10 ms·

Mars: Inside the High-Risk, High-Stakes Race to the Red Planet

89 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

mortenjorck 10y ago
Suggesting that humans might find refuge on Mars after messing up Earth is “ethically and technically absurd,” says McKay. “I think we need to take the view that failure is not an option. The notion of Mars as a lifeboat makes the Titanic look like a happy ending.” Much as I admire Musk's drive to not only explore but colonize Mars, I have to agree with this sentiment. Viewing Mars as a "backup" for Earth is like relying on the Commodore 64 in your closet as a backup in case your MacBook Pro gets fried.
- foota 10y ago
  Given the recent sentiment here you might think some people would prefer a c64 over a mbp.
  - wlesieutre 10y ago
    I really need the D-sub game controller ports. Like I'm supposed to buy $50 of dongles just to hook my controllers up to a new computer? Ridiculous. I'm switching to C64 instead.
- Retric 10y ago
  Humanity is not the only thing that can 'mess up' earth. If we had 10 years warning that a small rogue planitoid say 300 miles wide was going to hit earth we would not be able to stop it. Sure, this is an ultra low risk but having a backup is still useful.
  - milkytron 10y ago
    Interesting point on the planetoid. You don't think in 10 years humanity could come up with some strategy to stop the impact?
    - Retric 10y ago
      Not even close. Picture a rock that could cover all of Virginia, DC, and Maryland at the same time and tall enough the ISS would hit it.
      - arcticfox 10y ago
        I'd be interested to see someone do the math, but I'd be curious how much energy it would take to deflect it by hitting it with nukes. It seems like if we could hit it 1 year out it would take well under 1 m/s to make it miss. How much energy that would take, I have no idea.
        Retric 10y ago
        1m/s * 1 year = 31,556.926 kilometers considering the earth has gravity I don't think you could really go much lower than that unless it was really close to missing us in the first place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet) is is a little smaller than that and estimated at 9 x 10^20 kg. So call it 10^21kg. KE = 1/2 m * v^2 (mass in kg, v in m/s = joule) but a bomb is not 100% efficient call it 50%. So, 1/2 * 10^21 * 1^2 /50% = 10^21 joule. Largest bomb ever detonated is = ~2.1×10^17 J so ~5,000 of them is kind of an ultra optimistic estimate. Not that we actually have 5,000 of them. Worse each of those weigh ~60,000 lb so we now need build rocks, and even build the infrastructure to build the rockets to get 300,000,000 kg out there not just LEO. At a rough ballpark 1/2 the worlds GDP for 8 years is not going to get you there. Worse that 50% was crazy optimistic.
        arcticfox 10y ago
        Forgot to respond, but nice analysis! Thanks! Interesting how it comes out to something definitely infeasible, but still in the approximate realm of the world's nuclear capability (~16k of various sizes exist today). The rocketry there would seem to be the impossibly limiting factor.
      - idlewords 10y ago
  - schwarrrtz 10y ago
    If we had 10 years warning, we might be able to stop it. If we could get out to it while it was still very far from Earth, it might not take much energy to deflect it. This is why it's important to build systems to detect such objects, like the Sentinel mission from B612. https://b612foundation.org/sentinel/ https://b612foundation.org/sentinel/
    - Retric 10y ago
      Asteroids are tiny in comparison. My example was ~125,000 times the mass of what killed the dinosaurs.
  - JBReefer 10y ago
    I don't know, humans are great at blowing stuff up. It's the long-effort over long timespan stuff we're terrible at.
  - yongjik 10y ago
    Ceres, the biggest asteroid in the asteroid belt, is only 946 km in diameter, and there are only six larger than 300 km.[1] Asteroids the size of 300 miles don't just appear out of nowhere. In order for them to hit Earth, they must be coming out of the deep space, and they have to hit Earth (radius 6371 km) out of a circle of radius 1 AU (150,000,000 km). To put it into perspective, if we can observe one "hostile" asteroid from outside the solar system crossing the circle made by the Earth's orbit every ten years (Note: we've never observed anything like that in our history, and we would surely have detected such a thing with 20th century technology), it will take 10 * (1 AU / 6371)^2 = 5.5 billion years before one hits Earth, on average. By that time the sun will destroy us anyway. I guess they are still more likely than a group of hostile jerk aliens sworn to exterminate humans once we set our foot on Mars, but not by a wide margin. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exceptional_asteroids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exceptional_asteroids
    - Retric 10y ago
      I mostly agree with your point as I was mostly going for effect not real risk. Though the earths capture radios is much larger than 6371 km, and odds don't run out like that. However, the larger point stands. Earth is not completely safe and we really can't protect it from everything.
- zardo 10y ago
  >is like relying on the Commodore 64 in your closet as a backup in case your MacBook Pro gets fried. It's a better backup plan than never using a computer ever again.
  - burkaman 10y ago
    I think the point is that it's morally questionable to call it a "backup plan" as it it's actually viable. Mars is better than nothing and it's worth pursuing, but only with the understanding that maintaining and fixing Earth is a much higher priority. It's sort of like the autopilot thing. You shouldn't call it autopilot unless you're ok with people thinking they don't need to worry about driving anymore, and you shouldn't call Mars a backup plan unless you're ok with people thinking they don't need to worry about Earth anymore, because Mars will be there if we ever need it.
    - robryk 10y ago
      Is this really the semantics "backup plan" has for many people? For me it's something that's very inferior to the, well, plan.
      - hueving 10y ago
        Yeah, if the backup plan was as good as the plan, it would just be the plan. :)
      - burkaman 10y ago
