[HN Gopher] A Recap of the Mars Terraforming Debate ___________________________________________________________________ A Recap of the Mars Terraforming Debate Author : rbanffy Score : 54 points Date : 2021-05-13 18:27 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (nautil.us) (TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us) | natch wrote: | It seems that it hasn't occurred to the author that we can also | change humans to be more adapted to Mars. And stretch the meaning | of human to encompass human like individuals who do not have the | same parameters. Terraforming might not have to go as far as he | thinks, to be sufficient. | Dort wrote: | I think humankind should first clean up the mess here on earth | before even thinking about colonizing moons and other planets. | Pfhreak wrote: | There's a fantastic novel series that starts with _Red Mars_ , by | Kim Stanley Robinson. It follows a series of the first colonizers | of Mars, and every time it shifts perspective it dives into a new | science/technology frame. | | For a few chapters you are following an engineer, and it talks | about the alloys and techniques she's using to build housing. A | little while later you follow a geologist and the topic shifts a | bit as this geologist goes out exploring. | | You follow biologists, psychologists, economists, and each time | it dives into the challenges they have in how they perceive Mars | and what to do with it. | | Inevitably, there's a conflict between the "Reds" and the | "Greens". Given the series titles (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue | Mars), I'm sure you can figure out who wins. However, it seems to | suggest a result that I find fairly likely -- it doesn't matter | what you _say_ we should do with Mars, people are going to do | what they want. We already don 't care about externalities here | on Earth, there's no way we can police them on Mars. | | That said, while I used to be a huge fan of the idea of | colonizing Mars, I've swung around to the idea that colonizing | asteroids is far more interesting. Mars is relatively resource | poor, and asteroids are incredibly resource rich. There are some | kilometers wide balls of iron, nickel, and platinum group metals | out there. Not to mention water and carbon. All the materials | you'd need to undertake construction in space and none of the | challenges of having to lift it into orbit. | BurningFrog wrote: | > _I 've swung around to the idea that colonizing asteroids_ | | Metal asteroids can, with some luck, provide us with boundless | supplies of pretty much all metals, as I understand it. This | will be one of the great milestones in human civilization. | | But I think it's a place you go to work. Mars is far more | interesting as a place to live and build a society. | 8note wrote: | You can fit a lot more people in the asteroids, and it'll be | easier to transport stuff between them. | | Mars has a lot of the same disadvantages that earth does. Its | got a lot of gravity, and you can't communicate through the | planet from one side to the other | cryptoz wrote: | I love Red Mars. The whole series is good but Red Mars itself | is fantastic, one of my favorite books. | | You practically get an undergrad in areology reading it. Super | curious to see how our reality lines up with the timelines in | the book. | OmicronCeti wrote: | Speaking of areology, there is a small subreddit for | precisely that field which is quite good: | reddit.com/r/Areology | Robotbeat wrote: | On the contrary, Mars has all the resources of asteroids but | the advantage of a water cycle that has concentrated and | reformed minerals like on Earth. The ability to process the | atmosphere directly is a massive and under-rated advantage. | MOXIE proves it's not just possible but feasible to generate | fuel (carbon monoxide) and oxidizer (oxygen) from the Martian | atmosphere, and nitrogen and even a bit of water (hydrogen and | oxygen) as well as argon are available anywhere on the planet. | | The "let's just build cylinders" (which I think we should | eventually do!!) often strikes me as a knee jerk contrarian | position, an attempt to avoid hard questions about environment, | and a "grass is always greener in fields further in the future | and with less solid understanding." | | Planetary bodies with water cycles (or a history of them) are | rich. Airless bodies have massive difficulties that are often | handwaved away. | | And now we have powered flight (without needing propellant) | demonstrated. Mars really is a much better place to establish a | permanent human presence. | elihu wrote: | I agree with that. The way I look at is is that Mars has the | resources needed to support a population and interplanetary | travel, whereas the asteroids are (probably) where the | lucrative mining opportunities are. Eventually we may | colonize the belt, but if so we'll probably do it by using | Mars as the local gas station and supermarket. | c048 wrote: | Building 'cylinders' gives us an environment that's a lot | easier to control, manage and safeguard compared to a whole | planet. Most planets will be entirely hostile to complex | earth based life to begin with. They'll require either | complex terraforming or some sort of isolated environment, | and that's not even bringing up issues concerning gravity. | | Furthermore, in future wars planets would also be far easier, | bigger and immovable targets compared to asteroids and space- | stations. Just look up what happens when you drop a 10ton | tungsten rod from outer-space. Thanks to gravity, when it | hits the ground it has the same impact of a small nuclear | device. | | When humanity starts to create colonies outside of earth, I | expect most planets will only become fully automated mining | colonies. Colonizing planets is a Star Trek fantasy that, | most likely, will not be worth it. | PicassoCTs wrote: | Living in a asteroid belt, makes the poorest person capable | of getting a ion-engine on a rock the ruler over all the | well-dwellers by default - after all you have the high | ground. | | Thus speaks the lord thy over-lord: | | I. You shall not erect asteroid defences. | | II. You shall not send others to space to rule beside me. | | III. Once every aeon i shall send a rock to test your | faith. You shall fight one another, to proof your | worthiness. | | IV. Be nice to one another. | | V. Game-theory applies, but in a similar way for everyone | living in system, to everyone else out-system. | kortilla wrote: | > Just look up what happens when you drop a 10ton tungsten | rod from outer-space. Thanks to gravity, when it hits the | ground it has the same impact of a small nuclear device. | | That's... not as good as a nuclear device? Susceptibility | to 10 ton tungsten rods is pretty lame to worry about when | a 10 ton actual nuclear bomb would be so much worse. | c048 wrote: | You're missing the point. The point is how easy it | becomes to destroy planetary targets once you start | having an extra-earth presence as a society. You | literally drop heavy stuff from orbit and you have a | nuke. You need an actual, guidable, nuke (or self | propelled object) to have the same effect on a space | station or asteroid. | PicassoCTs wrote: | Does that make Tesla a nuclear power though? Or do they | need to conduct a test first? | c048 wrote: | You may not realize it yet, but they've already become | our new overlords. Do you think they bothered with | getting a certified driving license for that puppet they | put in the car they launched a few years back? They don't | care about our earther laws. Yet there he is, drifting in | space. | rasputnik6502 wrote: | You don't drop stuff from the orbit - it doesn't fall | down | eloff wrote: | There is a HUGE difference in metals concentration in | planetary crust and an asteroid that's mostly that element. | Also a huge difference in gravity if you want the materials | offworld. | | You don't have to colonize them, but mining asteroids makes | tons of sense. | Baeocystin wrote: | I think a lot of it will ultimately depend on whether Mars | has enough gravity to avoid the health issues that we see in | orbital microgravity environments. | | Do we have any idea, based on our experiences with space | stations & lunar landings? Genuine question, I'd really like | to know. | rbanffy wrote: | Mars has about a third of the Earth's, so it's not | microgravity and is about twice as powerful as the