I was in the early 2000's and I had in my hand a scientific magazine . At that time I was very young and I was a fanatical reader of "explorers" writers, that is, those authors who portrayed the reality and the upper limits of man and mankind: Jack London - was "North explorer" for me, Karl May - "Western explorer," James Clavell - the "eastern explorer" and Jules Verne - the "explorer in space and depth".
This scientific journal had a little test inside it telling you how much you know the planet we live in. You had to answer some questions and finally calculate your score.
Remember that I mistaken one question:
Are there places on the planet where man has never arrived?
I responded with the enthusiasm of the exploring child who saw the forests of the Amazon jungle inviting you to discover them, the tribes inside them that never came into contact with civilization. We have been visiting undiscovered islands and still living wild.
And I answered "yes," thinking that it is impossible for man to have discovered the Earth in 100% proportion.
What is funny - is that I now answer "Yes" equally convinced and enthusiastic. It was as though that answer was wrong, at least from the point of view of that publication.
And I, in my naivety, was extremely disappointed. The planet, according to the specialists, had barely revealed all of the physical "corners", even though we are talking about the Marian Pit, Mount Everest, the North Pole or the South Pole. And the definition of virgin forests in modern times is not that man never put his foot in them, but that although he put it, he decided not to put it. In other words, there are no forests "in their pure form" by their inaccessibility, but by the "goodwill" of the modern world.
That sort of kills the "magic" of this physical world and transfers the "unknown" once to the physical world (scientific explorers, discoveries and innovations that are made at the level of technology), but beyond Terra, if we relate to the physical world . This means that the human mind begins, slowly but surely, to cross the visible borders and to imagine the colonization of other planets.
The explorer of the past
No matter how "conservative" we are as a personality pattern, no matter how attached we are to the tradition and the new ways known, we are attracted as a magnet for exploring new realities and opportunities.
It was the way we put the "destiny" that came out to us as people. We could have been what we were born to be born (the economic situation and nationality acquired without any merit or guilt) or we could make our luggage and discover territories, riches and opportunities to claim in our own name.
Of course, such an explorer was subject to immense risks and the chance that he would die in his quests was extremely high. But since then there were "madmen" who believed in their idea, they were persuasive enough to convince others and go to "unknown" with them or fund them in return for a share of future gains.
Christopher Columbus, for example, presented the idea of finding a new path to Asia through the West for more than 7 years at the Royal Courts of Europe. In 1485, the king of Portugal at that time, John II (or Joao II, if we take it according to his nationality) refused him. He tried again in 1488 at the same yard, only to be refused again.
After which he went on with his crazy idea, presenting her to the royal courts in Genoa, Venice and even England, not receiving support from anywhere.
To go a little way into the context, the road to Asia (the famous Silk Road) was at the time endangered by the rapid expansion of the Ottoman Empire. The interest in finding another route was very great, but at the same time Columbus's theories of how he could get to India by sailing directly to the West seemed absurd.
"When Columbus lived, people thought the earth was flat. They thought the Atlantic Ocean was full of monsters big enough to eat the explorers' craft from a sip, that it was full of waterfalls, on the edge of the world, where the vessels would have fallen endlessly. Columbus had to fight these stupid beliefs in order to convince other people to sail with him. "
Emma Miler Bolenius, author, 1919
But the beliefs spoken by Emma Miler Bolenius were about folk beliefs. Because the scientists of the time already understood the size of the earth as a sphere. Aristotle, a few hundred years before Jesus was born, claimed that the earth was round, arguing that his form was observable with his naked eye during a moon's eclipse, when the planet shadowed the satellite and stood in the path of the sun.
(as a funny fact in 2016, following an IVOX study, it was revealed that two europeans in ten believe the sun is rolling around the Earth - and one in ten thinks the Earth is flat).
Returning to Columbus, in 1492 his lobby made his way to the court of Spain, where, legend says, Queen Isabella finally rejected the opinion of his own congressmen, scientists, and accepted his first trip. Initially, King Ferdinand and his wife, Queen Isabela, had already ordered all Spanish cities to offer Columbus the roof and food at no cost, hoping that he would no longer present the ideas of other royal courts.
On October 12, 1492, at 2:00, Rodrigo de Triana, a sailor on one of the three ships that Columbus had left, noticed the earth in front. It had been five weeks since she left the European continent. The legend also says that Columbus later claimed that he had already seen the light on the shores in front of the ships a few hours earlier, claiming on this occasion the "life pension" promised by Ferdinand and Isabela to the first person who sees the earth.
Those were the risks of exploration. Columbus's first remarks about San Salvador about the natives say, "They can become very good slaves, because they repeat very quickly what we say. I think they can be easily Christian because they do not seem to have a religion of theirs. "As for lack of metals and advanced weapons, Columbus wrote," I could conquer everyone with 50 people and govern them as I want ".
On the second journey, Columbus was already carrying 17 vessels with no less than 1,200 passengers to establish permanent colonies in the New World. Already the news had gone all over Europe and people were already offering themselves as prime colonizers in the hope of a new and prosperous life.
That's why I say there is a need for a single fool to believe in his mission. Because if he succeeds in spite of all criticism and beliefs that can not be done, then thousands of enthusiasts, even millions nowadays, will follow him. Once these pioneers have finished their "mission", the world already perceives the new reality as a normality.
Another example of the "move" of the enthusiastic wave of people who take their destiny in their own hands is given by the famous "earth rush" started in 1862 in the United States to colonize the "wild west." Any adult who had never struggled against the United States could "claim" a batch of land, which became personal property, provided he worked it. Millions of eastern US immigrants living on the brink of subsistence took the West's way, dreaming of a piece of land to cultivate, and assuming the risk of going to the "unknown."