        Mars is not just inferior, it is almost literally not an option. It might be someday, and that's why it's worth pursuing, but even in the forseeable future it would just be a horrible, suicidal backup plan for like a couple hundred people. The context of the quote is a response to people who are really enthusiastic about actually being Mars colonists. "It’s a lot easier to imagine a few scientists spending a year or two at a small Martian research station, like the ones in Antarctica, than it is to imagine thousands of people emigrating permanently to a Martian metropolis."
- Gravityloss 10y ago
  Instead of a C64, more like a lump of quartz. Technically, the silicon is there...
- bpodgursky 10y ago
  I don't really understand this sentiment, on either side. If we're able to set up a self-sustaining settlement on Mars, then we're going to be able to survive on Earth, no matter how badly we mess it up. Just build a bubble and pretend you're on Mars. Short of total thermonuclear war, it's hard to imagine any non-survivable world where we have that technology. On the other hand, _someone_ building a backup colony on Mars because _someone else_ decides to get in a nuclear war doesn't sound unreasonable. Plus, there are world ending scenarios outside our control. Meteors, volcanic activity, etc.
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  I don't think anyone disagrees that the more palatable option would be to keep Earth in good shape in perpetuity. However: 1. Cosmic-size bad stuff could happen, at a scale where we are powerless. "Think of the dinosaurs", etc. 2. "Thanks" to the continuous progress of science and technology, we are putting more and more power into the hands of the everyman. Wherein the sanity and the moral trustworthiness of the aforementioned everyman is on a bell curve just like everything else - meaning most people are fine, but it's guaranteed there are a few spectacularly bad apples somewhere in that pile. Think of Jim Jones with nukes, or tabletop biotech. So, making Mars livable is important for the same reason why you have backups for your data - only even more so. You do have backups, don't you? We should absolutely do both - protect the Earth, and settle Mars.
  - Symmetry 10y ago
    I can easily imagine huge disasters on Earth that kill 90+% of the population but even then Earth will still have a higher population and be more habitable than Mars. And I can imagine things that would wipe out humanity on Earth and Mars. But the range of disasters that would totally wipe out humanity on Earth while sparing Mars seems pretty narrow to me.
    - enraged_camel 10y ago
      If the Sun goes supernova, sure, we are all toast regardless of whether we are on Earth or Mars or even Pluto. But that's relatively unlikely. On the other hand, a large enough asteroid impact could kill 99%+ of the Earth's population and leave Mars intact. But even if it killed only 90%, think about what the remaining 10% would do. They would probably wage war on each other to grab whatever land and natural resources remain. Furthermore, civilization as a whole would severely regress technologically, as we would lose the vast majority of power plants, laboratories, factories, data centers, etc. We would find ourselves back in the Middle Ages. Compared to that, a super high-tech stable Mars colony that has a population of 1,000 would have it pretty good. Sure, they would be living most of their lives under the surface, but so what?
      - 10y ago
- _coldfire 10y ago
  On what sort of timescale? I doubt it would be a viable option in our lifetime, yet someone has to take first steps. Few hundred years from now people may appreciate the foresight.
- jksmith 10y ago
  I'm not clear that there's any good analog example that does the subject justice...Which is exactly why we should do it :)
- Mahn 10y ago
  > Failure is not an option There's guaranteed gonna be a catastrophic event outside of our control on Earth given a large enough timescale, be it climate change consequences, glaciation, collision with large meteorite, fatal epidemy, etc etc. Mars makes for a shitty backup plan, sure, but we can't pretend that the Earth is gonna last forever either. A shitty backup plan is still better than simply sitting on our ass and hoping that no natural catastrophes ever happen; taking good care of Earth is not enough on the long term.
  - m3ta 10y ago
    "Failure is not an option" is not even in the same reality as "sitting on our ass". It is exactly the opposite.
  - neaden 10y ago
    Most of the things you mention would still leave the Earth way more habitable than Mars. It would really need to be at the rogue planetoid/gamma ray burst level extinction event rather then global warming or nuclear war.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    By the time the colonization of mars is going to be an achievable reality all of those things would not be an issue. Large impact protection and geo-engineering are considerably easier efforts than colonizing mars considering just how hostile the environment is (even the martian dust is extremely poisonous to humans). You are effectively going to live on a planet with no effective atmosphere, no magnetic field, with extreme temperatures and plenty of natural hazards. The level of geo-engineering required to build martian colony which is both self sustainable and could serve as a lifeboat for the human species is currently insurmountable, we haven't even sent a single living thing to mars, we haven't sent a single person, nor we returned them safely. We have not studied the effect of long term exposure to the martian environment and we have virtually no clue on what is going to be required in practice to enable large number of humans to live there for eternity. And most importantly everything on that list with the exception of a gamma ray burst (which would fry mars also) is going to live earth considerably more liveable and hospitable to humans. If you can build a self sustaining colony on Mars you can build on on earth even after a mega impact event, supervolcano, another ice age or extreme pollution. Earth has an atmosphere that at best would require a rebreather, it has a magnetic shield that protects you from radiation, you won't die or suffer serious health effects because you were exposed to sand, and in any case the temperatures would still remain considerably more hospitable to humans than they'll ever be on mars. Earth also has a diverse biome, which means regardless of what is going to happen life would still continue to exist in one shape or form, if nothing else this would constantly provide humanity with food, energy, and oxygen.