Moon's. | There are not many reasons to expect it will create huge | health issues for earthlings but if you spend too much time | on Mars without exercising on a centrifuge, adapting back | to Earth could be a problem. There will be some loss of | muscular mass, at least. | OmicronCeti wrote: | Also going to voice my love for Red Mars, I found Green Mars to | be much more of a slog to get through, but I really like | anything KSR writes. Blue Mars was a nice finale though. | BurningFrog wrote: | I wanted to like Red Mars, and the science stuff was well made, | but a lot of the book is about politics, and to me, those parts | were painful to read. | | I found it incredibly naive and unrealistic. Clearly many | others disagree :) | rbanffy wrote: | I couldn't really like, or care for, the characters. | gnarbarian wrote: | I think it would be better to figure out how to establish self | sufficient colonies capable of growth and replication without | assistance. Starting out on planets and moons then in space. | | We could colonize the entire solar system by the time a | measurable change has been made to the content of the martian | atmosphere (if it's possible at all). | capableweb wrote: | > better to figure out how to establish self sufficient | colonies capable of growth and replication without assistance | | Before we do that on planets and moons, what if we do it right | here on Earth? Still large parts of the world are reliant on | assistance from other "colonies", and there seems to be a human | problem as the cause rather than technological or logistical | problem. | gnarbarian wrote: | I think you're talking about reversing globalism. I honestly | think it's easier to develop space colonies than reverse | globally entrenched political positions. | | If we don't spread out there is a 100% chance we will all die | given enough time. There are political forces aligned with | your position which would seek to redirect any efforts back | towards earth. If those ideas become entrenched we will never | escape this planet and we will be forever subjugated and | enslaved by its political machinations. | | With increased population density we always see more | bureaucracy and authoritarian government and fewer freedoms | and less autonomy. | foreigner wrote: | No, _you 're_ talking about transcending globalism by | moving off or globe! | gnarbarian wrote: | Basically I just want to blast off into space where | people won't annoy me. | rsj_hn wrote: | Globalism has been reversed in the past. It's not some end | state of humanity. | | Globalism => increased interdependence => increased | fragility => collapse => localism => generate surplus from | local institutions => increased profit opportunities from | trade => globalism | dfilppi wrote: | Mars needs more gravity and raw materials (nitrogen). I suggest a | large impactor or impactors to solve both. Now how to get them | there... | Robotbeat wrote: | My whole opinion on terraforming Mars is it's a question for the | indigenous Martians, not for Earth. Once there are people on Mars | (perhaps descendants of people who come in our lifetimes) who | have lived and survived on the planet for long enough for Mars to | be their home, for them to have developed a distinctly Martian | culture, way of life, and possibly | cultural/mythological/spiritual/religious connections with the | planet and their surroundings, who have had to survive the harsh | environment for at least a few generations, then THEY should make | the decision, not people millions of miles away arguing for or | against it. | | They are the only ones who will have sufficient stake (their own | lives) and perspective (living on the planet for the vast | majority of their natural lives) to make this decision. | | Just like I think indigenous people on Earth have the right to | environmental decisions on their land, so should Martians. They | will cherish Mars more than we will ever understand. | | Secondly, I think that terraforming Mars should be seen in two | levels: | | 1) making the atmosphere thick enough to go without a pressure | suit in the deepest areas. This is technically possible (although | not comfortable or healthy or safe, and requires some positive | pressure) once the pressure exceeds the Armstrong Limit, or | 0.9psi, in Hellas Basin. Notably, this can be even achieved (with | a safety factor of 2!) within the volatiles budget that the "NASA | says terraforming Mars is impossible" Jakosky paper claims. | ...which is also something really frustrating. The bar for what | counts as "terraformed" is made very high by the authors, higher | than the physiological reality, and this is somewhat arbitrary | but they treat it as an objective fact. Anyway. 1-2psi or so, | mostly CO2. Similar conditions to this actually persisted for a | while on Mars during the Noachian Period where there was flowing | water and a very active water cycle, and this may have been when | Mars had life that thrived if there was any. This level of | terraforming could be accomplished within a century in principle. | So if anything, this level of terraforming is really | "Areoforming" and would potentially allow Martian life to thrive. | This level is achievable and makes Mars settlement MUCH easier | and safer without insane energy requirements (just orbital | mirrors or solar sails could do it). Martians may decide to stop | at this point. | | 2) actual breathable atmosphere. The pressure would have to be | higher, probably 3-5psi, and oxygen to 1-3psi partial pressure. | It would change Mars by oxidizing the surface. But the energy | required to make this much oxygen is insane. petawatts for | centuries. (Humanity uses just a few Terawatts of useful energy | right now.) it'd likely kill surface Mars life unless it was | adapted. And by the time this happens, Martians may already have | adapted to the low oxygen environment, with maybe some sort of | mechatronic/prosthetic oxygen carrying organ just like whales | adapted to the airless ocean depths. So it may just be | unnecessary. (There's one trick that could possibly make this | fast and cheap: if huge quantities of perchlorates are found. | Perchlorates exothermally release oxygen when catalyzed... they | actually could produce power with oxygen as a byproduct. Some | oxygen candles use perchlorates, and perchlorates have been found | to be fairly common on Mars. It's a hail-Mary, but is an | interesting potential option.) | | The timescale and feasibility (and, I argue, ethical | considerations) between 1 and 2 are orders of magnitude apart but | they're often treated as the same exact question, especially in | the press which doesn't like getting too technical. | robbles wrote: | I remember reading that Mars doesn't have a magnetic field like | Earth's to protect it from solar wind, therefore the atmosphere | mostly gets swept away. Is that not the more difficult problem | here? This debate seems to center on generating enough CO2, but | that seems a bit irrelevant if it would just blow away. How would | you even go about fixing the magnetic field of a planet? | andys627 wrote: | We can create a magnetosphere at Lagrange point between Mars | and Sun that has a tail that would protected Mars from solar | radiation. Radiation from other stars is still a problem I | think? https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars- | atmo... | rbanffy wrote: | True, but at least the magnetic field could redirect solar | wind (or, at least, its protons) to impact head-on and | replenish Martian hydrogen instead of pushing the atmosphere | away. | m4rtink wrote: | Build a worldhouse instead of full terraformation ? | | https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/484746e824a3a | | No need to worry about atmosphere loss & you can start | incrementally and get usable land almost at only, not only | after long years of terraformation. | qayxc wrote: | Agreed. Para-terraforming is a criminally underrated concept. | | With "terraforming" you'd have the problem that dozens of | generations would have to work their proverbial asses off | without ever experiencing the fruits of their labour. Not | exactly a strong suit of the human race. | | Another advantage of the world-house approach is the | possibility to leave sites of interest as-is by not including | them. With terraforming it's impossible to preserve select | areas for scientific or cultural reasons. | meepmorp wrote: | It's all about