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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

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.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    I think whatever is on your disk is less valuable than humanity as a species. I think the amount of backup you can "afford" should be relative to the value of the thing being backed up. Backing up is also not the strongest reason to go to Mars. "Because its there" is easily the strongest, but its not understood by those who don't understand it... That seems tautological, but it is hard to label this thing, it is like a sense of adventure but less childish. It is the same thing started every other exploration into the unknown and left everyone who stayed behind alive and poorer for it. When it pays it pays off in vast sums, literal new worlds are the payoff.
    - grondilu 9y ago
      "Because its there" is the argument of mountain-climbers[1]. That can be an argument for an Apollo-style mission, not for a colonization project. 1. Mallory is famously quoted as having replied to the question "Why did you want to climb Mount Everest?" with the retort "Because it's there", which has been called "the most famous three words in mountaineering". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory
      - sqeaky 9y ago
        I am well aware of the quote and its use in stopping analysis for a further reason, because it is the reason. I don't see why there is a threshold between moonshot and mars colonization, it seems arbitrary to me. Could you explain to me the method for determining the threshold of validity in the reasoning behind "Because it's there"?

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.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  I think whatever is on your disk is less valuable than humanity as a species. I think the amount of backup you can "afford" should be relative to the value of the thing being backed up. Backing up is also not the strongest reason to go to Mars. "Because its there" is easily the strongest, but its not understood by those who don't understand it... That seems tautological, but it is hard to label this thing, it is like a sense of adventure but less childish. It is the same thing started every other exploration into the unknown and left everyone who stayed behind alive and poorer for it. When it pays it pays off in vast sums, literal new worlds are the payoff.
  - grondilu 9y ago
    "Because its there" is the argument of mountain-climbers[1]. That can be an argument for an Apollo-style mission, not for a colonization project. 1. Mallory is famously quoted as having replied to the question "Why did you want to climb Mount Everest?" with the retort "Because it's there", which has been called "the most famous three words in mountaineering". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory
    - sqeaky 9y ago
      I am well aware of the quote and its use in stopping analysis for a further reason, because it is the reason. I don't see why there is a threshold between moonshot and mars colonization, it seems arbitrary to me. Could you explain to me the method for determining the threshold of validity in the reasoning behind "Because it's there"?