I'm a huge fan of Musk's engineering work, but comparing the American pioneers to early Martian settlers is naive at best.
Humans have evolved on Earth. Even the least habitable place on Earth (e.g. Antarctica) is paradise in comparison to Mars. Mars settlement using current technology is an intractable problem.
Musk is selling his vision as an aspirational goal, not something achievable in his (or any of our) lifetimes. He knows better than anyone that a planet without a magnetosphere, fertile soil or a breathable atmosphere (just to name a few) is a death trap for humanity. But he has made it his life purpose to get the ball rolling.
If we look at the goal of colonizing our solar system rationally, a far more optimal strategy is robotic colonization. Advances in AI are now making it possible to fundamentally change how manufacturing is done via robotics. Once this happens, Mars colonization becomes far more feasible. Musk knows this, hence his pivot of Tesla from cars to robotics. The idea of sending people onto a hostile planet, where they then build a colony is archaic. People will arrive once the colony is fully built and operational.
The state of robotics today is very, very far from anything that could construct a Mars colony without people there making it all happen. Even with people there, a self-sufficient Mars colony is far beyond our capacity today.
Even a self-sufficient colony in the middle of the Sahara Desert, constructed all hands-on, is out of reach.
I will believe a Mars colony could be self-sustaining if the colonists, before they leave for Mars, by themselves build all the equipment they will have on Mars, including a copy of the equipment they need to do that building.
Humans have evolved on Earth. Even the least habitable place on Earth (e.g. Antarctica) is paradise in comparison to Mars. Mars settlement using current technology is an intractable problem.
Musk is selling his vision as an aspirational goal, not something achievable in his (or any of our) lifetimes. He knows better than anyone that a planet without a magnetosphere, fertile soil or a breathable atmosphere (just to name a few) is a death trap for humanity. But he has made it his life purpose to get the ball rolling.
If we look at the goal of colonizing our solar system rationally, a far more optimal strategy is robotic colonization. Advances in AI are now making it possible to fundamentally change how manufacturing is done via robotics. Once this happens, Mars colonization becomes far more feasible. Musk knows this, hence his pivot of Tesla from cars to robotics. The idea of sending people onto a hostile planet, where they then build a colony is archaic. People will arrive once the colony is fully built and operational.