the rate of loss. If it's 1% per year, that's | probably not going to work; if it's 0.0001%, that's a different | matter altogether. | | Everything is temporary in the long run. | OmicronCeti wrote: | From the paper in the article: | | >"MAVEN has observed the Martian upper atmosphere for a full | Martian year, and has determined the rate of loss of gas to | space and the driving processes; 1-2 kg/s of gas are being | lost." | | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001910351. | .. | meepmorp wrote: | Oh, I was thinking in terms of the cost benefit of | terraforming. If you magically make the planet's atmosphere | 1 bar of co2, how long would that last at a usable level - | say at or above 0.5 bar - assuming no replacement? | | If that's 10k years it's less appealing, but 1m years might | be worth it. | FredPret wrote: | Earth's magnetic field comes from consisting of a massive ball | of molten iron surrounded by layers of rock, soil, and, | ultimately, monkeys. | | The critical component for the magnetic field (the molten iron | ball) is hard to replicate. | jpollock wrote: | That's probably a problem on billion year scales. I wonder what | the annual loss would be. | OmicronCeti wrote: | From the paper in the article: | | >"MAVEN has observed the Martian upper atmosphere for a full | Martian year, and has determined the rate of loss of gas to | space and the driving processes; 1-2 kg/s of gas are being | lost." | | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001910351. | .. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Its estimated Mars had at atmosphere for the first billion | years. But loss is not linear. The less you have, the faster | it's eroded. | | So to rebuild it, might want to quickly get to a sustainable | value before its blown away again? I favor crashing Saturn's | icy asteroids into Mars to release gigatons of water vapor. | cogman10 wrote: | Isn't it the reverse? The more atmosphere is present the | faster it erodes away? | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Not according to the papers. | cogman10 wrote: | Which papers? That's really counter intuitive to me. I'd | expect that a higher atmosphere concentration would have | a higher rate of loss because the solar wind would grab | more of it. | | Does this mean that mars is losing atmosphere faster | today than it did 500million years ago? That's really | fascinating! | bpodgursky wrote: | https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars- | atmo.... | | > In answer to this challenge, Dr. Jim Green - the Director of | NASA's Planetary Science Division - and a panel of researchers | presented an ambitious idea. In essence, they suggested that by | positioning a magnetic dipole shield at the Mars L1 Lagrange | Point, an artificial magnetosphere could be formed that would | encompass the entire planet, thus shielding it from solar wind | and radiation. | tibbydudeza wrote: | No problem - we just need to melt the outer core to get the | dynamo effect - will only require 1 trillion nuclear bombs once | we figure the technology to drill down to that depth. | OmicronCeti wrote: | Perhaps that's the end-game for lord Musk's Boring Company | TchoBeer wrote: | Can't tell how sarcastic this comment is | OmicronCeti wrote: | First, I should note that I have a personal bias in that I study | Mars for my PhD. I dislike Elon Musk, and I am not in favor of | terraforming. | | That out of the way, McKay comes off as overly aggressive at | times, and wishy-washy in others. It seems contradictory to call | Jakosky's model ridiculous and absurd while also claiming we | don't have enough data to know for sure. Jakosky is a well-known | and respected Mars researcher, and I would much rather trust his | 2018 paper over a paper or two written in the early '90s before | we had detailed observations of the Martian atmosphere or | surface. | | At the very least, I appreciate Jakosky planting an empirical | stake in the ground for his position. | Miraste wrote: | You're not in favor of terraforming, full stop? Elon's nukes | and ground CO2 idea seems dubious, and like his dome habitats | idea (turns out they're very limited in lower gravity and | pressure: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/28/domes- | are-very...) I think it will be dropped quickly once SpaceX | gets to Mars and starts working on habitation seriously. He | talks big but he acknowledges reality eventually. | | However, I struggle to see a reason to oppose the concept of | terraforming Mars. I don't study the planet for a living so I'd | love to hear your thoughts on it. | OmicronCeti wrote: | I see no point to it. As another commentor mentioned below, | humanity is unlikely to travel to another star system. To me, | terraforming Mars is like going camping in your backyard. | It's different, it's harder, fun, but ultimately has no real | purpose. Mars is more likely to be colonized for exploitation | of its resources than as some utopian egalitarian human | endeavor. To me that would be a shame. I would like to see it | preserved more or less as-is as a record of its own history. | Miraste wrote: | Interesting. To me, Mars is a large rock in a universe of | large rocks, but it could be our second home (even if it is | done for profit). In conversations like this I often | consider this comic: https://www.smbc- | comics.com/comic/modules | | I don't care about Mars' surface processes. If I had a | button to blast its outer layer off and replace it with a | habitable one I would press it without hesitating - yet I | imagine if I spent years studying the planet academically I | would act differently, based on an amalgam of my concepts | of "studying" and "Mars" I came up with on the spot and am | ignoring anyway. Empathy is a poor substitute for | understanding. | | There's a philosophical difference here too. I don't see a | problem with pulling resources from as much of the galaxy | as we can reach if it prolongs Earth life, assuming we | don't find other lifeforms. The galaxy only has mystique | when we assign it, which we can't do if we're dead. | dheera wrote: | I mean a few hundred years ago people believed humans could | not ever fly, but it happened, and we take it for granted | now. | OmicronCeti wrote: | There is model for flight on Earth: birds. Humans | achieved a similar feat through mimicry and the use of | fossil fuels. There is no model for instellar transit. I | am not optimistic that we can develop a technology that | can speed transport between stars to such a degree before | we destroy ourselves like every other hominid that has | ever existed. | rbanffy wrote: | > There is no model for instellar transit. | | There is, but extrasolar objects don't have engines and | do very low energy transits. | | We'd need a large habitat, a power source that can last | for a couple thousand years and a lot - and I mean a LOT | - of reaction mass to accelerate it and to brake it when | it arrives at its destination. Ideally, it'd be preceded | by numerous robotic probes that'd chart the worlds ahead | for possible refueling stops (that could add a couple | thousand years to the mission) and have a number of | possible targets lined up on a reasonable trajectory so | that if the next system is not really that hospitable or | doesn't have anything worth doing a very large delta-v | for, it can just press ahead to the next destination. | | Another thing it'd need is a lot of determination to | build it, to seal it with a population, test it for | generations to make sure the ecosystem works and is | stable, and then send it out into the unknown without any | possibility of returning to Earth. It's very long term | engineering we rarely do. | valuearb wrote: | There are numerous credible designs for space ships able | to reach a few percentage points of the speed of light. | | Reaching 10% would be enough to visit nearby stars within | a lifetime. | | And once we can extend human life spans to many hundreds | of years these journeys become even more achievable. | kortilla wrote: | The breakthroughs in flying came when we stopped trying | to make machines look like birds. | | Submarines work well because we didn't bother making them | anything like fish. | dheera wrote: | Planes work quite differently from birds. We were | inspired by them, but we didn't copy them at all. | Attempts in the past to copy birds mostly failed. | | We got to the moon, Mars, and several