8 ms·

I've noticed that during the webcast they talked much more about their planetary colonisation project than they usually do. I guess it makes sense since today

I've noticed that during the webcast they talked much more about their planetary colonisation project than they usually do. I guess it makes sense since today is the first time they actually implement the re-usability plan they believe is the key to this colonisation. But frankly, is the cost of going to mars really that important for its colonisation? I mean, I wouldn't move to mars even if going there was free. For one, there's no breathable air, for Pete's sake. They are talking about building a city on a place where there isn't even breathable air. That's insane. This whole thing is very conflicting to me. On one hand I can appreciate the technological achievement and I acknowledge that re-usability will be extremely useful for space exploration, but on the other hand I can't help thinking that those people who get excited about building a city on mars are completely delusional.

dkonofalski 10y ago
> They are talking about building a city on a place where there isn't even breathable air. Yet. As far as I know, the plan is to create some generators and a basic colony that can terraform the land to try and create an atmosphere on the planet. It's not unlike what they were planning in "Total Recall" but, at least in this case, there's more science to it than fantasy.
hayd 10y ago
> I can't help thinking that those people who get excited > about building a city on mars are completely delusional. That's what they once said about walking on the moon.
- grondilu 10y ago
  Well, there is probably a reason why nobody thought it was worth doing it again ever since. More seriously though, just because many projects were wrongly considered foolish in the past, does not mean one can not point at a new one and call it foolish. History tends to remember those who turned out to be brilliant, and forget all those who genuinely were foolish. The example I like is Franz Reichelt [1]. People around him were watching as he prepared to meet his death. Nobody said "don't do that, you'll kill yourself". Why? I guess because they were not sure, and they did not want to be the person who dissed someone who might be remembered as say the Wright brothers were. I guess I'm not comfortable being the guy who says nothing as he watches people being foolish or delusional. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBN3xfGrx_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBN3xfGrx_U
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    Was he really foolish or just ahead of his time and willing to brave the risks? OK, that one guy was foolish he should have started small and worked his way up. Perhaps a death defying leap onto a mattress, would have been better. But there are plenty of others who were close to a variety of successes and them not succeeding doesn't mean they were foolish. There must have been hundreds or thousands of potential aviators, but we remember the brothers at Kittyhawk because of their success. This doesn't make the others fools, likely they were successful in some of their other plans or iterated on designs more like the flyer afterwards. From all of their perspectives as long as they minimized danger, unlike Franz, they would live to see another day and keep attempting High risk High reward situations. This is much the same with startups today. Plenty made their fortunes in tech startups and while history might call all but a few failures, many are relaxing with their millions or even just comfortable enjoying their backup plan of a high tech job and settling down with a family. EDIT - Grammar, wording and spelling.
  - platypii 10y ago
    Franz Reichelt clearly failed in his approach, but his idea was not crazy -- today we have wingsuits that can fly.
    - grondilu 10y ago
      Yet as of today nobody has ever landed with just a wingsuit. You need a parachute.
      - an_cap 10y ago
        Not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Connery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Connery
        grondilu 10y ago
        That's an argument of semantics. I mean people can jump onto giant airbags without either parachute or jumpsuit from very high heights. I wouldn't call that landing, and in any case that's not what Franz Reichet was attempting.
vickychijwani 10y ago
The way I think about this is: if not SpaceX, some govt or company will one day establish a base on another planet. Something like the stations we have in Antarctica. So SpaceX taking a shot at this isn't totally absurd - over-ambitious, sure, but not so ridiculous as to be out of the question. Maybe it won't happen for a few decades, or a century - but IMO it's very likely it will happen some time. And that's what ultimately matters. It doesn't have to be Elon Musk's company that does it. Cities on Mars - it's not productive debating this at such an early stage, though it makes for an interesting discussion.
- elihu 10y ago
  I think who gets there first is going to have a huge impact on what kind of society is established on Mars (the economy, the legal system, the culture, how infrastructure is managed, government, etc...). SpaceX may change its culture over time, but as things stand now I would rather live in a society established by SpaceX than one established by, say, Boeing.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
jacquesm 10y ago
I'm ok with aiming high and en-passant solving cheap access to orbit. Anything else is gravy, imagine if that dream did not exist this whole saga would not have happened. Dreams are good, they allow people to expend energy chasing that dream and the spin-offs from that may be worth as much or more to humanity than the original dream, even if we may not be able to figure out what path that might take today. I'm certainly not complaining, hope they dream a lot more and will produce many more useful milestones, and if they don't end up achieving their dream I'll feel sorry for them but thank them for their incredible service anyway. Think of that dream as a very powerful motivator for a lot of extremely smart and talented people. It's the fox to a whole pack of hounds that would very much like to gain ground and as such it seems to be doing a very good job.