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The Sahara desert is infinitely more hospitable than Mars. It's easier to get to. There's air to breath. There's water. The main reason to terraform Mars (o

• le-mark 9y ago
  I'm certain this will be downvoted to hell, but it's absolutely correct. Even Antarctica is more appealing. There has to be a money making, gold rush, get rich reason why anyone would settle Mars. My pet theory is that Mars, a much more shallow gravity well than Earth could serve as an industrial base for processing material from the rest of the Solar System.
  • rimunroe 9y ago
    If reduced gravity is the goal, then what would be the advantage of doing things on Mars versus in orbit, or just on the Moon?
    • LeifCarrotson 9y ago
      The reason that reduced gravity helps is that after processing, you can loft it back into orbit. You can't manufacture fuel in orbit (it's a vacuum), and you can't manufacture fuel on the Moon (oxygen can be extracted with a lot of heat, but we can't make rockets without a fuel). But you can manufacture fuel with Martian atmospheric CO2 and frozen water.
      • rimunroe 9y ago
        Those are all reasons for not manufacturing fuel in orbit, but the person I was replying to was talking about processing materials from other planets. I get the desire of Mars-as-a-gas-station/space-oil-field, but don't see a benefit to manufacturing other things there specifically because of gravity. If we have the ability to ship materials from planet to planet for processing, then I don't see how you get much benefit flying them down to Mars's surface for processing versus just staying in orbit and shipping fuel/whatever you get from Mars up to you, just like with the other planets.
        • marktangotango 9y ago
          Not planets, asteroids. Will Belters be able to refine and create high tech alloys in zero g? Will they be able to manufacture parts and equipment in zero g, at scale. It may be that all those activities require gravity, or are exceedingly difficult in zero g, we don't know. In the case that those things are hard in zero g, my proposition is that Mars will be desirable place for those activities due to its low gravity and atm making it easy to send back up.
  • djsumdog 9y ago
    In the Kim Stanley Robinson series on Mars (best Sci-Fi series ever, you should read it), they first 100 colonists train in Antarctica, because it's the closest conditions on Earth to Mars (and even then, still quite far off)
    • cududa 9y ago
      MAny astronauts, on their path to being selected as a trainee for NASA will spend a year in Antarctica maintaining telescopes etc
  • chriswarbo 9y ago
    A couple of reasons I'm in favour of colonising Mars, the Moon, etc. are: - No life or ecosystems to disrupt; Mars would be ours to build on, dig up, pollute, irradiate, etc. without wiping out any native species. The only thing to spoil would be the views and landscapes, but we'd be the only ones able to appreciate them anyway. - Not being stuck on this rock. Mars and the Moon are first steps. In a few centuries, maybe the clouds of Venus, tunnels on Mercury, etc. would be viable. Such colonies aren't "backups" in case of disaster on Earth, any more than people live in Europe as a backup in case of disaster in Africa. Antarctica doesn't fulfil any of my reasons to live on Mars. In fact, Antarctica is the only place on Earth we've agreed to avoid exploiting! If anything, colonising Antarctica would be a backwards move.
    • yellowapple 9y ago
      To expand on that first reason, being able to live on Mars (and/or other worlds; I'd personally prefer Ceres or Enceladus, or maybe Pluto when we actually have the technology to perform an orbital insertion there) gives us an opportunity to evacuate Earth and let it recover from the injuries it's sustained during the Industrial Age.
• sillysaurus3 9y ago
  It's so easy to call out all the problems. Let them die. I'd go die on Mars. It's Mars. I think there are just different kinds of people in the world. Some of us hear "It's Mars," and that's all the justification needed. Nothing else matters. Not the cost, not the danger, not the practicalities. Your opinion is equally valid. But it's important to recognize the flipside. On Mars, the frontier exists. I've wished for it all my life.
  • grondilu 9y ago
    > Some of us hear "It's Mars," and that's all the justification needed. Nothing else matters. Not the cost, not the danger, not the practicalities. You sound like you know this is irrational, but you don't care.
    • angersock 9y ago
      Most of the important things in life worth doing are irrational.
      • nmeofthestate 9y ago
        Most of the important things in life worth doing are rational.
      • mattnewport 9y ago
        More like arational. Rationality is a tool to efficiently accomplish goals, what ultimate goals you choose to pursue is not a question that rationality is designed to answer.