other solar system | bodies in the past half century without any mimicry. | | Maybe you don't, but I have very strong optimism for | technological advancement, and also for modifying our | life form to rid ourselves of our tendency to destroy | things before heading to other stars. When I say "we" | will go to other stars, it won't be Homo sapiens, but | another species that we will create as our successor. | throwawayboise wrote: | We got to the moon. 12 humans have walked on it. Note | that 50 years later, nobody is living there, or working | there. Nobody has even returned. | | We may get humans to Mars. It's technically possible. But | I don't think we will ever live there. | OmicronCeti wrote: | The person you're replying to stated elsewhere that they | don't believe in the conservation of energy, so | (ironically) save yourself the energy of arguing with | them. | dheera wrote: | 50 years isn't a long time. I'm sure some dude said the | same thing about Tibet being too harsh to live in, and | yet there are cities there now. | OmicronCeti wrote: | What are you talking about? People have lived in Tibet | for 20,000+ years? | OmicronCeti wrote: | The distance to the moon and Mars is absolutely trivial | compared to even the closest star: to Mars is 0.0007% of | the way to Alpha Centauri. | | >We got to the moon, Mars, and several other solar system | bodies | | You're conflating humans and probes, which are vastly | different. | valuearb wrote: | We didn't land on the moon? | dheera wrote: | > You're conflating humans and probes, which are vastly | different. | | I disagree. Robots can build infrastructure far ahead of | human settlement, such that everything already exists | when we are ready to travel. | | We can also potentially re-engineer our own life form, or | create an entirely new inorganic lifeform, to withstand | various conditions, including radiation and a wider range | of temperatures. That will be our successor. | | We are only _beginning_ to understand genetics in the | past decade. We have a long, long way to go, and a lot to | understand. Science is still at its infancy. | | Also, this is something I could never say in an academic | context, but deep down I don't believe in conservation of | energy, partly because the big bang itself violates it. | Yes, I would be ridiculed for saying this in a scientific | context, but so would someone in the 1500s for saying | that the Earth goes around the sun. I think at some point | in the distant future we will not be reliant on stars as | our energy source. | OmicronCeti wrote: | 'we' did not go to Mars, 'we' did not go to pluto. We | sent cameras with walky-talkies. That is so vastly | different than sending people to the moon, that it's not | really something we can disagree on in good faith. | | If you truly do not believe in the conservation of | energy, I think we're done here since none of my | arguments will be good enough for such wild speculation. | dheera wrote: | If we can send cameras with walky-talkies, we can invent | and send (possibly silicon-based) life forms that will | carry on our legacy while being a lot more resistant to | the elements, require much less support along the | journey, and can tolerate whatever gases and radiation | may be present at the destination while still reproducing | and carrying on society just as life does now. | | Human bodies suck because they need to eat, need to poop, | complain if what they eat isn't tasty, fight with each | other, and get cancer, but our legacy as intelligent life | doesn't need to continue in our current carbon-based meat | bag form. | OmicronCeti wrote: | I can't believe I'm entertaining a reply, but how would a | human-invented lifeform sent to the stars carry on human | society if it is a) not human, and b) light years | spatially distance and thousands of years temporally | distant? | | This reads like an ungrad astronomy major fever dream. | natch wrote: | The question "what makes us human" is a deep one that has | vexed philosophers for a long time. I don't have the | answer. If you have the answer, forgive me if I take it | with a grain of salt. | | I do think it's possible that our best hope for | navigating the transition beyond the singularity involves | transplanting our humanness to another kind of life form. | I'm not necessarily talking about uploading... more about | a staggered intergenerational transition mixed in with | life as we know it. I realize that to some people, this | will continue to sound like crazy talk, until one day it | isn't. It's ok if you are one of those people :-). | dheera wrote: | It would carry on our legacy as intelligent life. I don't | think maintaining our current iteration in evolution is a | condition that should be valued. We can evolve, or invent | another life form that carries our civilization forward. | | Yes, it reads like a dream. Technological breakthroughs | of the past were created by people with dreams, not by | skeptics. | natch wrote: | I would like to see it preserved too, but it seems there | are some tradeoffs with respect to survivability of | intelligent life in the face of potential extinction | events. | | This is assuming that worst case scenarios are possible on | Earth as on any planet... I think that's a reasonable | assumption. | Robotbeat wrote: | I think we absolutely can travel to another star system. | But more critically, this argument strikes me as goal post | moving by space settlement skeptics: mass transport to Mars | is increasingly appearing to be feasible, so we'll put the | goal posts on Proxima b. | | The exploitation argument doesn't make any sense because | Mars doesn't have any resources that would really make | sense to ever bring back to Earth, except as a side | product. It's a new home like an island in the Pacific for | the Polynesians. I don't consider Polynesians settling | uninhabited new islands to be objectionable at all, but | instead an expression of what makes humanity wonderful. | Preservation of a dead rock for preservation's sake makes | no sense. It's treating stasis as better than life, and I | just can't get behind that. | medstrom wrote: | One reason not is: we're directly responsible for any | suffering that then happens on that rock. A biosphere | full of life means horror and suffering every day for so | many living things it potentially eclipses all humanity's | past crimes combined. | Robotbeat wrote: | > "A biosphere full of life means horror and suffering | every day for so many living things it potentially | eclipses all humanity's past crimes combined." | | This is the most astounding perspective on the value of | life that I can imagine. Like the argument of a genocidal | supervillain. | ithkuil wrote: | "I have the moral obligation to kill all the living | humans today so I spare the suffering of until | generations hereafter"? | beckingz wrote: | By that logic we should take responsibility for the | suffering on earth. | | Seems like the winning move is to go double or nothing | and try and make life more sufferable (containing less | suffering) on both planets. | dheera wrote: | Also honestly I think it's _extremely fortunate_ that we | have Proxima Centauri only 4 light years away as our | nearest star. It 's a red dwarf, and will continue to | shine for at least another 4 _trillion_ years, a thousand | times longer than the sun will shine. Of course, granted | it 's habitability zone and other things are different, | but that does not preclude us redefining habitability by | inventing another life form to be our successor. | | Proxima Centauri will outlive the vast majority of stars | in the galaxy. | Robotbeat wrote: | It's worth pointing out that an a long time scale of tens | to hundreds of thousands (not to mention millions) of | years, the stars move around quite a bit. | | The Alpha Centauri system will be just 3 light years away | in 30,000 years. In 1.4 million years, Gliese 710 will | pass within 0.2 light years of Earth. That's close enough | to be reached in a human healthspan with some beefed up | (but still fairly sane) nuclear-electric propulsion that | we could probably start building today if we had a reason | to go out to 0.2 light years. | | But other interstellar propulsion systems with higher | performance are feasible, such as pellet stream beamed | propulsion combined with a magsail. Really good fusion | might work, too. Laser propulsion is feasible especially | for probes