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We're hoping to start a colony on Mars. How could we possibly make Earth even remotely as inhospitable as Mars? Do you expect us to remove all the oceans' water

by Hondor 10y ago

We're hoping to start a colony on Mars. How could we possibly make Earth even remotely as inhospitable as Mars? Do you expect us to remove all the oceans' water? Remove most of the oxygen from the atmosphere? Kill all plants? I don't think we have much hope of making Earth inhospitable to us even if we tried. Perhaps we somehow contaminate it all with nuclear waste. Even then, there'll be safety underground for long term living, relative safety even in contaminated areas for short term work, and radioactive water can be cleaned by distillation, mechanical or chemical means. We might have to set up a lot of infrastructure to do all that, but we've done a good job of setting up far more complex infrastructure already. It took only a couple of hundred years since the beginning of powered machines to get to where we are now. We could do it all again many times over in the next 10,000 years.

rev_bird 10y ago
"Keep Earth hospitable" and "Colonize Mars" have very different goals, though. It would likely be humanity's crowning achievement to put a permanent outpost on another planet, but it would be, what, 15 people maybe? The other planet we're talking about has to support at least 7 billion.
- VLM 10y ago
  I'm so old I remember we only supported 4 billion people. Even pessimistically over one human lifetime I bet that "15 people" turns into at least 30. You get gene pool and interbreeding issues with too small of a pool, then again you'd be amazed what you can store in liq nitrogen for a long time. Also looking at the temporary and limited mineral and energy requirements, the earth isn't going to support 7B or 9B or even 1B for much longer, on a geologic / radiation timescale. For awhile you can turn mined petrochemicals and chemical fertilizers into lots of human biomass. The key is for awhile, temporarily.
  - ProAm 10y ago
    It's amazing to think the earth's population doubled between 1960 and 2000

by Hondor 10y ago

rev_bird 10y ago

"Keep Earth hospitable" and "Colonize Mars" have very different goals, though. It would likely be humanity's crowning achievement to put a permanent outpost on another planet, but it would be, what, 15 people maybe? The other planet we're talking about has to support at least 7 billion.

VLM 10y ago
I'm so old I remember we only supported 4 billion people. Even pessimistically over one human lifetime I bet that "15 people" turns into at least 30. You get gene pool and interbreeding issues with too small of a pool, then again you'd be amazed what you can store in liq nitrogen for a long time. Also looking at the temporary and limited mineral and energy requirements, the earth isn't going to support 7B or 9B or even 1B for much longer, on a geologic / radiation timescale. For awhile you can turn mined petrochemicals and chemical fertilizers into lots of human biomass. The key is for awhile, temporarily.
- ProAm 10y ago
  It's amazing to think the earth's population doubled between 1960 and 2000