    • baq 9y ago
      If rationality was the only thing that mattered in life, we'd all be dead.
    • sillysaurus3 9y ago
      Certainly. Our irrationality is why we're here. Launching a ship toward America was irrational. The scientists of the time could tell you with absolute certainty you'd die if your goal was to get to Asia by sailing west. We won't be discovering any new land, nor will we be surprised by anything. But that energy -- the fact that people want to go there, and want to colonize it -- that's rare. That's why the Sahara isn't the frontier. Love, in many ways, is completely irrational. There are countless advantages to spending your life alone. You'd conserve resources, you'd avoid heartbreak. If you want children, you can adopt. You could probably find someone to live with you, if you just want companionship. But the irrationality makes the experience.
• grondilu 9y ago
  Agreed. I would add that "living on mars" would be kind of a matter of speech. I mean, it would be more accurate to say you would live in a box that happens to be located on the surface of mars. Mars is such an hostile environment that you'd have to live in a highly controlled, mostly closed artificial habitat. Basically, a human-grade terrarium. Saying that men in such terrariums live on mars would be just as much as a stretch as saying that fishes in aquariums live on the ground. Honestly, if people enjoy living in a closed box, they can do it on Earth, they don't have to go to mars.
  • justinpombrio 9y ago
    > Honestly, if people enjoy living in a closed box, they can do it on Earth, they don't have to go to mars. Or perhaps some people care about things other than their immediate surroundings?
  • dwaltrip 9y ago
    > Honestly, if people enjoy living in a closed box, they can do it on Earth, they don't have to go to mars. This is a disingenuous strawman argument, and you know it.
    • grondilu 9y ago
      I'm sorry, but I really don't see the point. Most of the things you would do on mars, you could do them on Earth for much less effort. Exceptions are studying mars of course, and enjoying low-gravity. I don't see either one as a life-goal thing and anyway they are not the motivations that transpire from what I read from mars enthusiasts. Call it a strawman argument if you want, but it's not disingenuous in the sense that it's my genuine, honest opinion.
      • dwaltrip 9y ago
        It's disingenuous because you are implying that's why people want to go to mars, but that's obviously not the reason. No one wants to simply live in a small box. It's a ridiculous assertion that waters down the discussion.
• bpicolo 9y ago
  Musk is worried about extinction-level events according to paragraph one. Supervolcanoes, whatever killed the dinosaurs.. That perspective does seem reasonable in the grandest scheme of things. Earth has managed to kill a whole bunch of it's inhabitants in the past. That said, we may well have 70 million years to plan for that one.
  • grondilu 9y ago
    > Earth has managed to kill a whole bunch of it's inhabitants in the past. Yet all our ancestors have survived. I don't see why we, who are considerably more intelligent, who can predict celestial events, who can store food and water for years, who can build nuclear-bomb-proof bunkers, can generate energy from urianium dust, would do worse a job at surviving than tiny mouse-like animals 65 million years ago. https://www.amazon.com/Scatter-Adapt-Remember-Survive-Extinction/dp/0307949427 https://www.amazon.com/Scatter-Adapt-Remember-Survive-Extinc...
    • bpicolo 9y ago
      I don't doubt we'd have hope, but it would definitely kill off plenty of us. :) Also not saying going to Mars is necessary, just pointing out that it seems that's Musk's thoughts on the matter.
    • randomsearch 9y ago
      > Yet all our ancestors have survived. I wonder what you would have posted if they hadn't.
    • ashark 9y ago
      A revealing thought experiment is trying to come up with how much awful crap would have to happen to Earth to make living here less desirable than even a somewhat-terraformed Mars.
    • LeifCarrotson 9y ago
      We can build nuclear-bomb-proof bunkers, but that doesn't mean a survivable fraction of the population lives in them. If we had just days or hours of warning for an incoming dark asteroid, all our tech still might not save the species. Having a Martian society existing concurrently is like the difference between saying "yeah, we could back up our server to tape" and actually running concurrent instances. Or like the difference between legislation to require eco-friendly behavior and technology that makes eco-friendly behavior more economical than the old way. It exists not as a resource drain but as an improvement. Useful things that happen to also solve problems are often superior to perhaps less expensive things that solve the problem but might be seen as a cost center. Also, I don't disagree that post-apocalypse, 99% of those Martian manufacturers of orbital solar collectors should hop on the next shuttle back to Earth.