but isn't terribly efficient (pellet stream | uses like a hundredth the energy for the same payload). | Antimatter would be nice, but I'm not convinced feasible | storage could be developed to beat the usable energy | storage density of fission or fusion... or rather we're | probably much more than 100 years away from sufficiently | efficient antimatter storage. | OmicronCeti wrote: | I said this elsewhere in this thread, but I study surface | processes on Mars, so to me the planet is still alive and | active. Things change, mysteries unfold, new | environmental conditions come and go. | | I'm sure you wouldn't object to national parks or | wilderness areas, it's just that in the case of Mars | there is no (known) life. How much each of us values the | presence of life will differ, but in my view it's worth | preserving Mars. | kortilla wrote: | Pick a different planet to preserve. | rbanffy wrote: | Venus is very easy to preserve. | ianai wrote: | To me, if mars had life in its past and no longer does | then we could consider it one huge grave. Lost in the | terraforming debate I read is that any atmosphere we | managed to kick up would be temporary. It might take a | long time to leak off, but they're not discussing any | means to reverse the trend. As I understand, Mars doesn't | have an active core and thus magnetic field holding its | atmosphere in place. There's no way we're going to fire | up a core... | | Turning choice, large asteroids into liveable habitats | seems an infinitely more productive task. | Robotbeat wrote: | Firing up a core is hard, but laying superconducting | cables around the equator is not particularly hard | (probably easier than terraforming). It could replicate a | magnetosphere just fine, while also functioning as a | planet wide electricity grid and a decade-long battery. | valuearb wrote: | "Temporary" == millions of years. | albertzeyer wrote: | > I would like to see it preserved more or less as-is as a | record of its own history. | | But on the other side, what is really the point to this? | | In a couple of million years, none of this really matters. | OmicronCeti wrote: | I see it as littering, we'll all be dead in 100 years so | what does it matter if I toss my trash into the bushes? | beckingz wrote: | What about leaving behind awesome artwork? | | We could turn mars into a sweet art project. | OmicronCeti wrote: | You mean add graffiti to my beloved red rocks? Blasphemy. | tw04 wrote: | >and I am not in favor of terraforming. | | Why not? It would seem that's something we're going to have to | master in order to populate the galaxy. Seems like it would | make sense to figure it out somewhere close to home so we can | have all the appropriate gear onboard a flight out into the | cosmos. | throwawayboise wrote: | We aren't going to populate the galaxy. We aren't even going | to populate Mars. We are going to live on Earth until | something cataclysmic happens, and then we will be gone. | bpodgursky wrote: | That's really likely to be true if you walk into the future | believing it. | OmicronCeti wrote: | Seems a little grandiose considering its just a comment | on HN. | dheera wrote: | I strongly disagree with this. We have several hundred | million years left, and we've only been around as an | intelligent civilization for what, 100K years? | | 200 years ago nobody would even _think_ of flying on Earth, | and yet here we are, taking it for granted that you can get | almost _anywhere_ on this planet within 24 hours for a | couple thousand dollars, and within a century of inventing | the car we landed a robot on freaking Mars. | | Now I _do_ think that we will take charge of evolution and | invent a form of life that will be our successor to | withstand a much harsher range of conditions and absent | from the "bugs" of current life such as cancer and heart | disease, rather than our current unreliable meat bags, but | we'll make it happen nonetheless. | | All that said -- I do want to see more attention toward | terraforming _Earth_ as well. Even with zero global | warming, the sun 's brightness will increase such that our | oceans will boil away within 1 billion years, even though | it won't actually engulf the Earth for another 4 billion. I | would think it's realistic to extend the habitable period | of life on Earth from ~300 million years to maybe 2 billion | years with some terraforming tricks. That will buy us more | time to terraform Mars or Saturn's moons in preparation for | the red giant phase of the sun. | | Also, learning to terraform the Earth can reverse global | warming, because, you know, politicians don't give a fuck | about stopping it, so we should attempt to learn to reverse | it as a backup plan while the political environmental | efforts continue in parallel. | OmicronCeti wrote: | I think the disconnect here is between potential and | probable. Humanity likely has the potential for | interstellar travel, but our nature will prevent it in my | opinion. Homo sapiens have twice come to the edge of | nuclear oblivion already (being saved only by luck | essentially), and I would wager we are are speeding much | faster towards nuking each other than reaching the stars. | dheera wrote: | If nuclear war breaks out, it will be sad, we will lose a | lot of our population, and cities will be destroyed, but | I do not think a nuclear breakout will result in the | death of humanity. I cannot see a realistic war scenario | in which we will destroy every habitable corner of the | planet. | | And if we can cure cancer in the next 50 years (I think | realistic), we'll have even better odds of surviving an | event, as a species. | natch wrote: | The person you are replying to has said he would not mind | if all humanity were to die and go extinct. Ugh. | OmicronCeti wrote: | The collapse of all plant life would mean the death of | humans. Nuclear winter is a well-studied and modeled | phenomenon. | dheera wrote: | I don't think we would collapse all plant life. | | While we have the theoretical capability to destroy all | plant life, I think realistically we'd end up | obliterating a few cities before war would cease, and a | full-on nuclear winter is unlikely. | kergonath wrote: | You don't need to kill _all_ plants, just enough of those | we can eat. Not even all of those, either. Look into | history to see what happens when enough people don't have | enough to eat. | OmicronCeti wrote: | > I don't think we would collapse all plant life. | | I mean it's not really about what _you_ _think_. See the | top two links here about the devastating effects of | small-scale conflicts | | - https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00794-y | | - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1919049117 | | - https://doi.org/10.1126/science.222.4630.1283 | | - https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JD030509 | | - https://doi.org/10.1080/03036758.1986.10423349 | | - https://doi.org/10.1029/2006JD008235 | kergonath wrote: | > We have several hundred million years left, and we've | only been around as an intelligent civilization for what, | 100K years? | | This sounds wildly optimistic, considering our chronic | inability to fix our behaviour before it results in | excessive damage. Never mind the occasional asteroid. | | > 200 years ago nobody would even think of flying on | Earth, and yet here we are, taking it for granted that | you can get almost anywhere on this planet within 24 | hours for a couple thousand dollars, and within a century | of inventing the car we landed a robot on freaking Mars. | | The myth of Icarus is a bit older than 200 years. So are | Leonardo da Vinci's drawings. Plenty of people did in | fact think of flying, most probably before they had any | way of writing it down for us to read. | margalabargala wrote: | It's been 241 years since the first manned unpowered | flight, in a hot air balloon. Granted that's a long way | from getting anywhere on the planet, but I'm skeptical | that 41 years after that event no one was thinking of | flying. | f00zz wrote: | Not with that attitude. | OmicronCeti wrote: | As the commentor below stated, I do not believe humans will | colonize anything but our own solar system. Things are simply | too far away, even assuming there is some breakthrough that | speeds up travel by two or three orders of magnitude. | dheera wrote: | There have been several order-of-magnitude breakthroughs in | travel speed for the past 200 years. We have several | hundred million years of time on Earth to go, and a couple | billion on the solar system, to figure it out. We also have | plenty of time to figure out how to re-engineer and evolve | our own bodies to deal with radiation and other hazards. | | We will figure it out. | OmicronCeti wrote: | We simply exploited fossil fuels. | | You are extremely optimistic about having several hundred | million years left on Earth, when the longest living | hominid existed for only ~2 million years. | | I firmly believe that homo sapiens will self-destruct | long before that point, as we have greatly overstressed | the planet in only 200,000 years, mostly in the last 200. | aaronax wrote: | We could learn how to "simply exploit" atomic fuels. That | should be good for another magnitude or two, right? | kergonath wrote: | The funny thing is that we know already quite a bit about | how to exploit them. Now, putting that into practice is | another matter. