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> 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

> 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. At least they had a goal, even the trip was risky. I was replying to a comment from someone who wrote "It's mars. That's all the justification I need".

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Ah. In that case: the goal is to colonize Mars. But you knew that. I think what you're looking for is a justification. Like love, sometimes there isn't one. Maybe it's a waste of resources. But it's theirs to waste. It's awesome, in the original sense of the word. That's the justification.
- grondilu 9y ago
  > But it's theirs to waste. Not quite, since as Musk admits in this paper, he expects this madness to be "a huge public–private partnership". So yeah, he expects tax-payer money to contribute.
  - Ajedi32 9y ago
    We already spend significant amounts of taxpayer money sending random probes to other planets. What makes you think it'd be a bad idea to divert some of that money to sending humans instead? Especially if there are people who want to go and SpaceX manages to make it cheap enough for that to be viable.
    - grondilu 9y ago
      > We already spend significant amounts of taxpayer money sending random probes to other planets. I tend to think scientific research deserves public funding. What musk advocates is not for scientific research, it's basically an extremely weird and expensive real estate project. And I don't think real estate deserves public funding, no matter how exotic it is. And even if I did not think scientific research deserves public funding, that would not matter, for a wrong should not justify an other wrong.
      - Ajedi32 9y ago
        If you believe that sending probes to Mars has scientific value, by what argument are you claiming that sending humans does not? I would think that humans could accomplish far more on Mars than a rover like Curiosity ever could.
        grondilu 9y ago
        We're talking about colonization, not manned exploration.
        ceejayoz 9y ago
        You don't think a colony would have scientists? I'd expect NASA to buy enough slots to found an Institute of Martian Studies pretty quickly.
        grondilu 9y ago
        > You don't think a colony would have scientists? Not a million of them. And if its purpose was scientific it wouldn't have to be "self-sufficient". Science is not Musk's goal. He wants to put people there for the sake of it.
        ceejayoz 9y ago
        A self-sufficient society will rapidly need universities, and I'd expect them to initially be fairly heavy on things like geology majors given the location.
        Ajedi32 9y ago
        But the government wouldn't need to pay to send a million of them. Just enough to send the people they want to send, along with associated equipment, plus the costs of feeding and housing them. Remember, we're only talking about the portion of the mission funded by tax dollars here. Not all of the funding is going to come from that source.
        9y ago
    - babyrainbow 9y ago
      Reminds me of this post I saw last week or so.. https://dissention.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/the-business-model-of-spacex-is-a-quintessentially-american-fraud/ https://dissention.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/the-business-mod...
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    > So yeah, he expects tax-payer money to contribute. Why wouldn't he? NASA has spent billions on Mars exploration. I suspect they'd jump at the chance to fund a few Geologist-in-Residence positions on Mars.
Nadya 9y ago
A worldwide disaster happens and all of humanity on Earth dies. Wouldn't it be nice if humans, as a species, could continue living on Mars?
- grondilu 9y ago
  If we are capable to live on mars, we can live on Earth no matter what could plausibly happen to it. Mars as a contingency plan is a weird idea. Whatever you plan on doing on mars to save mankind, you can do it much easier and for less money on Earth.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    This sounds like an argument against backup plans in principal. The idea of backups is to have another, "just in case". You can't always know, so have as many backups as you can afford. But here are some concrete examples of threats that make earth a bad deal while leaving mars workable: A nuclear war would like leave mars untouched and destroy civilization here. Even if earth is still "inhabitable" is doesn't matter if all the human on it are dead. Human Martians coming back a generation later and start anew or integrate with any meagre survivors. A religious inspired genocide that works. If some group somehow got it in their heads that "technology is bad except for the purpose of destroying other technology" this would be bad. If this group goes to war with western democracy and wins it would be worse. This does sound a lot like one specific group that is currently not able to reach mars, and likely never will be able to no many how many western democracies the attack. Any disaster that destroys then is done. Imagine a super-ebola that kills all humans. Because germs don't have a reliable space program mars is save and can wait 50 before sending scientists to check it out and trying to repopulate.
    - grondilu 9y ago
      > You can't always know, so have as many backups as you can afford. A backup on mars is basically the most ludicrously expensive backup you can imagine. It's as if when I make a backup for my hard-drive in Europe, I rent a safe in Japan to put it in. That would not make sense unless I think the whole European continent could be wiped out somehow. That's the thing : I don't think anything, not even the possibilities you mention, could make Earth worse a place to live than mars, not even a nuclear war. And I don't see a scenario that would wipe out all humans. Again, not even a nuclear war. And even if one of these scenarios could indeed wipe out humans, chances are that in a world where interplanetary travel is cheap, mars would not be spared.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

