Donald Trump is officially the 45th President of the United States, and despite all the protests happening across the country, there could be an upside to his election: humans could go to Mars sooner than expected.
The Washington Post reports the business mogul-turned-president has been particularly interested in John F. Kennedy’s accomplishments during his tenure when he laid the foundations that would put humans on the Moon for the first time.
Furthermore, Trump has met with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk twice now and has named him a permanent member of his business advisory board. The two have reportedly discussed going to Mars during their talks, according to inside sources.
How could Musk and Trump send humans to Mars?
Elon Musk’s direct line through the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum could prove its worth soon if Musk manages to persuade President Trump of pursuing a ‘Mars Race’ during his first term.
The Commander in Chief has been vocal about the direction NASA should take, focusing on space and deep space exploration rather than Earth-based research programs like climate monitoring.
These efforts include, of course, taking up manned missions again to the Moon and, potentially, to the Red Planet. One of SpaceX’s key goals is the one and the same, ambitiously planning to achieve it less than a decade away in the mid-2020s.
If Trump were to, somehow, impulse a Mars campaign a la JFK, he would find a close ally right beside him in Musk’s space travel venture, which already has a long record of delivering payloads to the ISS for NASA.
Do Trump and Musk’s interests align?
Both billionaires are opposites regarding political views, with the SpaceX CEO supporting Hillary Clinton at first and then coming to terms with Trump’s election back in December when he agreed to serve as a member of his Forum.
However, like gentlemen, their willingness to profit and move forward go beyond their conflicts of interest, and their unlikely partnership could result in growth for the U.S. and outlandish accomplishments if they push for a Mars Mission.
The two executives have proposed locally based business models, with Trump promising to create and keep jobs in America and Musk doing so by opening factories and facilities in California and Nevada.
The President’s views on climate change directly oppose those of the Tesla CEO, whose recently opened Gigafactory seeks to develop clean energy technologies to power cars and homes in the future.
Nevertheless, if the technology proves instrumental to SpaceX’s spacecraft to take humans to Mars, Trump may have a sudden change of heart, a shift many expect to happen soon instead of recent climate change trends.
Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal along with Musk and member of the President’s transition team Executive Committee, has compared the two businessmen saying they are both rather similar.
“THEY’RE BOTH GRANDMASTER-LEVEL SALESPEOPLE AND THESE VERY MUCH LARGER-THAN-LIFE FIGURES,” Thiel told The New York Times in an interview.
In the same exchange, the entrepreneur assured the reporter that Trump could make NASA great again as well, saying that going to Mars was harder than going to the Moon “but surely possible” within a decade.
Source: The Washington Post