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | >We simply exploited fossil fuels. | | This hand waves away all the accomplishments in seafaring | prior to the 19th century. | OmicronCeti wrote: | What were the order of magnitude speed developments in | seafaring before 1800? I'm not familiar with the topic. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | Navigation techniques improved substantially. While not | inherently a speed improvement it increased the effective | range of mariners by a ton resulting in effectively the | same thing. | kergonath wrote: | > While not inherently a speed improvement it increased | the effective range of mariners by a ton resulting in | effectively the same thing. | | There were _loads_ of innovations around the shape and | profiling of ship hulls depending on conditions in which | they operated. Same for sails and stuff, not to mention | doing away with rowers. This improved speed quite a lot | on top of range. | OmicronCeti wrote: | Navigation is irrelevant to the space flight argument | though, we know how to navigate between planets and stars | (in theory). Speed is the limiting factor. | kergonath wrote: | > We simply exploited fossil fuels. | | Not simply, but mostly: progress started before the steam | engine. But yeah, pop sci is hyping a lot of things that | are very, very unlikely in the near future, and it looks | like we won't have much beyond that. | Robotbeat wrote: | This is a pretty terrible argument, mostly because it | seems to support Musk's and Zubrin's position that if we | stop progressing we risk falling into stagnation, decay, | and ultimately extinction and yet you're somehow using it | to say we SHOULDN'T try expanding to other planets or | star systems. It doesn't seem logically consistent! | | My view is that learning to master inhabitation of Mars | and other places in space will enable us to revert Earth | from a bunch of agricultural land and farms and suburban | sprawl back into a garden (dotted with dense, luxurious | cities) which we camp out in during the weekend. | | Space development shows how to thrive WITHOUT fossil | fuels. It's so strange to me that folks seem to have this | backwards. | meepmorp wrote: | > My view is that learning to master inhabitation of Mars | and other places in space will enable us to revert Earth | from a bunch of agricultural land and farms and suburban | sprawl back into a garden (dotted with dense, luxurious | cities) which we camp out in during the weekend. | | How does that work, exactly? | Robotbeat wrote: | In space, any food produced would have to be grown | inside, sealed away from the outside environment to | protect it from the vacuum or near-vacuum of space or | Mars. We will grow it in greenhouses or perhaps vats | (staples like corn or wheat can be replaced by fermented | foods like @solar_foods or @feedkind, using ultimately | solar power, this is actually more efficient than | photosynthesis and with a much smaller environmental | footprint than agriculture) and certainly not have free | grazing cattle (which is the biggest land use in the US). | On Mars, we're already beginning to master solar/battery- | electric flight, so perhaps we may not need so many | surface roads and we can place trains and such | underground. Our footprint on the planet Earth could | shrink by an order of magnitude even as our economy and | quality of life improve (the density effect on economic | productivity is well-established--and Mars will be really | expensive to live on unless in large, dense cities... | suburban sprawl being prohibitively expensive). These are | all things that are fairly hard to prove on Earth as the | whole system has an inertia due to developing with | abundant fossil fuels, but on Mars we will be forced to | rely entirely on renewable (mostly solar but perhaps wind | and geothermal) or nuclear power, so a Martian society | becomes a blueprint and a powerful proof of concept of | how Earth life can be.. | OmicronCeti wrote: | We use the rare Martian mineral handwavium | OmicronCeti wrote: | I totally accept extinction. It's natural. Homo sapiens | will burn bright and briefly, and the planets will | continue to spin. I would argue that it would be much | more worthwhile to spend money improving Earth for humans | while we can, than dumping trillions of dollars into | spaceflight (which I say unironically as someone who is | currently paid by NASA). | | >Space development shows how to thrive WITHOUT fossil | fuels. | | Not sure how that's the case given the staggering | emissions of Falcon 9 for example. | Robotbeat wrote: | Every satellite in orbit that lasts more than a week or | two uses solar or nuclear energy. Starlink is solar | powered and uses electric rockets to reach final orbit | and maintain position. | | Hydrogen is one of the most common rocket fuels, and | Starship will need to used synthesized methane (which we | actually make on board ISS using direct cabin air carbon | capture and the Sabatier process using hydrogen made from | water split with solar electricity) on Mars to return to | be reused, and Musk said SpaceX would eventually use | synthesized methane for Earth-side refueling of Starship | as well. | jrochkind1 wrote: | From your comments I feel like you _gotta_ be familiar | with Kim Stanley Robinson 's novel SF _Red Mars_ (if not | you'd like it), but here's how he tries to make you feel | better about your NASA budgetted job, while agreeing with | your basic analysis on things like terraforming and many | other things you've said (the plot of his earlier novel | notwithstanding, he's partially doing penance for it). | | > However, even if slower, terraforming Mars remains a | great long-term goal; but long-term meaning like ten | thousand years. Which means we have to get our | relationship to our own planet in order for anything | interesting to happen on Mars... | | > The main project for civilization now is creating a | sustainable way of life here on Earth. That's the | necessary first step; anything beyond would rely on that | succeeding, so exploring space is less important now. | That said, space science is an earth science. What we | learn around the solar system can often illuminate the | project we have here of keeping this planet's biosphere | healthy. So I like the space program, and feel it is not | funded out of proportion to its importance. Robotic | missions are already doing a lot of what we need done, | but humans are better at many things than robots, and | it's more exciting to see humans on the other planets | than it is to see robots. So, on balance, I'd like to see | more investment in space science and less in areas like | weaponry. Our taxpayer bailout of the banker gamblers who | lost their bets in 2008 cost us about ten thousand times | the entirety of what we've spent on NASA. | | https://www.publicbooks.org/earth-first-then-mars-an- | intervi... | | This interview in particular is worth reading for this | whole topic being discussed here. | tlb wrote: | Which parts of our solar system do you think we should | colonize? | OmicronCeti wrote: | None besides Earth. | [deleted] | sigg3 wrote: | Not even a cozy hotel on the moon, overlooking the earth? | OmicronCeti wrote: | I'd be down, but it's more likely going to be an awful | penal mining colony armed with nukes pointed back down at | us. | bobsmooth wrote: | Why? | ModernMech wrote: | > Why not? It would seem that's something we're going to have | to master in order to populate the galaxy. | | I think the unstated premise here is that populating the | galaxy is something we should do. Looking around at what | we're doing here on Earth, I think humanity populating the | galaxy would be a net negative for the galaxy. | | You know how the aliens from Independence Day are portrayed | as a race that goes from planet to planet draining its | resources until there's a husk left? That's exactly what | humanity would do. There's no question about that. | | https://independenceday.fandom.com/wiki/Harvesters | | "The Harvesters are a race of highly intelligent and | incredibly technologically advanced hive-mind | extraterrestrial beings. They are a threat of universal | proportions that seeks to harvest and destroy planets to | refuel their ships, to grow, and to perfect their technology | at the expense of driving indigenous races to extinction." | | We are the Harvesters in this story. | mellosouls wrote: | Better to master our behaviour on our own planet first before | we go and trash another. | lexicality wrote: | The article doesn't seem to address the problem of how you stop | your new atmosphere from also dissipating into space. Surely | that's a slightly more important problem? | Narishma wrote: | Doesn't that happen on geological time scales? | OmicronCeti wrote: | From the paper in the article: | | >"MAVEN has observed the Martian upper atmosphere for a full | Martian year, and has determined the rate of loss of gas to | space and the driving processes; 1-2 kg/s of gas are being | lost." | | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001910351. | .. | 8note wrote: | That sounds similar to earth's? | OmicronCeti wrote: | Earth's is more like 3kgs if I remember correctly | ethbr0 wrote: | Yes. We should, if we can. | | We're possibly going to have to terraform Earth in the near | future, and could use all the experience we can get. | kfarr wrote: | I think we've already started terraforming the Earth, perhaps | not intentionally at first but now armed with data on climate | change we continue our warming ways. | OmicronCeti wrote: | What from the article are you staking your comment on? Why do | you think that? Hoping for a more substantive response. | | Edit: I see you fleshed out your comment more. | OmicronCeti wrote: | I would conclude the opposite. If in fact Earth requires | terraforming, that would be the strongest possible argument | against any human influence on other planets. Our current | irresponsibility should be proof in and of itself that we | should not try. To me it feels deeply wrong to use Mars as some | sort of testing ground when it is currently pristine. | | Also, with a rich and privileged life raft available on Mars, | there is no incentive to preserve the world we have now. | _Elysium_ comes to mind. | ethbr0 wrote: | That seems like an argument for stasis. | | We're likely to know more in the future than we know today, | which means we should never do anything today because we will | be able to do it better / with less risk / more reliably / | more efficiently / etc. tomorrow? | | We wouldn't be facing climate change if we hadn't | industrialized. | | But, then, we also wouldn't live in a world of plenty and | have increased the human carrying capacity of the planet many | times over either. | chalcolithic wrote: | The Sun luminosity increases, preservation will only work | short term. | OmicronCeti wrote: | Are you referring to the sun going supernova? I'm not | familiar with the luminosity increase. | chalcolithic wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth | | Given that the only option outside of SciFi is generation | ships we have very little time. | Miraste wrote: | > currently pristine | | I don't understand this line of thinking. Mars isn't | pristine, it's sterile. Dead. It's the perfect testing ground | because it can't be made worse. | OmicronCeti wrote: | Guess pristine is subjective. I study surface processes on | Mars so to me the planet is still alive and active. Things | change, mysteries unfold, new environmental conditions come | and go. | bobsmooth wrote: | Geological processes aren't sentient. | FredPret wrote: | Martian soil is a fine, toxic dust. The planet is far from the | sun. It is also too light to generate the gravity we evolved in. | | We should be living in spinning space stations in warm-and-toasty | solar orbits | kspacewalk2 wrote: | We can try living in both, see which one's better. | FredPret wrote: | That would be the best outcome. Also, the Moon, it's right | next door | worik wrote: | I really hope it is a pipe dream. | | Wrecking one planet let's move to another - I do not like that | philosophy. | Animats wrote: | The entire surface area of Mars is less than 5x that of Siberia | plus the Sahara desert plus the Australian outback, areas | currently not worth developing. | jl6 wrote: | Some random ideas off the top of my head for why developing | Mars is better than developing the outback: | | * Do scientific research and exploration | | * Win fame and prestige | | * Enjoy having no existing property claims or cultural heritage | to disturb | | * No laws. Make your own laws. Escape persecution. | | * Build a low light-and-RF-pollution observatory | | * Create the ultimate off-site backup | klmadfejno wrote: | > The entire surface area of Mars is less than 5x that of | Siberia plus the Sahara desert plus the Australian outback | | This is such a weird statement. It's less than five times three | very large areas combined... It leaves me with no idea how | large it is. For those curious, it's about the same land | surface area as earth has (removing oceans). | 8note wrote: | Its three large areas we aren't putting effort into putting | people and terraforming. | | They've got the same challenges but are easier | chadcmulligan wrote: | Thats the first thought I always have when terraforming is | discussed, we can't even fix earth, how would we fix | another planet. | Miraste wrote: | None of those are on another planet - it changes the value | proposition. | tsimionescu wrote: | Yes, it makes it much less valuable, since anything of value | you can produce is much harder to bring into our normal | economy. | | If we were talking about another planet in another solar | system, you could have some arguments about long term | survival, but otherwise the earth will at worse become as | inhospitable as Mars, until the sun burns them both to a | crisp at about the same time in a distant future. | Miraste wrote: | There are all kinds of cataclysms that would end humanity | on Earth while leaving Mars untouched. Global nuclear war, | asteroids, and solar flares are three relatively likely | ones that come to mind. | tsimionescu wrote: | Global nuclear war would neither wipe out humanity nor | leave the earth in any shape nearly as bad as Mars, | either in terms of temperature, radiation, atmosphere, | soil quality etc. | | Similarly, any asteroid impact of a size that the Earth | has seen since life appeared would neither wipe out ALL | of humanity nor leave the Earth in a shape as horrible as | Mars is in right now. | | Edit: we know this for sure, because even after the | asteroid that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs, human | sized and larger animals survived and thrived through the | impact and fallback, despite having no access to any kind | of technology or preparation. If the cold-blooded | crocodiles could do it, I'm not worried about our | chances. | | Solar flares do not count as earth-ending events, at | worst they could destroy our current electric networks | and kill and strand maybe millions, but they are not in | any way civilization-ending, nevermind life-on-earth | ending as far as I know. | OmicronCeti wrote: | Are you arguing that the surface area is too small or too | inhospitable? What does the development of those areas have to | do with Mars? | Animats wrote: | That, even if successful, it's not worth it. | pie420 wrote: | Having your name be immortalized forever in history is | something that appeals to a lot of people, especially | billionaires who have run out of things to buy. | _Microft wrote: | Comparing Siberia, Sahara, Antarctica or the Australian | outback to Mars seems flawed because there are many places | that are a lot better suited for human activities and | settlement on Earth. We would not want to go there unless | other options are ruled out. So emphasis