Risky Polaris mission is neccesary if Musk wants a city on Mars
Astronauts need courage, and never more so than on the Polaris Dawn mission now in orbit around the Earth.
The four crew members are all civilians. Only one has ever been to space before. Just once.
And if that wasn’t enough, the SpaceX Dragon capsule will take them further from Earth than anybody since the Apollo missions, through radiation belts around the planet.
Then the crew will attempt the first spacewalk by private astronauts, testing a new suit in the vacuum of space, from a spacecraft that doesn’t even have an airlock.
The mission is so full of risk it’s a wonder it ever got insurance.
Jared Isaacman, the billionaire commander and funder of the mission, is a space geek.
He believes in humanity’s journey away from our home planet. And the experiments and proof of technology on this flight are part of that.
Isaacman has paid SpaceX for three Polaris missions. He hopes the third will be on Starship, the mega-rocket that Elon Musk hopes will take people to Mars.
He said recently that uncrewed flights should happen in two years.
If they land successfully, astronauts will be on board two years after that and a self-sustaining city will exist on Mars in 20 years.
It sounds far-fetched.
But daring missions like Polaris could make it more likely.