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  It's a bit disappointing to me that poverty, human trafficking, addiction, habitat destruxtion, cultural erasure, genocide, torture, extinction, etc aren't very powerful motivators for such people. I feel such pressure to use our new skills to solve these problems, but I know 10 years ago they were a combination of invisible/impossible to me. If I hadn't been aggressively pushed by smart feminists to examine my life more closely I might still feel the same way. If I hadnt been intellectually curious enough to stick with them, despite their worldview seeming so alien and wrong, I would probably be working in VR now instead of housing. Maybe it's just that such challenges are too dark for some people... Mars is all optimism, no need to struggle with the realities of evil. Maybe some people just cant handle the pain of working on poverty and violence. I totally understand the desire to avoid fields where evil plays a daily role in your job. I grew up in an alcoholic household so pain seems sort of normal, although I have an intense desire to dismantle its causes. I accept that a more emotionally healthy person might just nope out of such challenges. I guess it's also a little like the video games vs life choice: Mars is a clear goal, with all the players in a clear sandbox. Poverty is a messy mindfuck of a problem. That makes it more intellectually challenging, but also scarier. Failure hurts worse: a rocket that doesn't launch is one thing. Watching your friends die is another. Still, it puzzles me that so many smart people need something like Mars to feel like they have a hard problem that's worth solving. I see so many around me. Easing violence seems like such a bigger win than getting off planet.
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Its a reach. For comparison, lets start a city on top of Mt Everest? Better air, better weather, lots easier to get to, and help is only days away instead of months. Yet we haven't begun to do things even that ambitious yet.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  Everest isn't really better weather. Parts of Mars get up to 70 F in the summer day, and the thin atmosphere means even a big storm doesn't have much impact even on someone walking around (the events that start The Martian simply can't happen as depicted).
- dwaltrip 10y ago
  There's no special humanity wide significance to having a city on Mt. Everest. And there is also no new science that such a city would enable. Lastly, it wouldn't teach us anything about our place in the universe.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Talking about trial runs for Mars, which of course will be far less exciting. But can we imagine doing even that much? It seems preposterous to put a city on a tall mountain - but we're already talking about another planet.
    - dwaltrip 10y ago
      I can imagine it :) It's hard to say when and how, of course. It might not happen in any serious fashion until asteroid mining and space tourism became real industries, which should result in improved tech and much lower costs for building Mars colonies.
- nickik 10y ago
  We have no reason to start a city on Mt Everest. We would not do it just for training, if we are going to do it, there must be a good reason.
nickik 10y ago
For all Spaceflight of getting to Space is huge, no matter what you are trying to do. I'm not sure why it is conflicting for you. Even if they are delusional, you profit from cheaper access to Space no matter why they are going there.
- grondilu 10y ago
  One thing I don't like is that Musk stated that he expects that colonization project to be a public-private partnership. That means that the government will put money into it, and I'm not OK with the State investing in what is to me nothing but an extraordinarily exotic real-estate project. Going to mars for science is ok. Going there and build insanely expensive accommodations, just for the sake of living there, is not, unless you do it with your money.
  - issa 10y ago
    I think the stated reason for building a sustainable city on Mars--to ensure that a disaster on Earth doesn't end the species--is a damned good one. The science and other technology that will come as a result of the colonization is just bonus.
    - grondilu 10y ago
      > I think the stated reason for building a sustainable city on Mars--to ensure that a disaster on Earth doesn't end the species--is a damned good one. It's stupid. If we can live on mars, we can live on Earth no matter what happens to it. I don't see anything that could turn Earth into worse a place to live than mars.
      - rohit89 10y ago
        Learning to survive on Mars is what will enable us to survive on earth.
      - issa 10y ago
        >I don't see anything that could turn Earth into worse a place to live than mars. How about a major asteroid strike?
acover 10y ago
There are several reasons: adventure, incentivize cheaper space travel, drastically improve humanity's chance at survival. Waitbutwhy has an amazing explanation of the how's and why's. http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize-mars.html/2#part2 http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-coloni...
- grondilu 10y ago
  I'm familiar with this article. First, "adventure" is a reason to go there, not to settle. Second, I'm not buying the "drastically improve humanity's chance at survival" argument. There have been several mass extinction events in the past, so in order to survive one that might be coming, we should move to a place where there is likely no life at all? That does not make any sense to me. If we can survive on mars, we can survive on Earth no matter what can plausibly happen to it. Mankind will likely survive the next mass extinction[1], and we don't have to go to mars for that. 1. http://io9.gizmodo.com/why-humans-will-survive-the-next-world-ending-catastrop-486158068 http://io9.gizmodo.com/why-humans-will-survive-the-next-worl...
  - mmalone 10y ago
    You don't need to send a live person to ensure the survival of the species. I agree, it's not about that.
  - jononor 10y ago
    > If we can survive on mars, we can survive on Earth no matter what can plausibly happen to it. Exactly. So going to Mars and staying there long-term will require us to develop many solutions that can be applied here on Earth. Both under current conditions and conditions that would currently be civilisation-threatening.
    - grondilu 10y ago
      So the whole thing is nothing but an exercice in survivalism? That is ludicruous. There is no need for that.