- geertj 10y ago
  > Much as I admire Musk's drive to not only explore but colonize Mars, I have to agree with this sentiment. Viewing Mars as a "backup" for Earth is like relying on the Commodore 64 in your closet as a backup in case your MacBook Pro gets fried. I tend to agree about the "backup Earth" justification. But is there really any justification required, other than it's our human nature to want to explore and push the frontiers? When people started moving from Europe to America in the 17th century, I don't think anyone saw it as a backup plan.
  - trhway 10y ago
    >When people started moving from Europe to America in the 17th century, I don't think anyone saw it as a backup plan. i like the Mayflower crowd motivation, in particular "found the Dutch morals much too libertine." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrim_Fathers#Leiden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrim_Fathers#Leiden So, once the transportation to Mars starts working, one can imagine various new settlements by groups "special" in one way or another. Imagine an Amish colony under a giant glass dome for example.
    - thaumasiotes 10y ago
      I find it kind of funny imagining a group best known for their reluctance to use premodern technology colonizing Mars.
      - L_226 10y ago
        Amistics[1] may be of interest to you. [1] - http://www.newphilosopher.com/articles/the-art-of-amistics/ http://www.newphilosopher.com/articles/the-art-of-amistics/
        thaumasiotes 10y ago
        I'm aware that the Amish have mechanisms for formally allowing certain technologies while disallowing others. But I think colonizing Mars makes for a pretty big breach in the wall.
- headcanon 10y ago
  Musk's justification as he speaks it is a drastically simplified version of what he's really trying to say - instead of a lifeboat, or a backup, think of a Martian civilization as a technology development platform. All the stuff that they would have to come up with in order to survive, and eventually, thrive, would present a whole new class of advanced geoengineering and space technology that would be used on Earth and beyond. And if you're thinking, "why not just develop that specific technology that we need and save the money of a whole Mars venture", thats not how development of real, usable tech works. There are many things that were developed for one use that were eventually used for something else. R&D is a complex web of different ideas and solutions to different problems. Even if we don't realize all that we want to on Mars, the new booster system will open up many other options for Earth-based satellites that can be useful here and now [1]. Space science has been essential for studying climate change[2], and will continue to be in the future, even (and especially!) if that space tech extends to other planets. 1. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/09/what-else-can-you-do-with-a-bi.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/09/what-els... 2. http://www.planetaryresources.com/earth-observation/#eo-intro http://www.planetaryresources.com/earth-observation/#eo-intr...
  - marktangotango 10y ago
    The "other applications" are what I think most people miss, and what's really important. For example, a lot of people think asteroid mining and resource extraction will be huge. I am skeptical. Processing anything in zero gravity may prove to be intractable. I welcome anyone to ponder how to really actually mine an asteroid. In zero or near zero g, no earthly techniques work; pick axes, drills, etc. All new techniques will be required. I think the Martian killer app may turn out to be a not too inhospital, shallow gravity well, that can serve as the industrial jumping off point and base for developing the rest of the solar system.
  - IndianAstronaut 10y ago
    Another thing to note is that if we can survive on Mars, then we can just as easily do so on the moon Callisto or dwarf planet Ceres.
- chm 10y ago
  Colonizing Mars and "saving" Earth are not two opposed goals. You don't have to choose one or the other. You can do both. The problem I have with the argument proposed by McKay (and a lot of others) is that it's way too simplistic and misguided. It makes Mars colonization supporters like the ultimate pessimists, people who have already conceded the Earth battle to be lost. This is simply not true but it is implied by the argument.
- akiselev 10y ago
  Relying on Mars as a backup planet for humanity is more like relying on the Commodore 64 in your closet as a backup of last resort in case all other computing devices in existence are irreparably fried. The C64 may not be anywhere near as good as all those other devices but in the insanely remote chance of a catastrophe, having a terrible computing device is better than none at all (except in the case of Mars, we'll be wiped out without the backup with no chance of bootstrapping back to civilization).
- randyrand 10y ago
  just like the dinosaurs messed up earth when they all died too? Such a stupid sentiment. Humans can be wiped out for a variety of unknown reasons. It's not necessarily that "we messed up."
partycoder 10y ago
We want to terraform mars, but we are marsforming earth instead. With many people still not accept climate change, things are going to get harder. Not all ice on earth is water. Some of it is methane. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Once the arctic permafrost containing methane starts melting, produces a strong greenhouse effect that raises temperatures, reinforcing the melting process by making it faster... This is believed to be linked to the Permian Extinction event. In that sense, this would be an existential threat that needs to be managed carefully. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
- burkaman 10y ago
  I'm guessing the downvotes are because nearly everyone on this website accepts the reality of climate change, and your comment doesn't seem that relevant.
  - partycoder 10y ago
    Note that I also added some information about a very specific side effect of global warming, which is less often discussed.
    - calgoo 10y ago
      Its already happening in the Russian tundra. http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/casestudy/news/n0681-now-the-proof-permafrost-bubbles-are-leaking-methane-200-times-above-the-norm/ http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/casestudy/news/n0681-now-th...
      - hash-set 10y ago
