me_irl

Except he’s not going to send the ultra wealthy first. He’s going to send upper middle class engineers middle class trades people to set up the base.

His robot has shown the ability to…pick up and drop objects in a controlled environment. So people are going to need to go to set up the suicide domes.

There’s many exciting opportunities to die horribly on the way to mars.

Exploding in the lower atmosphere due to the rocket having to red line its engines to get the thing to orbit and starship having absolutely no tested abort system.

Suffocating in a steel tube because the life support system was built using “move fast and break things” techniques, unlike nasa who designs with “there’s no second chances” as a philosophy.

Elon’s car, launched on the first falcon heavy, was supposed to be orbiting mars, but they fucked up somewhere and it’s now orbiting the sun in deep space. So getting trapped on a vessel doomed to orbit the sun for decades due to incompetence is also a uniquely horrifying way to die. Trip is supposed to take 6 to 8 months, but after that, supplies will run out.

Keeping humans in tight spaces for months is a regular problem in submarine corps and space flight. Administrations meticulously select their candidates so they don’t go batshit and try to murder each other. Elon will no doubt ignore this entirely. So a mundane death via mutiny or surprise spree killings is exciting.

Starship has no plans for radiation shielding. So constant exposure to solar radiation or acute exposure during a solar storm is a great way to accumulate dangerous doses of radiation that will kill you in a few years.

6 months of micro gravity will deplete a lot of bones mass, especially if crews aren’t drilled on regular exercise techniques to slow it down. So it’s entirely possible the entire crew makes it down to the mars surface and breaks their legs trying to walk around.

Speaking of making down to the surface. Starship lands on its engines. Engines that are powered by incredibly precisely machines turbo pumps that provide the pressure for the combustion chamber. No one has tested what happens to these pumps, or the lubricants in them, when they’ve been sitting in space for months. Will the engines even fire while you’re screaming through the thin Martian atmosphere at 12 kilometers per second?

If they make it down and don’t break their legs on a rock. They now have to build and live in domes that haven’t even been designed yet. Mars is very radioactive compared to earth, and radiation sickness on missions is a real concern. Living in a dome is silly, as it’s not going to block enough rads to keep people safe. So more than likely, the crew will move from the small tube of the starship, to a bigger tube of an old lava tube. See above about humans going batshit when in confined spaces for extended periods.

These are just the ways to die that I could think of Off the top of my head. I’m sure if this mission happens, Elon will “discover” “new” challenges that will unfortunately kill the entire crew.

Instead of having the implode feature, it is entirely built around exploding!