• Joeri 9y ago
  Plus, to get an equivalent level of radiation shielding as earth's atmoshere you need 5 meters of soil above you. If you want to live in a self-sufficient cave complex, you might as well do that on earth. I still think we should go, it's just that it seems getting there is the easy part, and even that is almost impossible.
  • Joeri 9y ago
    Although thinking about that, it does explain why Elon is suddenly so interested in tunnel boring machines, and why the boring company's machine is designed to be small and easy to build in large numbers.
  • m-j-fox 9y ago
    And then you have to hope for soil that is not itself radioactive. Lots of soil on earth contains radon, but I don't know about soil on mars.
• crawshaw 9y ago
  One resource Mars has that no land on Earth has is Low Mars Orbit. It is much easier to launch mass into the solar system from Mars because LMO is closer to the surface in terms of velocity than LEO. Space craft don't need booster stages on Mars.
  • LeifCarrotson 9y ago
    https://xkcd.com/681_large/ https://xkcd.com/681_large/ This was the most approachable explanation of gravity wells I've seen.
  • sp332 9y ago
    It would be even easier from Earth's moon though.
    • crawshaw 9y ago
      It is easier to reach a stable orbit from the moon. The question is how much harder is it to build a self-sustaining civilization on the moon than Mars, and is that difference worth the easier orbit? I don't know the answer. I suspect what matters is the number of stages to orbit for a large mass vehicle. We can just about build a single stage craft from earth, but it can't carry anything. On Mars, a SSTO can carry many tons. You could carry even more from the moon, but I suspect a viable SSTO to orbit is key, and a few extra tons doesn't add much. So at that point, you may as well go with the warmer site with more-comfortable gravity, Mars.
• bufbupa 9y ago
  What a pessimistic outlook. People climb Everest for the challenge, not because its most convenient mountain. People sky dive, ski, mountain bike, and rock climb for the thrill of it. The men that crossed the Atlantic into the unknown in the face of near certain death are evangelized and their names taught to children in history books (there’s even a holiday for it!). I think it’s a good thing that not all humans optimize for the most practical routes in life. It makes us more diverse and greater as a species, and pushes us to accomplish amazing feats that seem impractical on the surface. If everyone was optimizing for the lowest hanging fruits, who would invest in constructing the really tall ladders that future generations could build off of? “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Embrace your inner childhood sense of adventure and wonder!
  • grondilu 9y ago
    > People climb Everest for the challenge, not because its most convenient mountain. Notice that once they reach the summit, they don't stay very long. They don't plan on building a home there and plant potatoes. Musk is not just talking about exploring mars in this paper. He's not talking about a Everest-like challenge. He's talking about colonization, which in the eyes of many, is extremely premature at best, completely delusional at worst.
    • fooker 9y ago
      >Notice that once they reach the summit, they don't stay very long. They don't plan on building a home there and plant potatoes. If it was allowed, someone would have tried.
      • grondilu 9y ago
        There are plenty of places on Earth that people explored, tried to colonize, and failed. Australia for instance, is mostly empty for this very reason[1]. Why would mars be easier to colonize than Australia? 1. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3320021/Maps-just-Australia-really-population-clings-coast-jams-tiny-urban-clusters.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3320021/Maps-just-Au...
• InclinedPlane 9y ago
  This is wrong on a fundamental level. Humanity has always looked to colonize places seemingly on the margin of livability. Northern Europe, the arctic, the Eurasian steppes, etc. Our ability to live and thrive in different environments has come concomitant with our development of the technology to do so. We push to new environments because we can, we develop technology to better live in new environments because we're there, it goes hand in hand. Living in the Sahara (aside from all the other problems) is not living on Mars, it won't depend on and push the development of technology for living off-Earth. Living on Mars will be hard. Harder than many people appreciate today. But the more we do it the easier it will get, and the faster our technology will advance for living off-Earth. By living on Mars we'll unlock our ability to live not just there but in space and on other planets. Colonizing Mars won't just give us Mars, it'll give us the stars. It'll kickstart the development of technologies that will enable self-reliant space habitats, which will give us, eventually, generation ships, and will also feedback to improving life on Earth (better recycling systems, better power systems, things we can't even envision today). That doesn't happen if you just try to spread out on Earth more.
