"Inside Nat Geo's Incredible Documentary Mission to Mars" Topic

"A spaceship is preparing to land on Mars when the crew notices that one of the thrusters isn't firing. There is, as they say, a problem. But there's no use telling Houston—by the time a distress message reaches home more than 30 million miles away, either the astronauts on board will be space dust or humanity will have become an interplanetary species.

That's the premise of National Geographic's new series, Mars, which mixes documentary and speculation to tell the parallel stories of two groups: the fictional future explorers who will make that first journey, and the pioneers of today—scientists, astronauts, and strategists—who are blazing the trail. In the premier episode, for example, that white-knuckle landing scene is spliced with a look at Elon Musk's SpaceX as engineers test a real retropropulsion landing system…"
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Amicalement
Armand

NatGeo issue arrived yesterday. The supplement says, "Colonizing Mars". Yeah, right. A handful of scientists living inside a hut/dome on the surface does not become whole towns under domes. It is little more than a grounded space station. You can claim "it's a start". But it isn't "colonizing" until normal people go live there. That will, in all likelihood, never happen……………

Unless you believe Zubrin and Musk. There seems to be a space nerd fight starting between Zubrin and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

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Going to Mars is one thing. Pretending we will terraform it and colonize it is something else.