        "It's already happening"--um, you realize that "it's" been happening on this planet for millions of years, right? The climate changes, all over the world. Before humans, after humans.
sandworm101 10y ago
"...what space can do to a human body could be a huge problem. “They’re going to be sick when they get there.”" I see this time and time again, but nobody has given me a proper reason why we cannot send a spinning ship, one where zero-gravity wouldn't be an issue. Radiation is certainly a problem, but again that is a matter of shielding/weight. I don't see any monumental reason why we couldn't send perfectly healthy people. The only real issue seems one of cost.
- idlewords 10y ago
  Cost is the monumental reason. Start with a design that can produce 1G from spinning with a suitably gentle gravity gradient that people can live in it. Then try to figure out how to accelerate that very large structure so it can get to Mars. (You can use the fuel as a radiation shield, since there will have to be a metric assload of it.)
- neaden 10y ago
  It takes energy, have to design the ship to withstand the rotation, and it would have to have a pretty long radius (like 300+ meters). Almost certainly you wouldn't be at full gravity either, but like half. It adds a whole bunch of headaches that might not be worth it.
  - sandworm101 10y ago
    Rings are only one of many 'spinning' options. There is something to be said for two objects tethered by a long rope. Such a structure can spin and still reach 300+ meters with ease. And building such a thing in orbit is awkward, but not in the same league as constructing a 300m ring.
- CapitalistCartr 10y ago
  "The only real issue seems one of cost." But that is a real issue. A tiny ship is billions of dollars. A ship big enough to provide even half a G is more like a trillion dollars. It can't simply be a tiny spinning wheel. It has to be dozens of meters across. Of course, trashing Iraq cost us over a trillion so far, and will likely exceed 2 trillion before all is done, but that's different.
simonh 10y ago
I think the discussion of the kinds of risks Mars might act as a hedge against are being trivialised a bit. It's not all just about asteroids. Elon has researched this pretty thoroughly. If you want to really understand what he's talking about look up Nick Bostrom, but here are a few. * a nanotechnology disaster * Implementation of technologies that enable a global super-stable oppressive state. * An AI disaster along the lines of a paper clip optimiser * An AI or augmented intelligence that deprecates all lesser intelligences. * The film version of I Robot. * Biotech plague. * Regression to a stable social and biological state optimising for lower intelligence or stagnation. The way I think about this is that it's not just a backup. It's also deliberately introduced variation in environment and social structures that variegated Hunan civilization. Well develop technologies and social structures we wouldn't otherwise have that might help mitigate some of these risks. Semi-isolated from Earth, it would be at least partially protected from many of these threats. Of course, it could introduce new threats, but the isolation would work to protect Earth to some extent in that eventuality. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_catastrophic_risk&action=edit&section=3 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_catastro...
- mmiliauskas 10y ago
  Nick Bostrom's research costs £6.99. It is not a research, it is a quick way to make money while the window of opportunity is still open by doing cargo cult science. I am yet to hear a decent argument about how AI will wipe out the earth. It starts to belong to the same category as politics, nobody knows what they are talking about, but everyone has an opinion. Even the so called "smarts". I remember there were news about Stephen Hawking being concerned about AI, if you watched his interview, he literally pointed his software to the "Existential risk from artificial general intelligence" wikipedia page and read the abstract... Elon Musk started by comparing AI danger to "The Terminator" scenario. Seriously a f* movie? How about we don't go to Mars because of the "Alien" movie? Now he says that "not all scenarios are benign..." - no shit, Scotty.
  - aaron695 10y ago
    > I am yet to hear a decent argument about how AI will wipe out the earth. I ask AI how to create a biological virus that would kill every human on the planet that's encrypted enough other AI would not be able to cure it in time.
altonzheng 10y ago
I can only imagine the feeling that those engineers got in the room the moment that rocket relanded on earth. Wish I could experience it
SubiculumCode 10y ago
This article is one big downer. Being realistic is one thing, but this read more like a hit piece than anything else.
danblick 10y ago
I just finished "The Dark Side of the Moon" by Gerard De Groot, which is a history of the American space program focused on the key people involved and their motivations. The author argues that a major problem with the manned space program was that we had no rational need to send humans to space. Was going to the moon about science? National defense? International relations and prestige? None of these arguments held up. (Most scientists hated the huge amount of tax money spent on manned space flight that could have been spent more efficiently. The case for sending people instead of robots was based more on fantasy than on reason.) The story makes Eisenhower seem very wise (for trying to avoid getting into a pointless and wasteful race against the Russians and his awareness of how the military industrial complex would serve its own interests at the expense of the nation as a whole). It even points out that Kennedy was nowhere near as enthusiastic about the moon landing as you'd assume and regretted locking the nation into an expensive promise he couldn't get out of. Quotes from astronauts who visited the moon portray it as "magnificent desolation": The first thing that springs to mind is the vivid contrast between the Earth and the Moon... I'm sure that to a geologist the moon is a fascinating place, but this monotonous rock pile, this withered, Sun-seared peach pit out of my window offers absolutely no competition to the gem it orbits. Ah, the Earth, with its verdant valleys, its misty waterfalls... I'd just like to get our job done and get out of here. - Michael Collins, Apollo 11