Ah. In that case: the goal is to colonize Mars. But you knew that. I think what you're looking for is a justification. Like love, sometimes there isn't one. Maybe it's a waste of resources. But it's theirs to waste. It's awesome, in the original sense of the word. That's the justification.

grondilu 9y ago
> But it's theirs to waste. Not quite, since as Musk admits in this paper, he expects this madness to be "a huge public–private partnership". So yeah, he expects tax-payer money to contribute.
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  We already spend significant amounts of taxpayer money sending random probes to other planets. What makes you think it'd be a bad idea to divert some of that money to sending humans instead? Especially if there are people who want to go and SpaceX manages to make it cheap enough for that to be viable.
  - grondilu 9y ago
    > We already spend significant amounts of taxpayer money sending random probes to other planets. I tend to think scientific research deserves public funding. What musk advocates is not for scientific research, it's basically an extremely weird and expensive real estate project. And I don't think real estate deserves public funding, no matter how exotic it is. And even if I did not think scientific research deserves public funding, that would not matter, for a wrong should not justify an other wrong.
    - Ajedi32 9y ago
      If you believe that sending probes to Mars has scientific value, by what argument are you claiming that sending humans does not? I would think that humans could accomplish far more on Mars than a rover like Curiosity ever could.
      - grondilu 9y ago
        We're talking about colonization, not manned exploration.
        ceejayoz 9y ago
        You don't think a colony would have scientists? I'd expect NASA to buy enough slots to found an Institute of Martian Studies pretty quickly.
        grondilu 9y ago
        > You don't think a colony would have scientists? Not a million of them. And if its purpose was scientific it wouldn't have to be "self-sufficient". Science is not Musk's goal. He wants to put people there for the sake of it.
        ceejayoz 9y ago
        A self-sufficient society will rapidly need universities, and I'd expect them to initially be fairly heavy on things like geology majors given the location.
        Ajedi32 9y ago
        But the government wouldn't need to pay to send a million of them. Just enough to send the people they want to send, along with associated equipment, plus the costs of feeding and housing them. Remember, we're only talking about the portion of the mission funded by tax dollars here. Not all of the funding is going to come from that source.
        9y ago
  - babyrainbow 9y ago
    Reminds me of this post I saw last week or so.. https://dissention.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/the-business-model-of-spacex-is-a-quintessentially-american-fraud/ https://dissention.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/the-business-mod...
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  > So yeah, he expects tax-payer money to contribute. Why wouldn't he? NASA has spent billions on Mars exploration. I suspect they'd jump at the chance to fund a few Geologist-in-Residence positions on Mars.

Nadya 9y ago

A worldwide disaster happens and all of humanity on Earth dies. Wouldn't it be nice if humans, as a species, could continue living on Mars?

grondilu 9y ago
If we are capable to live on mars, we can live on Earth no matter what could plausibly happen to it. Mars as a contingency plan is a weird idea. Whatever you plan on doing on mars to save mankind, you can do it much easier and for less money on Earth.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  This sounds like an argument against backup plans in principal. The idea of backups is to have another, "just in case". You can't always know, so have as many backups as you can afford. But here are some concrete examples of threats that make earth a bad deal while leaving mars workable: A nuclear war would like leave mars untouched and destroy civilization here. Even if earth is still "inhabitable" is doesn't matter if all the human on it are dead. Human Martians coming back a generation later and start anew or integrate with any meagre survivors. A religious inspired genocide that works. If some group somehow got it in their heads that "technology is bad except for the purpose of destroying other technology" this would be bad. If this group goes to war with western democracy and wins it would be worse. This does sound a lot like one specific group that is currently not able to reach mars, and likely never will be able to no many how many western democracies the attack. Any disaster that destroys then is done. Imagine a super-ebola that kills all humans. Because germs don't have a reliable space program mars is save and can wait 50 before sending scientists to check it out and trying to repopulate.
  - grondilu 9y ago
    > You can't always know, so have as many backups as you can afford. A backup on mars is basically the most ludicrously expensive backup you can imagine. It's as if when I make a backup for my hard-drive in Europe, I rent a safe in Japan to put it in. That would not make sense unless I think the whole European continent could be wiped out somehow. That's the thing : I don't think anything, not even the possibilities you mention, could make Earth worse a place to live than mars, not even a nuclear war. And I don't see a scenario that would wipe out all humans. Again, not even a nuclear war. And even if one of these scenarios could indeed wipe out humans, chances are that in a world where interplanetary travel is cheap, mars would not be spared.