shop there, we obliterate any trace of its existence. Or imagine that harmful organisms exist on Mars and spacecraft inadvertently bring them back to Earth.

These are scenarios that keep astrobiologists and planetary protection specialistsawake at night. They’ve led to unbelievably stringent international policies around what can and cannot be done on government-sponsored space missions.

Yet Musk’s plans threaten to throw the rule book on planetary protection out the window. As a private company SpaceX isn’t directly bound by international planetary protection policies. And while some governments could wrap the company up in space bureaucracy, they’ll find it hard to impose the same levels of hoop-jumping that NASA missions, for instance, currently need to navigate.

It’s conceivable (but extremely unlikely) that a laissez-faire attitude toward interplanetary contamination could lead to Martian bugs invading Earth. The bigger risk is stymying our chances of ever discovering whether life existed on Mars before human beings and their grubby microbiomes get there. And the last thing Musk needs is a whole community of disgruntled astrobiologists baying for his blood as he tramples over their turf and robs them of their dreams.

Ecoterrorism

Musk’s long-term vision is to terraform Mars – reengineer our neighboring planet as “a nice place to be” – and allow humans to become a multi-planetary species. Sounds awesome – but not to everyone. I’d wager there will be some people sufficiently appalled by the idea that they decide to take illegal action to interfere with it.

The mythology surrounding ecoterrorism makes it hard to pin down how much of it actually happens. But there certainly are individuals and groups like the Earth Liberation Front willing to flout the law in their quest to preserve pristine wildernesses. It’s a fair bet there will be people similarly willing to take extreme action to stop the pristine wilderness of Mars being desecrated by humans.

How this might play out is anyone’s guess, although science fiction novels like Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Mars Trilogy” give an interesting glimpse into what could transpire once we get there. More likely, SpaceX will need to be on the lookout for saboteurs crippling their operations before leaving Earth.

Space politics

Back in the days before private companies were allowed to send rockets into space, international agreements were signed that set out who could do what outside the Earth’s atmosphere. Under the United Nations Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, for instance, states agreed to explore space for the benefit of all humankind, not place weapons of mass destruction on celestial bodies and avoid harmful contamination.

That was back in 1967, four years before Elon Musk was born. With the emergence of ambitious private space companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin and others, though, who’s allowed to do what in the solar system is less clear. It’s good news for companies like SpaceX – at least in the short term. But this uncertainty is eventually going to crystallize into enforceable space policies, laws and regulations that apply to everyone. And when it does, Musk needs to make sure he’s not left out in the cold.

This is of course policy, not politics. But there are powerful players in the global space policy arena. If they’re rubbed the wrong way, it’ll be politics that determines how resulting policies affect SpaceX.

Climate change

Perhaps the biggest danger is that Musk’s vision of colonizing Mars looks too much like a disposable Earth philosophy – we’ve messed up this planet, so time to move on to the next. Of course, this idea may not factor into Musk’s motivation, but in the world of climate change mitigation and adaptation, perceptions matter.

The optics of moving to a new planet to escape the mess we’ve made here is not a scenario that’s likely to win too many friends amongst those trying to ensure Earth remains habitable. And these factions wield considerable social and economic power – enough to cause problems for SpaceX if they decide to mobilize over this.

There is another risk here too, thanks to a proposed terrestrial use of SpaceX’s BFR as a hyperfast transport between cities on Earth. Musk has recently titillated tech watchers with plans to use commercial rocket flights to make any city on Earth less than an hour’s travel from any other.

This is part of a larger plan to make the BFR profitable, and help cover the costs of planetary exploration. It’s a crazy idea – that just might work. But what about the environmental impact?

Even though the BFR will spew out tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the impacts may not be much greater than current global air travel (depending how many flights end up happening). And there’s always the dream of creating the fuel – methane and oxygen – using solar power and atmospheric gases. The BFR could even conceivably be carbon-neutral one day.

But at a time when humanity should be doing everything in our power to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the optics aren’t great. And this could well lead to a damaging backlash before rocket-commuting even gets off the ground.

Inspiring – or infuriating?

Sixty years ago, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite – and changed the world. It was the dawn of the space age, forcing nations to rethink their technical education programs and inspiring a generation of scientists and engineers.

We may well be standing at a similar technological tipping point as researchers develop the vision and technologies that could launch humanity into the solar system. But for this to be a new generation’s Sputnik moment, we’ll need to be smart in navigating the many social and political hurdles between where we are now and where we could be.

These nontechnical hurdles come down to whether society writ large grants SpaceX and Elon Musk the freedom to boldly go where no one has gone before. It’s tempting to think of planetary entrepreneurialism as simply getting the technology right and finding a way to pay for it. But if enough people feel SpaceX is threatening what they value (such as the environment – here or there), or disadvantaging them in some way (for example, by allowing rich people to move to another planet and abandoning the rest of us here), they’ll make life difficult for the company.

This is where Musk and SpaceX need to be as socially adept as they are technically talented. Discounting these hidden hurdles could spell disaster for Elon Musk’s Mars in the long run. Engaging with them up front could lead to the first people living and thriving on another planet in my lifetime.

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