(CNN)Elon Musk has built a $12 billion company in an endeavor to pave the way to Mars for humanity. He insists that Mars is a "long-term insurance policy" for "the light of consciousness" in the face of climate change, extinction events, and our recklessness with technology. On the other hand, astronaut Chris Hadfield is skeptical: "Humanity is not going extinct," he told me. He added: "There's no great compelling reason to go, apart from curiosity, and that's not going to be enough to sustain the immense cost necessary with the technology that exists right now." But I question our future, stuck here on Earth. Our environment is a highly balanced system and we are the destabilizing element. Pursuing "green" initiatives is no long-term solution to the wall we're hurtling towards, they're speed bumps. If this is where humankind is destined to remain, then we shall find ourselves fighting over whatever is left of it.
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Pursuing "green" initiatives is no long-term solution to the wall we're hurtling towards, says Ashley Dove-Jay
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Dove-Jay: Launching missions to Mars would use less energy than those to the Moon
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Mars program certainly has challenges to overcome, but technological gap between us and Mars is smaller than it was for the Moon program in 1960s, he adds
With Martian gravity around a third of that on @placeholder, it would take astronauts a couple of days to acclimatize, and perhaps a few months to fully adapt.
Any Martian life will have evolved independently and is unlikely to be capable even of interacting with @placeholder life on a molecular level.