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> How much value has America created since it was a colony? The comparison to America is terrible, if you ask me. If the american continent was looking anythi

> How much value has America created since it was a colony? The comparison to America is terrible, if you ask me. If the american continent was looking anything like Mars, people would have never settled there and the value you're talking about would be very close to zero. If seems dishonest to me to compare mars with the American continent, especially considering that if we want to compare mars with the discovery of a whole continent, there is one that looks much more like mars : Antarctica. There is no record whatsoever of any long-term human occupation there. That has to prove that humans tend to dislike living in cold deserts. By comparison, the american continent has been inhabited for thousands of years, and its discovery by Europeans has brought many extremely appreciated plants and animals. What is there to bring from mars that there is not on Earth already? Apart from vast areas of rusted rocks and dust, not much, except perhaps for the possibility of fulfilling the fantasy of people who have read or watched too much science-fiction. I mean, a settlement on mars can have value, but it will only be the value that you'll bring there. For instance if you build an hotel or casino there (as I personally believe tourism is one of the very few business models that make sense for mars), then the fact that it is on mars will not bring much more value than the intrinsic value of your hotel or casino itself.

InclinedPlane 11y ago
> "I mean, a settlement on mars can have value, but it will only be the value that you'll bring there." This is actually true for most countries. America's economic strength lies in the fact that it creates software, micro-chips, manufactured goods, entertainment, etc. Tell me, where in the ground do you dig up a micro-processor? Or a hollywood blockbuster? Or a Tesla Model S? Or the source code for google's search engine? Economic value is primarily created by human activity. Once there is human activity on Mars there is the potential for economic value there. And once human activity on Mars is relatively self-sustaining, which we can achieve through building up the local industry combined with certain technological innovations, then that human activity will indeed provide things of net positive value to the rest of human civilization. It seems so hard now, but in fifty or a hundred years we'll look back and it'll just seem normal and possibly even natural. We tend to discount the truly incredible and jaw dropping amount of labor and ingenuity that has gone into building the prosaic world we see out the window every day. Even something like providing water to New York City is itself a herculean effort beyond the capability of even the entire human race only a few centuries ago. What we've done to network the world together digitally, to build engines of mass trade of manufactured goods across and between continents, to travel across land/sea/air from point to point with minimal overhead beyond the raw requirements imposed by the laws of physics, all of these things are awe inspiring creations when you give yourself the opportunity to look at them in whole. And many of them are vastly more difficult and in some cases more questionably of long term value than colonizing Mars.
- nardi 11y ago
  That is seriously hampered by the cost of trade, though. I don't think anyone quite knows how this will play out with regard to exports/imports to Mars. It seems like those on Mars will be handicapped by lots of "survival" overhead in what they are able to produce per capita. Even their Internet access will be 5-20 minutes delayed to/from Earth.
  - T-A 11y ago
    Musk knows the score on exports perfectly well: " Honestly, if you had like crack-cocaine on Mars, in like prepackaged pallets, it still wouldn't make sense to transport it back here." [1] A couple of years ago there was loose talk of SpaceX financing the Mars colony by building a space-based ISP (in low Earth orbit, mind you), but as far as I can see that's no longer on the table [2][3]. [1] http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/elon-musk-at-mits-aeroastro-centennial-part-5-of-6-2014-10-24 http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/elon-musk-at-mits-aeroast... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneWeb_satellite_constellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneWeb_satellite_constellation [3] http://www.techinsider.io/elon-musks-spacex-is-backpedaling-its-satellite-internet-plan-2015-10 http://www.techinsider.io/elon-musks-spacex-is-backpedaling-...
- aetherson 11y ago
  America's economic strength lies in that fact NOW. What convinced Europeans to move to America was that there were people who found it within their means to move to America take unclaimed land (or, at least, unclaimed within their legal system), and build farms on it. Or hunt fur animals, or build mines. And the existence of those people created a market for those who wanted to say sell those people goods. And so forth. There's nothing to start the process off on Mars. Mars is intractably expensive to get to in a way that America was not. It is expensive to live on in a way that America was not. It has no basic draw that can bring thousands of people there despite the cost.
  - InclinedPlane 11y ago
    Which is why the "activation energy" for colonizing Mars is different than it was for the Americas (either time). Yet still, that doesn't push colonizing Mars outside the realm of reasonable activities, it just means it requires more of a push. People want to live on Mars, for lots of reasons. Mostly Mars colonization is about getting the activation energy lower than the latent resources available for doing it (which are substantial, make no mistake).