89 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

Suggesting that humans might find refuge on Mars after messing up Earth is “ethically and technically absurd,” says McKay. “I think we need to take the view that failure is not an option. The notion of Mars as a lifeboat makes the Titanic look like a happy ending.” Much as I admire Musk's drive to not only explore but colonize Mars, I have to agree with this sentiment. Viewing Mars as a "backup" for Earth is like relying on the Commodore 64 in your closet as a backup in case your MacBook Pro gets fried.

foota 10y ago
Given the recent sentiment here you might think some people would prefer a c64 over a mbp.
- wlesieutre 10y ago
  I really need the D-sub game controller ports. Like I'm supposed to buy $50 of dongles just to hook my controllers up to a new computer? Ridiculous. I'm switching to C64 instead.
Retric 10y ago
Humanity is not the only thing that can 'mess up' earth. If we had 10 years warning that a small rogue planitoid say 300 miles wide was going to hit earth we would not be able to stop it. Sure, this is an ultra low risk but having a backup is still useful.
- milkytron 10y ago
  Interesting point on the planetoid. You don't think in 10 years humanity could come up with some strategy to stop the impact?
  - Retric 10y ago
    Not even close. Picture a rock that could cover all of Virginia, DC, and Maryland at the same time and tall enough the ISS would hit it.
    - arcticfox 10y ago
      I'd be interested to see someone do the math, but I'd be curious how much energy it would take to deflect it by hitting it with nukes. It seems like if we could hit it 1 year out it would take well under 1 m/s to make it miss. How much energy that would take, I have no idea.
      - Retric 10y ago
        1m/s * 1 year = 31,556.926 kilometers considering the earth has gravity I don't think you could really go much lower than that unless it was really close to missing us in the first place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet) is is a little smaller than that and estimated at 9 x 10^20 kg. So call it 10^21kg. KE = 1/2 m * v^2 (mass in kg, v in m/s = joule) but a bomb is not 100% efficient call it 50%. So, 1/2 * 10^21 * 1^2 /50% = 10^21 joule. Largest bomb ever detonated is = ~2.1×10^17 J so ~5,000 of them is kind of an ultra optimistic estimate. Not that we actually have 5,000 of them. Worse each of those weigh ~60,000 lb so we now need build rocks, and even build the infrastructure to build the rockets to get 300,000,000 kg out there not just LEO. At a rough ballpark 1/2 the worlds GDP for 8 years is not going to get you there. Worse that 50% was crazy optimistic.
        arcticfox 10y ago
        Forgot to respond, but nice analysis! Thanks! Interesting how it comes out to something definitely infeasible, but still in the approximate realm of the world's nuclear capability (~16k of various sizes exist today). The rocketry there would seem to be the impossibly limiting factor.
    - idlewords 10y ago
- schwarrrtz 10y ago
  If we had 10 years warning, we might be able to stop it. If we could get out to it while it was still very far from Earth, it might not take much energy to deflect it. This is why it's important to build systems to detect such objects, like the Sentinel mission from B612. https://b612foundation.org/sentinel/ https://b612foundation.org/sentinel/
  - Retric 10y ago
    Asteroids are tiny in comparison. My example was ~125,000 times the mass of what killed the dinosaurs.
- JBReefer 10y ago
  I don't know, humans are great at blowing stuff up. It's the long-effort over long timespan stuff we're terrible at.
- yongjik 10y ago
  Ceres, the biggest asteroid in the asteroid belt, is only 946 km in diameter, and there are only six larger than 300 km.[1] Asteroids the size of 300 miles don't just appear out of nowhere. In order for them to hit Earth, they must be coming out of the deep space, and they have to hit Earth (radius 6371 km) out of a circle of radius 1 AU (150,000,000 km). To put it into perspective, if we can observe one "hostile" asteroid from outside the solar system crossing the circle made by the Earth's orbit every ten years (Note: we've never observed anything like that in our history, and we would surely have detected such a thing with 20th century technology), it will take 10 * (1 AU / 6371)^2 = 5.5 billion years before one hits Earth, on average. By that time the sun will destroy us anyway. I guess they are still more likely than a group of hostile jerk aliens sworn to exterminate humans once we set our foot on Mars, but not by a wide margin. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exceptional_asteroids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exceptional_asteroids
  - Retric 10y ago
    I mostly agree with your point as I was mostly going for effect not real risk. Though the earths capture radios is much larger than 6371 km, and odds don't run out like that. However, the larger point stands. Earth is not completely safe and we really can't protect it from everything.
zardo 10y ago
>is like relying on the Commodore 64 in your closet as a backup in case your MacBook Pro gets fried. It's a better backup plan than never using a computer ever again.
- burkaman 10y ago
  I think the point is that it's morally questionable to call it a "backup plan" as it it's actually viable. Mars is better than nothing and it's worth pursuing, but only with the understanding that maintaining and fixing Earth is a much higher priority. It's sort of like the autopilot thing. You shouldn't call it autopilot unless you're ok with people thinking they don't need to worry about driving anymore, and you shouldn't call Mars a backup plan unless you're ok with people thinking they don't need to worry about Earth anymore, because Mars will be there if we ever need it.
  - robryk 10y ago
    Is this really the semantics "backup plan" has for many people? For me it's something that's very inferior to the, well, plan.
