Your probability of dying on Mars is much higher than earth. Really, the ad for going to Mars would be like Shackleton's ad for going to the Antarctic: "It's gonna be hard. There's a good chance of death, going in a little can through deep space. You might land successfully. Once you land successfully, you'll be working nonstop to build the base."

Nuke Mars refers to a continuous stream of very low fallout nuclear fusion explosions above the atmosphere to create artificial suns. Much like our sun, this would not cause Mars to become radioactive.

It's so insane the way rockets work today. It would be like if you got a plane and the way you get to your destination is you bail out with a parachute over the city in question and your plane crash lands somewhere. That's how rockets work today-with the exception of Falcon 9. This is completely bonkers.

I think there is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multi-planetary in order to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen.

Rocket engineering is not like ditch digging. With ditch digging you can get 100 people and dig a ditch, and you will dig it a hundred times as faster if you get 100 people versus one. With rockets, you have to solve the problem of a particular level of difficulty; one person who can solve the problem is worth an infinite number of people who can't.

Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket - half a million dollars. It can be done.