dkonofalski 10y ago

> They are talking about building a city on a place where there isn't even breathable air. Yet. As far as I know, the plan is to create some generators and a basic colony that can terraform the land to try and create an atmosphere on the planet. It's not unlike what they were planning in "Total Recall" but, at least in this case, there's more science to it than fantasy.

hayd 10y ago

> I can't help thinking that those people who get excited > about building a city on mars are completely delusional. That's what they once said about walking on the moon.

grondilu 10y ago
Well, there is probably a reason why nobody thought it was worth doing it again ever since. More seriously though, just because many projects were wrongly considered foolish in the past, does not mean one can not point at a new one and call it foolish. History tends to remember those who turned out to be brilliant, and forget all those who genuinely were foolish. The example I like is Franz Reichelt [1]. People around him were watching as he prepared to meet his death. Nobody said "don't do that, you'll kill yourself". Why? I guess because they were not sure, and they did not want to be the person who dissed someone who might be remembered as say the Wright brothers were. I guess I'm not comfortable being the guy who says nothing as he watches people being foolish or delusional. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBN3xfGrx_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBN3xfGrx_U
- sqeaky 10y ago
  Was he really foolish or just ahead of his time and willing to brave the risks? OK, that one guy was foolish he should have started small and worked his way up. Perhaps a death defying leap onto a mattress, would have been better. But there are plenty of others who were close to a variety of successes and them not succeeding doesn't mean they were foolish. There must have been hundreds or thousands of potential aviators, but we remember the brothers at Kittyhawk because of their success. This doesn't make the others fools, likely they were successful in some of their other plans or iterated on designs more like the flyer afterwards. From all of their perspectives as long as they minimized danger, unlike Franz, they would live to see another day and keep attempting High risk High reward situations. This is much the same with startups today. Plenty made their fortunes in tech startups and while history might call all but a few failures, many are relaxing with their millions or even just comfortable enjoying their backup plan of a high tech job and settling down with a family. EDIT - Grammar, wording and spelling.
- platypii 10y ago
  Franz Reichelt clearly failed in his approach, but his idea was not crazy -- today we have wingsuits that can fly.
  - grondilu 10y ago
    Yet as of today nobody has ever landed with just a wingsuit. You need a parachute.
    - an_cap 10y ago
      Not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Connery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Connery
      - grondilu 10y ago
        That's an argument of semantics. I mean people can jump onto giant airbags without either parachute or jumpsuit from very high heights. I wouldn't call that landing, and in any case that's not what Franz Reichet was attempting.

vickychijwani 10y ago

The way I think about this is: if not SpaceX, some govt or company will one day establish a base on another planet. Something like the stations we have in Antarctica. So SpaceX taking a shot at this isn't totally absurd - over-ambitious, sure, but not so ridiculous as to be out of the question. Maybe it won't happen for a few decades, or a century - but IMO it's very likely it will happen some time. And that's what ultimately matters. It doesn't have to be Elon Musk's company that does it. Cities on Mars - it's not productive debating this at such an early stage, though it makes for an interesting discussion.

elihu 10y ago
I think who gets there first is going to have a huge impact on what kind of society is established on Mars (the economy, the legal system, the culture, how infrastructure is managed, government, etc...). SpaceX may change its culture over time, but as things stand now I would rather live in a society established by SpaceX than one established by, say, Boeing.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

jacquesm 10y ago

I'm ok with aiming high and en-passant solving cheap access to orbit. Anything else is gravy, imagine if that dream did not exist this whole saga would not have happened. Dreams are good, they allow people to expend energy chasing that dream and the spin-offs from that may be worth as much or more to humanity than the original dream, even if we may not be able to figure out what path that might take today. I'm certainly not complaining, hope they dream a lot more and will produce many more useful milestones, and if they don't end up achieving their dream I'll feel sorry for them but thank them for their incredible service anyway. Think of that dream as a very powerful motivator for a lot of extremely smart and talented people. It's the fox to a whole pack of hounds that would very much like to gain ground and as such it seems to be doing a very good job.