    - hueving 10y ago
      Yeah, if the backup plan was as good as the plan, it would just be the plan. :)
    - burkaman 10y ago
      Mars is not just inferior, it is almost literally not an option. It might be someday, and that's why it's worth pursuing, but even in the forseeable future it would just be a horrible, suicidal backup plan for like a couple hundred people. The context of the quote is a response to people who are really enthusiastic about actually being Mars colonists. "It’s a lot easier to imagine a few scientists spending a year or two at a small Martian research station, like the ones in Antarctica, than it is to imagine thousands of people emigrating permanently to a Martian metropolis."
Gravityloss 10y ago
Instead of a C64, more like a lump of quartz. Technically, the silicon is there...
bpodgursky 10y ago
I don't really understand this sentiment, on either side. If we're able to set up a self-sustaining settlement on Mars, then we're going to be able to survive on Earth, no matter how badly we mess it up. Just build a bubble and pretend you're on Mars. Short of total thermonuclear war, it's hard to imagine any non-survivable world where we have that technology. On the other hand, _someone_ building a backup colony on Mars because _someone else_ decides to get in a nuclear war doesn't sound unreasonable. Plus, there are world ending scenarios outside our control. Meteors, volcanic activity, etc.
Florin_Andrei 10y ago
I don't think anyone disagrees that the more palatable option would be to keep Earth in good shape in perpetuity. However: 1. Cosmic-size bad stuff could happen, at a scale where we are powerless. "Think of the dinosaurs", etc. 2. "Thanks" to the continuous progress of science and technology, we are putting more and more power into the hands of the everyman. Wherein the sanity and the moral trustworthiness of the aforementioned everyman is on a bell curve just like everything else - meaning most people are fine, but it's guaranteed there are a few spectacularly bad apples somewhere in that pile. Think of Jim Jones with nukes, or tabletop biotech. So, making Mars livable is important for the same reason why you have backups for your data - only even more so. You do have backups, don't you? We should absolutely do both - protect the Earth, and settle Mars.
- Symmetry 10y ago
  I can easily imagine huge disasters on Earth that kill 90+% of the population but even then Earth will still have a higher population and be more habitable than Mars. And I can imagine things that would wipe out humanity on Earth and Mars. But the range of disasters that would totally wipe out humanity on Earth while sparing Mars seems pretty narrow to me.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    If the Sun goes supernova, sure, we are all toast regardless of whether we are on Earth or Mars or even Pluto. But that's relatively unlikely. On the other hand, a large enough asteroid impact could kill 99%+ of the Earth's population and leave Mars intact. But even if it killed only 90%, think about what the remaining 10% would do. They would probably wage war on each other to grab whatever land and natural resources remain. Furthermore, civilization as a whole would severely regress technologically, as we would lose the vast majority of power plants, laboratories, factories, data centers, etc. We would find ourselves back in the Middle Ages. Compared to that, a super high-tech stable Mars colony that has a population of 1,000 would have it pretty good. Sure, they would be living most of their lives under the surface, but so what?
    - 10y ago
_coldfire 10y ago
On what sort of timescale? I doubt it would be a viable option in our lifetime, yet someone has to take first steps. Few hundred years from now people may appreciate the foresight.
jksmith 10y ago
I'm not clear that there's any good analog example that does the subject justice...Which is exactly why we should do it :)
Mahn 10y ago
> Failure is not an option There's guaranteed gonna be a catastrophic event outside of our control on Earth given a large enough timescale, be it climate change consequences, glaciation, collision with large meteorite, fatal epidemy, etc etc. Mars makes for a shitty backup plan, sure, but we can't pretend that the Earth is gonna last forever either. A shitty backup plan is still better than simply sitting on our ass and hoping that no natural catastrophes ever happen; taking good care of Earth is not enough on the long term.
- m3ta 10y ago
  "Failure is not an option" is not even in the same reality as "sitting on our ass". It is exactly the opposite.
- neaden 10y ago
  Most of the things you mention would still leave the Earth way more habitable than Mars. It would really need to be at the rogue planetoid/gamma ray burst level extinction event rather then global warming or nuclear war.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  By the time the colonization of mars is going to be an achievable reality all of those things would not be an issue. Large impact protection and geo-engineering are considerably easier efforts than colonizing mars considering just how hostile the environment is (even the martian dust is extremely poisonous to humans). You are effectively going to live on a planet with no effective atmosphere, no magnetic field, with extreme temperatures and plenty of natural hazards. The level of geo-engineering required to build martian colony which is both self sustainable and could serve as a lifeboat for the human species is currently insurmountable, we haven't even sent a single living thing to mars, we haven't sent a single person, nor we returned them safely. We have not studied the effect of long term exposure to the martian environment and we have virtually no clue on what is going to be required in practice to enable large number of humans to live there for eternity. And most importantly everything on that list with the exception of a gamma ray burst (which would fry mars also) is going to live earth considerably more liveable and hospitable to humans. If you can build a self sustaining colony on Mars you can build on on earth even after a mega impact event, supervolcano, another ice age or extreme pollution. Earth has an atmosphere that at best would require a rebreather, it has a magnetic shield that protects you from radiation, you won't die or suffer serious health effects because you were exposed to sand, and in any case the temperatures would still remain considerably more hospitable to humans than they'll ever be on mars. Earth also has a diverse biome, which means regardless of what is going to happen life would still continue to exist in one shape or form, if nothing else this would constantly provide humanity with food, energy, and oxygen.
