Elon Musk to Train Astronauts in the Gobi Desert

Before being sent on a space mission to Mars, the astronauts will receive training at a state-of-the-art center that Elon Musk wants to build in the Mongolian part of the Gobi Desert.

Intense contacts between American billionaire Elon Musk and Mongolian political leaders continue. This time the talks between Mongolian Prime Minister Luvsannamsrain Oyun-Erdene and Tesla’s godfather concern space issues and particularly the possibility of building one or more training centers for future astronauts in the Mongolian part of the Gobi Desert. According to Musk, spacecraft crews for future missions to Mars will be trained in Mongolia. The terrain of the Gobi Desert located in the southern part of Mongolia is very similar to the surface of Mars. As the world media recalled, “Musk has named the colonization of Mars as one of his main goals.”

Earlier, Prime Minister Oyuun-Erdene discussed with Musk the possibility of developing modern telecommunications technologies in Mongolia based on Starlink satellite systems, as well as the possibility of building a Tesla plant in Mongolia to produce electric cars in this Asian country.

In July, Mongolian authorities approved two special licenses for SpaceX. Elon Musk’s company will operate in Mongolia “as a telecommunications service provider using Starlink low-orbit satellites.” Thanks to the agreement between the government of Ulaanbaatar and SpaceX, users in the Gobi Desert and many other more remote areas of Mongolia will finally be able to access the Web.

The arc-shaped Gobi Desert stretches over the area exceeding 1,300,000 square kilometers, from the mountains of the Russian Altai and the Siberian taiga in the east to the territory of Mongolia in the west and to the fertile Chinese regions of Manchuria and the Zheltaya (Yellow) River valley in the south. The Gobi Desert is divided lengthwise by the border between Mongolia and China. In Mongolian language, Gobi means “territory without water,” and in Chinese, the name of the desert paradoxically means “Great Sea.”