  • adekok 9y ago
    > Humanity has always looked to colonize places seemingly on the margin of livability. I think you're missing my point. It's just dreaming to call Mars "on the margin of livability". There's insufficient air to breath. No plants will grow there. There's no industry, etc. Every single thing outside of rocks and solar power will have to be brought from Earth. > Northern Europe, the arctic, the Eurasian steppes, etc. Comparing those places to Mars is again dreaming. People have been living in those places for thousands of years, and subsisting on what they can grow / gather / kill locally. No such local lifestyle is possible on Mars. > By living on Mars we'll unlock our ability to live not just there but in space and on other planets. How does that work? Maybe some technology helps, but you can't get past the sheer volume of air / water required to terraform Mars. And once you've done that, it's all on Mars. You can't use it to do anything else. I like science fiction as much as the next person, but your response is a fantastical vision of hope. It requires a hard-nosed engineering approach to turn that hope into reality.
    • 9y ago
• mschuster91 9y ago
  > It's expensive to get there. For now, because mass-produced starships are not a thing yet. SpaceX is on the best way to change this. > If you forgot something on Earth, it will be 2 years before you can retrieve it. Assuming regular (monthly) spaceship travel it's anything from 150 (you noticed the same day the ship is launched and Earth is at optimum position) to 330 days (ship just launched a second after you noticed and Earth is at longest distance), but not a full year. > Once there, you're damned closed to dying every minute of every day. I'd guess if you put in a proper emergency hospital kit on a pre-manned-flight-mission and two ER doctors on the first manned flight you're pretty much set. Lots of dangers that kill in short time on Earth are simply not present on Mars - you won't have deadly new pathogens, no cars, no dangerous animals and cancer can be kept at bay until a flight back to Earth can be arranged. The immediate dangers however will be decompression/Mars atmosphere exposure, structural failure in the buildings that will be used for housing, fire and critical breakage of oxygen generation.
  • adekok 9y ago
    > For now, because mass-produced starships are not a thing yet. SpaceX is on the best way to change this. Ignoring the cost of the rockets, the biggest expense in space travel is delta-V, followed by life support. That's basic physics, and no amount of cheap rockets will help. > I'd guess if you put in a proper emergency hospital kit on a pre-manned-flight-mission and two ER doctors on the first manned flight you're pretty much set. Your ER doctors won't help if the habitat springs a leak. What I meant was: * ripped space-suit? Die. * leak in habitat? Die * run out of water? Die * plants get disease? Die. * air recyclers break? Die. Plus, there's all the Earthly ways of dying! Fall down a hole, have a rock fall on you, etc. > Lots of dangers that kill in short time on Earth are simply not present on Mars - you won't have deadly new pathogens, no cars, no dangerous animals and cancer can be kept at bay until a flight back to Earth can be arranged. The same can be said for the space station... no diseases, wild animals, etc. Why not build LEO habitats instead? Lots cheaper than going to Mars, and re-supplies are just a few hours away.
• jamesrcole 9y ago
  Here's some rational reasons for why colonising Mars is a good idea (copy and pasted from an old comment of mine): * It would be a challenge, and (as there is lots of historical evidence for) innovation comes from people working on hard problems. So it would lead to innovations * It would inspire a generation to be more interested in areas like science and technology * The fresh start of a new planet would provide the opportunity for people to try out new forms of social structure. The founding of the USA is a historical example of this. Broken systems and structures is a big problem on earth right now. * Ultimately if humanity only exist on a single planet, then it's at great risk of being wiped out by some catastrophe. Getting off earth is important for our future existence. (A long time ago, I read Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars" and I think a lot of these ideas came from that. https://www.amazon.com/Case-Mars-Plan-Settle-Planet/dp/145160811X https://www.amazon.com/Case-Mars-Plan-Settle-Planet/dp/14516...)
• AYBABTME 9y ago
  People don't need any valid reason to go. All they need is the means, the money, and the desire and then they can go for whatever reason, good or bad, they have. This is all presented as a project where people who want in are paying for themselves. People who want out can just as well continue their life and stop telling others what is meaningful, what they're allowed to dream about.
  • Pinckney 9y ago
    Musk says he anticipates this being a public-private partnership.
• toephu2 9y ago
  Moving to the Sahara desert is not going to save mankind from an extinction event on Earth.
• Mz 9y ago
  Sailing across the ocean used to be about as bad here on earth. But it got better.
• hyperpallium 9y ago
  \tangent Antartica is a bit more similar.