geertj 10y ago
> Much as I admire Musk's drive to not only explore but colonize Mars, I have to agree with this sentiment. Viewing Mars as a "backup" for Earth is like relying on the Commodore 64 in your closet as a backup in case your MacBook Pro gets fried. I tend to agree about the "backup Earth" justification. But is there really any justification required, other than it's our human nature to want to explore and push the frontiers? When people started moving from Europe to America in the 17th century, I don't think anyone saw it as a backup plan.
- trhway 10y ago
  >When people started moving from Europe to America in the 17th century, I don't think anyone saw it as a backup plan. i like the Mayflower crowd motivation, in particular "found the Dutch morals much too libertine." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrim_Fathers#Leiden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrim_Fathers#Leiden So, once the transportation to Mars starts working, one can imagine various new settlements by groups "special" in one way or another. Imagine an Amish colony under a giant glass dome for example.
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    I find it kind of funny imagining a group best known for their reluctance to use premodern technology colonizing Mars.
    - L_226 10y ago
      Amistics[1] may be of interest to you. [1] - http://www.newphilosopher.com/articles/the-art-of-amistics/ http://www.newphilosopher.com/articles/the-art-of-amistics/
      - thaumasiotes 10y ago
        I'm aware that the Amish have mechanisms for formally allowing certain technologies while disallowing others. But I think colonizing Mars makes for a pretty big breach in the wall.
headcanon 10y ago
Musk's justification as he speaks it is a drastically simplified version of what he's really trying to say - instead of a lifeboat, or a backup, think of a Martian civilization as a technology development platform. All the stuff that they would have to come up with in order to survive, and eventually, thrive, would present a whole new class of advanced geoengineering and space technology that would be used on Earth and beyond. And if you're thinking, "why not just develop that specific technology that we need and save the money of a whole Mars venture", thats not how development of real, usable tech works. There are many things that were developed for one use that were eventually used for something else. R&D is a complex web of different ideas and solutions to different problems. Even if we don't realize all that we want to on Mars, the new booster system will open up many other options for Earth-based satellites that can be useful here and now [1]. Space science has been essential for studying climate change[2], and will continue to be in the future, even (and especially!) if that space tech extends to other planets. 1. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/09/what-else-can-you-do-with-a-bi.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/09/what-els... 2. http://www.planetaryresources.com/earth-observation/#eo-intro http://www.planetaryresources.com/earth-observation/#eo-intr...
- marktangotango 10y ago
  The "other applications" are what I think most people miss, and what's really important. For example, a lot of people think asteroid mining and resource extraction will be huge. I am skeptical. Processing anything in zero gravity may prove to be intractable. I welcome anyone to ponder how to really actually mine an asteroid. In zero or near zero g, no earthly techniques work; pick axes, drills, etc. All new techniques will be required. I think the Martian killer app may turn out to be a not too inhospital, shallow gravity well, that can serve as the industrial jumping off point and base for developing the rest of the solar system.
- IndianAstronaut 10y ago
  Another thing to note is that if we can survive on Mars, then we can just as easily do so on the moon Callisto or dwarf planet Ceres.
chm 10y ago
Colonizing Mars and "saving" Earth are not two opposed goals. You don't have to choose one or the other. You can do both. The problem I have with the argument proposed by McKay (and a lot of others) is that it's way too simplistic and misguided. It makes Mars colonization supporters like the ultimate pessimists, people who have already conceded the Earth battle to be lost. This is simply not true but it is implied by the argument.
akiselev 10y ago
Relying on Mars as a backup planet for humanity is more like relying on the Commodore 64 in your closet as a backup of last resort in case all other computing devices in existence are irreparably fried. The C64 may not be anywhere near as good as all those other devices but in the insanely remote chance of a catastrophe, having a terrible computing device is better than none at all (except in the case of Mars, we'll be wiped out without the backup with no chance of bootstrapping back to civilization).
randyrand 10y ago
just like the dinosaurs messed up earth when they all died too? Such a stupid sentiment. Humans can be wiped out for a variety of unknown reasons. It's not necessarily that "we messed up."