erikpukinskis 10y ago
It's a bit disappointing to me that poverty, human trafficking, addiction, habitat destruxtion, cultural erasure, genocide, torture, extinction, etc aren't very powerful motivators for such people. I feel such pressure to use our new skills to solve these problems, but I know 10 years ago they were a combination of invisible/impossible to me. If I hadn't been aggressively pushed by smart feminists to examine my life more closely I might still feel the same way. If I hadnt been intellectually curious enough to stick with them, despite their worldview seeming so alien and wrong, I would probably be working in VR now instead of housing. Maybe it's just that such challenges are too dark for some people... Mars is all optimism, no need to struggle with the realities of evil. Maybe some people just cant handle the pain of working on poverty and violence. I totally understand the desire to avoid fields where evil plays a daily role in your job. I grew up in an alcoholic household so pain seems sort of normal, although I have an intense desire to dismantle its causes. I accept that a more emotionally healthy person might just nope out of such challenges. I guess it's also a little like the video games vs life choice: Mars is a clear goal, with all the players in a clear sandbox. Poverty is a messy mindfuck of a problem. That makes it more intellectually challenging, but also scarier. Failure hurts worse: a rocket that doesn't launch is one thing. Watching your friends die is another. Still, it puzzles me that so many smart people need something like Mars to feel like they have a hard problem that's worth solving. I see so many around me. Easing violence seems like such a bigger win than getting off planet.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

Its a reach. For comparison, lets start a city on top of Mt Everest? Better air, better weather, lots easier to get to, and help is only days away instead of months. Yet we haven't begun to do things even that ambitious yet.

ceejayoz 10y ago
Everest isn't really better weather. Parts of Mars get up to 70 F in the summer day, and the thin atmosphere means even a big storm doesn't have much impact even on someone walking around (the events that start The Martian simply can't happen as depicted).
dwaltrip 10y ago
There's no special humanity wide significance to having a city on Mt. Everest. And there is also no new science that such a city would enable. Lastly, it wouldn't teach us anything about our place in the universe.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Talking about trial runs for Mars, which of course will be far less exciting. But can we imagine doing even that much? It seems preposterous to put a city on a tall mountain - but we're already talking about another planet.
  - dwaltrip 10y ago
    I can imagine it :) It's hard to say when and how, of course. It might not happen in any serious fashion until asteroid mining and space tourism became real industries, which should result in improved tech and much lower costs for building Mars colonies.
nickik 10y ago
We have no reason to start a city on Mt Everest. We would not do it just for training, if we are going to do it, there must be a good reason.

nickik 10y ago

For all Spaceflight of getting to Space is huge, no matter what you are trying to do. I'm not sure why it is conflicting for you. Even if they are delusional, you profit from cheaper access to Space no matter why they are going there.

grondilu 10y ago
One thing I don't like is that Musk stated that he expects that colonization project to be a public-private partnership. That means that the government will put money into it, and I'm not OK with the State investing in what is to me nothing but an extraordinarily exotic real-estate project. Going to mars for science is ok. Going there and build insanely expensive accommodations, just for the sake of living there, is not, unless you do it with your money.
- issa 10y ago
  I think the stated reason for building a sustainable city on Mars--to ensure that a disaster on Earth doesn't end the species--is a damned good one. The science and other technology that will come as a result of the colonization is just bonus.
  - grondilu 10y ago
    > I think the stated reason for building a sustainable city on Mars--to ensure that a disaster on Earth doesn't end the species--is a damned good one. It's stupid. If we can live on mars, we can live on Earth no matter what happens to it. I don't see anything that could turn Earth into worse a place to live than mars.
    - rohit89 10y ago
      Learning to survive on Mars is what will enable us to survive on earth.
    - issa 10y ago
      >I don't see anything that could turn Earth into worse a place to live than mars. How about a major asteroid strike?

acover 10y ago

There are several reasons: adventure, incentivize cheaper space travel, drastically improve humanity's chance at survival. Waitbutwhy has an amazing explanation of the how's and why's. http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize-mars.html/2#part2 http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-coloni...

grondilu 10y ago
I'm familiar with this article. First, "adventure" is a reason to go there, not to settle. Second, I'm not buying the "drastically improve humanity's chance at survival" argument. There have been several mass extinction events in the past, so in order to survive one that might be coming, we should move to a place where there is likely no life at all? That does not make any sense to me. If we can survive on mars, we can survive on Earth no matter what can plausibly happen to it. Mankind will likely survive the next mass extinction[1], and we don't have to go to mars for that. 1. http://io9.gizmodo.com/why-humans-will-survive-the-next-world-ending-catastrop-486158068 http://io9.gizmodo.com/why-humans-will-survive-the-next-worl...
- mmalone 10y ago
  You don't need to send a live person to ensure the survival of the species. I agree, it's not about that.
- jononor 10y ago
  > If we can survive on mars, we can survive on Earth no matter what can plausibly happen to it. Exactly. So going to Mars and staying there long-term will require us to develop many solutions that can be applied here on Earth. Both under current conditions and conditions that would currently be civilisation-threatening.
  - grondilu 10y ago
    So the whole thing is nothing but an exercice in survivalism? That is ludicruous. There is no need for that.