Explorers today
Adrenaline, thinking that you are subject to immense risks, the thought of writing history at the same time, but also the thought that your fate will change. That you will be much more than you were written to be. Fame, money, freedom, love. Maybe a little bit of everything, perhaps the one you fight for.
I was talking to a friend. She stared in my eyes, the voice was gagged, her shoulders a little lean.
"I'm a coward" he told me.
I did not know what to say but:
"Are not we all?"
Then he flinched.
"You are not leaving. Live the life you want. I struggle to give up my resignation for more than 4 years. And I'm afraid. I'm paralyzed by fear. Because I do not know what I will find, I do not know if I will deal with it, I do not know if I will have money to live, I do not know if I will not find out that I'm not done for it. "
And I said to him:
"I am, because I live with the same feeling day by day. She never left me. But what I know is that where there is fear, there is courage. "
Call any skill / quality that you want for yourself and that would change your life. If you are honest with yourself, if you dig deep enough, you will see that skill or quality is within you. Most likely in latent, unexplored condition yet.
Man has the greatest defect and the highest possible quality. The defect is when it feels that the limits they perceive are fixed, unsubstantiated.
"I can not speak in public."
"I have no courage to talk to clients."
"I'm afraid of being criticized."
"I can not resign myself."
"I'm chaotic, totally devoid of discipline."
"I can not concentrate on a single task."
These "phrases" are taken to the identity. "That's how I am, and I can not change it!" When you talk about a limitation of yours as if it were a fatality, it means you have become your own enemy and you are putting your stumbling block while walking, through life.
The highest quality, the other face of the coin, is given by the fact that a man has in him the whole spectrum of abilities, qualities and emotions he wants or needs. They are just waiting to be explored, as the unknown lands of the past were explored.
Because if you look at my above-mentioned dialogue with my friend and you imagine it was between two sailors, more than 500 years ago, you'll see that it's the same thing.
The ocean, the unknown, the dangers waiting for you, the riches. They're all there.
And if you do not get on the ship to explore with, you probably think the earth is flat. As the ocean is full of monsters that will swallow you, as at the end of your journey you will give the edge of the world and you will slip beyond it in an endless fall.
You probably smile now, but our inner journeys rarely end up like this. You will not end up like Fernando Magellan, who was murdered by the natives of the Philippine Islands in an attempt to surround the planet in an attempt. Not nearly.
Elon Musk tells us that fashion will return to explorers! By the way, this time!
At the end I want to come up with a ray of hope for the youngest and most crazy of us. In a little excess of zeal to my friend above I told him the metaphor with the explorers of the past. And there is only one difference, that the worst thing that can happen to him if he resigns is that he will have to engage elsewhere. As an explorer, the chances of you returning to life were extremely low.
I was surprised by telling me:
"Maybe it sounds hypocrisy, but I feel it would be easier for me to ride a ship with Columbus than give up my resignation."
I laughed and told him he still had a little patience. Because if the "physical" borders were shut down with NASA's budget cut, more than 40 years ago, a "crazy", modern explorer, could open them again.
Elon Musk presented SpaceX's main goal, founded by him in 2002: to colonize Mars. The first transport could take place in 2026, it would have over 100 people on board, "pioneers" who want to write history, adventure and aware that there is a good chance they will never return to Earth.
The ticket would cost between $ 100,000 and $ 200,000 at first, it would take over 40 years to populate a city of over one million people.
You have the Guadalajara conference on September 27, 2016, announcing that man could become a multi-planet species. It was a live broadcast - to see directly the "start", I recommend you to jump at 21:00.
Although it seems to be SF at the moment, I can not help remembering how Elon Musk changed the entire automotive industry by what seemed impossible at some point: electric cars that reach 100 km / h in less than 3-4 seconds and have autonomy over 500 km.
In 2007, when Tesla Motors launched the Roadster, their first electric sports car model, Robert Lutz's director at General Motors, said:
"All General Motors geniuses told me that lithium-ion technology still takes 10 years to be performance. Every year I was given the same answer. Toyota agreed with us - and boom, Tesla appears. So I told them: how is it that a California start-up, driven by a man who knows nothing about cars and the automotive industry, can do that and we can not? That was a moment that helped us overcome our own limits. "
And if Elon Musk was taken care of when he talked about his future projects, this time, although his plan seems more crazy than ever, the world tends to take it seriously.
I was saying in the first part of the article - it is often necessary for a fool to believe in his mission. Because if he succeeds despite criticism and beliefs that can not, then millions of enthusiasts will follow him. It has already happened once for electric cars, which has changed the short-term goals of the entire automotive industry.
Around the 1500s, with the discovery of the New World, the "sailors" fashion began.
In the 1800s there was a "rush to earth" in the US.
In the 1900s there was a "space flight" disputed by the two great superpowers, the USSR and the US, which led to the first man's moonlighting.
Why not take place in the 2000s - "Mars colonization race"?
When Elon Musk was asked who would have the courage to board the first transport, over 10 years, he replied:
"I think the first trip will be very dangerous. The risks will be huge and I do not think it can be otherwise. Are you ready to die? If you're okay with this idea, then you're a good candidate. At the same time it would be an incredible adventure. I think it will be a story that will inspire billions of people. Life should be more than just solving problems in everyday life. We should wake up in the morning and be excited about our future, be inspired, want to live! "
So you end up with the title of the article:
Mars will be colonized sooner or later.
There are people who will have the courage to get on board that ship, despite the risks.
Why are you afraid?
Let me answer the question below - and tell me your opinion about Elon's crazy plan.
Best regards,
Adrian