partycoder 10y ago

We want to terraform mars, but we are marsforming earth instead. With many people still not accept climate change, things are going to get harder. Not all ice on earth is water. Some of it is methane. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Once the arctic permafrost containing methane starts melting, produces a strong greenhouse effect that raises temperatures, reinforcing the melting process by making it faster... This is believed to be linked to the Permian Extinction event. In that sense, this would be an existential threat that needs to be managed carefully. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

burkaman 10y ago
I'm guessing the downvotes are because nearly everyone on this website accepts the reality of climate change, and your comment doesn't seem that relevant.
- partycoder 10y ago
  Note that I also added some information about a very specific side effect of global warming, which is less often discussed.
  - calgoo 10y ago
    Its already happening in the Russian tundra. http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/casestudy/news/n0681-now-the-proof-permafrost-bubbles-are-leaking-methane-200-times-above-the-norm/ http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/casestudy/news/n0681-now-th...
    - hash-set 10y ago
      "It's already happening"--um, you realize that "it's" been happening on this planet for millions of years, right? The climate changes, all over the world. Before humans, after humans.

sandworm101 10y ago

"...what space can do to a human body could be a huge problem. “They’re going to be sick when they get there.”" I see this time and time again, but nobody has given me a proper reason why we cannot send a spinning ship, one where zero-gravity wouldn't be an issue. Radiation is certainly a problem, but again that is a matter of shielding/weight. I don't see any monumental reason why we couldn't send perfectly healthy people. The only real issue seems one of cost.

idlewords 10y ago
Cost is the monumental reason. Start with a design that can produce 1G from spinning with a suitably gentle gravity gradient that people can live in it. Then try to figure out how to accelerate that very large structure so it can get to Mars. (You can use the fuel as a radiation shield, since there will have to be a metric assload of it.)
neaden 10y ago
It takes energy, have to design the ship to withstand the rotation, and it would have to have a pretty long radius (like 300+ meters). Almost certainly you wouldn't be at full gravity either, but like half. It adds a whole bunch of headaches that might not be worth it.
- sandworm101 10y ago
  Rings are only one of many 'spinning' options. There is something to be said for two objects tethered by a long rope. Such a structure can spin and still reach 300+ meters with ease. And building such a thing in orbit is awkward, but not in the same league as constructing a 300m ring.
CapitalistCartr 10y ago
"The only real issue seems one of cost." But that is a real issue. A tiny ship is billions of dollars. A ship big enough to provide even half a G is more like a trillion dollars. It can't simply be a tiny spinning wheel. It has to be dozens of meters across. Of course, trashing Iraq cost us over a trillion so far, and will likely exceed 2 trillion before all is done, but that's different.

simonh 10y ago

I think the discussion of the kinds of risks Mars might act as a hedge against are being trivialised a bit. It's not all just about asteroids. Elon has researched this pretty thoroughly. If you want to really understand what he's talking about look up Nick Bostrom, but here are a few. * a nanotechnology disaster * Implementation of technologies that enable a global super-stable oppressive state. * An AI disaster along the lines of a paper clip optimiser * An AI or augmented intelligence that deprecates all lesser intelligences. * The film version of I Robot. * Biotech plague. * Regression to a stable social and biological state optimising for lower intelligence or stagnation. The way I think about this is that it's not just a backup. It's also deliberately introduced variation in environment and social structures that variegated Hunan civilization. Well develop technologies and social structures we wouldn't otherwise have that might help mitigate some of these risks. Semi-isolated from Earth, it would be at least partially protected from many of these threats. Of course, it could introduce new threats, but the isolation would work to protect Earth to some extent in that eventuality. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_catastrophic_risk&action=edit&section=3 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_catastro...

mmiliauskas 10y ago
Nick Bostrom's research costs £6.99. It is not a research, it is a quick way to make money while the window of opportunity is still open by doing cargo cult science. I am yet to hear a decent argument about how AI will wipe out the earth. It starts to belong to the same category as politics, nobody knows what they are talking about, but everyone has an opinion. Even the so called "smarts". I remember there were news about Stephen Hawking being concerned about AI, if you watched his interview, he literally pointed his software to the "Existential risk from artificial general intelligence" wikipedia page and read the abstract... Elon Musk started by comparing AI danger to "The Terminator" scenario. Seriously a f* movie? How about we don't go to Mars because of the "Alien" movie? Now he says that "not all scenarios are benign..." - no shit, Scotty.
- aaron695 10y ago
  > I am yet to hear a decent argument about how AI will wipe out the earth. I ask AI how to create a biological virus that would kill every human on the planet that's encrypted enough other AI would not be able to cure it in time.

altonzheng 10y ago

I can only imagine the feeling that those engineers got in the room the moment that rocket relanded on earth. Wish I could experience it

SubiculumCode 10y ago

This article is one big downer. Being realistic is one thing, but this read more like a hit piece than anything else.

danblick 10y ago

I just finished "The Dark Side of the Moon" by Gerard De Groot, which is a history of the American space program focused on the key people involved and their motivations. The author argues that a major problem with the manned space program was that we had no rational need to send humans to space. Was going to the moon about science? National defense? International relations and prestige? None of these arguments held up. (Most scientists hated the huge amount of tax money spent on manned space flight that could have been spent more efficiently. The case for sending people instead of robots was based more on fantasy than on reason.) The story makes Eisenhower seem very wise (for trying to avoid getting into a pointless and wasteful race against the Russians and his awareness of how the military industrial complex would serve its own interests at the expense of the nation as a whole). It even points out that Kennedy was nowhere near as enthusiastic about the moon landing as you'd assume and regretted locking the nation into an expensive promise he couldn't get out of. Quotes from astronauts who visited the moon portray it as "magnificent desolation": The first thing that springs to mind is the vivid contrast between the Earth and the Moon... I'm sure that to a geologist the moon is a fascinating place, but this monotonous rock pile, this withered, Sun-seared peach pit out of my window offers absolutely no competition to the gem it orbits. Ah, the Earth, with its verdant valleys, its misty waterfalls... I'd just like to get our job done and get out of here. - Michael Collins, Apollo 11