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> "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 eco
by 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 agoThat 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 agoMusk 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 agoAmerica'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 agoWhich 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).
- aetherson 11y agoI sort of agree. If we imagined a world thousands of times more wealthy than the present one, I think you'd probably see a Martian colony kick off more or less "just because it's there." But absent any return on investment, the available resources today are orders of magnitude too small to make a go of it. In any foreseeable world, any kind of substantial off-Earth human presence (more than say 200 people) is going to require a substantial practical value to justify it. Pure science or "just because it's there" or fulfilling the childhood sci-fi dreams of various people are not going to cut it. Which bums me out too! I have childhood sci-fi dreams. If there's a path to large-scale (or even medium-scale) human presence off Earth, it's something like solar power generation or asteroid mining.
- grondilu 11y agoI was objecting to the comparison between mars and the american continent. The value of the American for the Europeans was certainly higher than if it were completely desert. Europeans brought countless species[1], and discovered large areas of fertile lands. You are talking about current american economy that happened literally centuries later. > Economic value is primarily created by human activity. Precisely. If economic value depends on human activity and not on the location it takes place, then why spend hundreds of billions to do it somewhere else? What exactly can you do on mars that you coud not do on Earth for much less money? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Exchange