6. Whos Going To Get Us There?
To get ourselves to Mars, we're going to need a spaceship. Not only that, but we're going to need one that is relatively cheap and preferably reusable if we're going to start building a colony. It used to be a given that, if we were going to Mars, it would be NASA who would take us there. However, in the last decade, a number of private companies have come out of the woodwork with their own plans to reach the Red Planet. Although Mars One (the ones who said they'd make a Mars mission into a reality TV show) turned out to be a bit of a bust, the likes of Boeing and SpaceX having been making real strides towards making the Martian dream a reality. The main driving factor behind how and when we reach Mars is cost. NASA is publicly funded and therefore vulnerable to budget cuts and public opinion, private companies such as SpaceX are vulnerable to the markets and whether or not the can turn a profit from their products. Perhaps a joint effort between the public and private sectors could be the answer. NASA and SpaceX have come together to propose the Red Dragon lander - a modification of SpaceX's Dragon craft that could one day transport a crew to Mars. SpaceX's main raison d'etre is to lower the cost of space travel and they are already delivering payloads into Earth orbit at a lower cost than ever before. The ultimate goal of SpaceX is to get to Mars, and the CEO, Elon Musk, has said that he plans to retire there. The Boeing Affordable Mission is another one working in tentative conjunction with NASA and is developing technology that would be crucial on a Mars mission including radiation shielding, centrifugal artificial gravity, and a reusable lander that could return the crew back to Earth again.