is "on Earth". | | Mars might not have regions that are better suited than | these inhospitable parts of Earth but it has the feature of | "not being Earth". | | Consider it a backup/fallback for the "single point of | failure" that Earth currently is not just for humanity but | for all of life in the universe that we know of. | | Now that we are developing the technical abilities to be | able to remove this possible failure point and to finally | add some redundancy for life, I think we are almost morally | obligated to do so. | tsimionescu wrote: | > See it as backup/fallback for the "single point of | failure" that Earth currently is (not just for humanity | but) for all of life in the universe that we know of. | | What could happen to the Earth that would make it even | close to as inhospitable as Mars? | bryanlarsen wrote: | Very little, if anything. Which means that it'll be a lot | easier to resettle Earth from Mars if something | cataclysmic happens to civilization here than it was to | settle Mars in the first place. | | It hardly matters that the apocalyptic Earth is more | hospitable to human life than Mars currently is if we | don't have any humans left to resettle Earth. | tsimionescu wrote: | What could kill all humans on Earth, while leaving it | hospitable and re-settleable from Mars? | | Even if a huge asteroid hit, we could almost certainly | build shelters where more people could survive the | initial impact than we can settle on Mars in the | foreseeable future. | datameta wrote: | Even a partial ecosystem collapse would make it a | tremendously difficult multi-generational effort to | return to modern levels of technology. | | An analogy: a bunch of important files become corrupt | (cataclysmic event) and the domain expert is no longer | with the company (loss of knowledge and industry). It is | much easier to move forward if one has a way of | contacting a subject matter expert (Mars colony) to | restore or rebuild what has been lost. | tsimionescu wrote: | What would make Mars more suited for housing such | expertise, that couldn't as easily be stored in an | artificial environment somewhere on Earth? | datameta wrote: | Even if we distribute such library and manufacturing | vaults and ensure they are staffed by those who can use | them - the world that arises post-cataclysm may not be | one of great cooperation. I can foresee scenarios in | which such valuables are used as tokens of power to | subdue neighboring factions. | | I believe we also need a colony to hold on to seeds of | _civilization_ in the very sense of the word. | tsimionescu wrote: | Again, why would the colonists on Mars, a much more | resource-restrained environment than the post-cataclysm | earth, be any more willing to cooperate or bring back or | perpetuate civilization as we understand it today? | bryanlarsen wrote: | We could, and we have, but how useful would they be? What | are they missing? | | It's like making a backup of your computer but never | testing restore. The chances of that backup not being | complete or recoverable are fairly high. | | The backup of human civilization on Mars will probably be | theoretically worse than one that can be made on Earth. | But it will be supporting life, making it fully tested | and thus practically better. | tsimionescu wrote: | Yes, but it would cost millions of times more resources | and energy, and it will not be achieved until well after | such technology becomes trivial to deploy everywhere on | Earth. | _Microft wrote: | It does not take an event that makes Earth as | inhospitable as Mars. It only needs to be bad enough to | remove our capability to go beyond Earth to doom life to | be limited to Earth itself. If life should persist in the | long run, we need to start spreading it beyond Earth. | | We might not colonize a neighbouring star system in the | near or medium term future but I am convinced that if we | do not start moving out into the solar system, we never | will go anywhere else either. | tsimionescu wrote: | I still don't understand what kind of event could make | the Earth so inhospitable that we lose the ability to | leave it, but it would leave Mars with this ability | intact. | | Mars has no fossil fuels, so that can't be it. Minerals | cant really be destroyed or exhausted. Technological | knowledge is much easier to preserve from cataclysmic | events on Earth than it is on Mars (if we fall under some | kind of technophobic super empire that seeks to destroy | this type of technology, that will as easily spread to | Mars as to the rest of the Earth). | 8note wrote: | Specifically preventing us from leaving earth? | | If our low earth orbit space gets too full of debris, we | become stuck until we can find ways to clear it out. | tsimionescu wrote: | That seems much more doable than having a completely | self-sustaining space industry on Mars (from mining to | chip manufacturing and everything in between, all life | support functions intact, all underground or in heavily | radiation-shielded buildings, and no fossil fuel | plastics, all spanning the Martian globe to actually get | access to the various minerals). | zabzonk wrote: | Quite. What I would like to hear from all these gung-ho | types, is how we go about producing quantities of a | simple 2-core power cable, on Mars, or in the asteroids | or the Moon. | | But no doubt they will say: use broadcast power. | FredPret wrote: | A nuclear conflict would do it. You don't even need that | many nukes to kick up enough dust to doom us all | tsimionescu wrote: | If we were able to build self-sustaining colonies on | Mars, surviving on a nuke-ravaged earth would be easy as | pie. | | Sure, temperatures would go down (but nowhere near as | cold as Mars) and it would be hard to harvest plants, but | we would still have fossil fuels to generate electricity | for grow rooms, and we would still have earth soils that | are ultra-rich in nutrients. The surface would be nowhere | near as radioactive, so people could still work outside, | allowing mines and so on to keep operating as today. | | Overall, while it would be a huge tragedy, kill billions, | and destroy our civilization as we know it, it would | still leave the Earth as an absolute paradise compared to | Mars. | giantrobot wrote: | The point where Mars could be some sort of viable backup | of anything on Earth is centuries and trillions of | dollars away. Up until a Mars colony(ies) has enough | _local_ infrastructure and industry to be entirely self- | sufficient it 's survival will require access to Earth's | infrastructure and industry. | | Mars also has fewer natural protections than Earth: a | thinner atmosphere, no magnetic field to speak of, and no | giant moon that deflects or absorbs at least some | percentage of objects that would otherwise impact Earth. | So Mars is more susceptible to dangerous radiation and | object impacts than Earth. | | For the same cost outlay (or way less) as trying to make | Mars an effective backup for Earth Earth could be made | more robust and dedicated purpose-built backups could be | created. | | Mars as a backup of Earth is like a cheap eBay thumbdrive | hanging from a wind chime on your patio is a backup for | your data. | _Microft wrote: | I would take a cheap eBay thumbdrive hanging from a wind | chime on my patio over "no backup at all" any time. | tsimionescu wrote: | They are hundreds of times easier to settle than Mars, and | probably richer in resources, so settling them would seem | like a good first step before thinking of cities on Mars. | OmicronCeti wrote: | This piece from the NYT suggests that Siberia may be the | new frontier: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/1 | 6/magazine/russ... | kergonath wrote: | It gets easier by the day, whilst the permafrost melts | away. | lancesells wrote: | I believe they are saying that the Mars landscape is akin to | the regions he listed and that these native locations are far | easier to develop or live on than going to another planet. | yborg wrote: | I think he's pointing out that we have cold and arid | environments with a standard atmosphere and surface gravity, | and a magnetosphere to deflect cosmic rays that we don't | colonize right here on Earth. Traveling millions of miles at | huge expense to try this on Mars doesn't seem like a sensible | endeavor right now regardless of its feasibility. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-05-13 23:00 UTC)