InclinedPlane 11y ago

> "I mean, a settlement on mars can have value, but it will only be the value that you'll bring there." This is actually true for most countries. America's economic strength lies in the fact that it creates software, micro-chips, manufactured goods, entertainment, etc. Tell me, where in the ground do you dig up a micro-processor? Or a hollywood blockbuster? Or a Tesla Model S? Or the source code for google's search engine? Economic value is primarily created by human activity. Once there is human activity on Mars there is the potential for economic value there. And once human activity on Mars is relatively self-sustaining, which we can achieve through building up the local industry combined with certain technological innovations, then that human activity will indeed provide things of net positive value to the rest of human civilization. It seems so hard now, but in fifty or a hundred years we'll look back and it'll just seem normal and possibly even natural. We tend to discount the truly incredible and jaw dropping amount of labor and ingenuity that has gone into building the prosaic world we see out the window every day. Even something like providing water to New York City is itself a herculean effort beyond the capability of even the entire human race only a few centuries ago. What we've done to network the world together digitally, to build engines of mass trade of manufactured goods across and between continents, to travel across land/sea/air from point to point with minimal overhead beyond the raw requirements imposed by the laws of physics, all of these things are awe inspiring creations when you give yourself the opportunity to look at them in whole. And many of them are vastly more difficult and in some cases more questionably of long term value than colonizing Mars.

nardi 11y ago
That is seriously hampered by the cost of trade, though. I don't think anyone quite knows how this will play out with regard to exports/imports to Mars. It seems like those on Mars will be handicapped by lots of "survival" overhead in what they are able to produce per capita. Even their Internet access will be 5-20 minutes delayed to/from Earth.
- T-A 11y ago
  Musk knows the score on exports perfectly well: " Honestly, if you had like crack-cocaine on Mars, in like prepackaged pallets, it still wouldn't make sense to transport it back here." [1] A couple of years ago there was loose talk of SpaceX financing the Mars colony by building a space-based ISP (in low Earth orbit, mind you), but as far as I can see that's no longer on the table [2][3]. [1] http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/elon-musk-at-mits-aeroastro-centennial-part-5-of-6-2014-10-24 http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/elon-musk-at-mits-aeroast... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneWeb_satellite_constellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneWeb_satellite_constellation [3] http://www.techinsider.io/elon-musks-spacex-is-backpedaling-its-satellite-internet-plan-2015-10 http://www.techinsider.io/elon-musks-spacex-is-backpedaling-...
aetherson 11y ago
America's economic strength lies in that fact NOW. What convinced Europeans to move to America was that there were people who found it within their means to move to America take unclaimed land (or, at least, unclaimed within their legal system), and build farms on it. Or hunt fur animals, or build mines. And the existence of those people created a market for those who wanted to say sell those people goods. And so forth. There's nothing to start the process off on Mars. Mars is intractably expensive to get to in a way that America was not. It is expensive to live on in a way that America was not. It has no basic draw that can bring thousands of people there despite the cost.
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  Which is why the "activation energy" for colonizing Mars is different than it was for the Americas (either time). Yet still, that doesn't push colonizing Mars outside the realm of reasonable activities, it just means it requires more of a push. People want to live on Mars, for lots of reasons. Mostly Mars colonization is about getting the activation energy lower than the latent resources available for doing it (which are substantial, make no mistake).