15 ms·

Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species

126 points by arikr 9y ago

c-smile 9y ago
Yeah, we'd better start ASAP. Otherwise "the first woodpecker (asteroid large enough) that came along would destroy civilization."
- jondubois 9y ago
  How many billions of dollars will it cost to start a Mars colony? How many people could be lifted out of poverty here on earth with that same money? The only thing this project would really achieve is further inflate the ego of a few billionaires. It's such a messed up system of values. It makes me wonder if humanity is actually worth saving.
  - jbreckmckye 9y ago
    > Are we the kind of species that would sacrifice the lives of so many of its own just to satisfy the ego of a few billionaires? yes
    - jondubois 9y ago
      I hope that scientists will soon prove that the universe will end... It might change our system of values if we know for sure that everything we do amounts to nothing.
  - gogopuppygogo 9y ago
    Historically speaking we are exactly the kind of species that would sacrifice the lives of many to satisfy the lives of a few.
  - skookumchuck 9y ago
    You could say that about most advancements - they started out being laughed at as foolish wastes of money and time.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
      There have definitely been many more foolish wastes of time that were laughed at than there have been advancements.
  - binarytransform 9y ago
    Half a trillion dollars is spent every year in advertising to those poor people to buy things. Trillions of dollars were spent on chasing jihadis around the desert for 16 years. There is enough money floating around currently spent on nonsense to achieve both yours and Musk's goals. And if you do not see the potential for positive externalities created here on Earth by arguably the most ambitious project mankind has ever endeavored to undertake, your aperture on the world is quite narrow.
    - babyrainbow 9y ago
      >your aperture on the world is quite narrow. May be that is why they can filter out the bullshit....
- JoeDaDude 9y ago
  Whenever the topic of dangerous asteroids comes up, I remind myself how much money was raised to save civilization [1] from such a threat. If that were really a concern for Musk, he could pay for something like this many times over. [1]. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-defend-earth-against-asteroid-threats#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-defend-earth-against...
deleted 9y ago
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humanfromearth 9y ago
I don't get the fascination with this barren gravity well called Mars. Other than scientific curiosity there is nothing there of value that is not 1 billion times more abundant in the belt. I genuinely don't understand why there is this need to be multi-planetery species and not just space-fairing civ? the tech we need for either seems kind of the same to me, but the belt has a much higher return so what am I missing?
- devoply 9y ago
  It's an interesting point. The potential advantage would be if Mars has resources like water and hydrogen that we can use to colonize it which would not be possible in the barren expanse of space. Also radiation and gravity have a rather large effect on human physiology...
- dhruvarora013 9y ago
  I think you're mistaking Mars to be an end goal. Much like the Moon exploration missions, it's only an extension of the frontier and another rotation in the humanity progress wheel. You're absolutely right in terms of absolute financial value the belt is a better bet, but the goal is more of if we can, and starting the effort of spreading humanity beyond Earth permanently. Mars isn't the end goal. It's just the closest starting point.
  - adrianratnapala 9y ago
    I interpreted @humanfromearth as not talking about end goals either: presumably setting up shop on some near earth asteroids is easier than Mars. It is arguably more useful too. So yeah: I suspect that in 1000 years time when we look back at the history of space colonisation (however the heck it happens) my guess is that Mars will not figure strongly in the story until we are much more advanced than we are now.
  - babyrainbow 9y ago
    > It's just the closest starting point. The closest starting point is right here on earth. Are we yet able to make it work here? I don't think so.
Animats 9y ago
The worst real estate on Earth is more habitable than the best real estate on Mars.
- candiodari 9y ago
  This is something I wonder about. The colonists will have children. I believe the question "do I want to be in this situation" is an obvious and easy one for 99.999% of the population at least, and therefore one should assume that these children will be incredibly unhappy. And sadly, for good reason. Those children will be born in a small room, surrounded by metal and aluminum, maybe a blow-up shelter, and will never once in their life leave those surroundings. They will never once breathe fresh air. They will live and die in an area of a total size of perhaps a small football field, divided into minimal rooms (so there'd be as many of them as possible), with minimal energy. And that's just the beginning. From what we've seen happening to astronauts it is blatantly obvious that you do not want to subject a growing human body to gravity even slightly different from earth surface, to do otherwise will at the very least have serious consequences for their bones. It is likely in the extreme that it'll have extreme medical consequences amounting to serious physical handicaps, even if they are born on the surface of Mars. If they are born in zero gravity, it seems unlikely that they'll ever even see adulthood. But if they survive, it'll be in a small compound. Metal and stone around them, all the time, everywhere, and not much of it. Accidents will be as lethal as they are on a submarine and therefore they'll require the iron discipline (including the rare to occasional decision to leave someone behind to drown/suffocate when the situation requires it). They will be locked into this situation by physics, with absolutely no way to fix it. Even if terraforming ever works, it will take centuries. Dozens of generations. They won't just be old when things change, they will never live long enough to see children that will set a foot outside. They will see DVDs, and will get the phenomenon we see in the third world. DVD players showing them the vast fjords of Norway. The immense flats in middle America. And let's be realistic here: spending a week in Death Valley will look like an incredibly attractive prospect for them, but even dying of exposure there will be utterly out of reach. Let's face facts here: these people will have lives that solitary confined prisoners would not trade place with. We are the ones, along with their parents, who will have "done this" to them. Their parents will be forgiven, as they have made a mistake, listening to the misrepresentations of people like Elon Musk. We, however, "could fix this", with incredibly massive energy expenditure to get a few thousand people back from another planet, and we'll choose not to. Why not ? It'll make the Moon landings look incredibly cheap, hell it'll make WWII look incredibly cheap, and even if we do it, it'll take decades for the transport to actually happen. Even if we choose to have a kid come back, the kid won't be back until (s)he's in their forties at least. We are probably a decade, maybe 2 or 3 removed from having built "general AI" individuals, who would have no more trouble walking in robot bodies on Mars or Venus than we do on earth. As in, a bit of planning would be required, and you'd do well to have some basic preparations and shelter ready, but failing that will be unpleasant, not deadly, and it would take weeks of exposure and deprivation to kill them. Besides, such individuals would be programs walking around in robot bodies. If they really got into trouble they could just transmit themselves to safety. Since these will easily colonize the solar system, and humans won't, not now, not ever, even if we manage to get a tiny Mars colony going, why not just wait ? Bots, AIs, cylons, machines, or whatever we choose to call these individuals will far outnumber people on Mars (Given the surface size, a Mars colony should expand to about 6 billion people, but it will take a little under 1500 years to get to that point, so even if we start with 1000 individuals (100 is more likely), machines will start to colonize Mars (and other planets) when there's less than 10k humans)
AdamTReineke 9y ago
This is a paper version of his talk [0] from International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico on Sept. 27, 2016. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9olSzNOh8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9olSzNOh8s He teased on Twitter [1,2] that there are major updates coming to the plan, especially around funding the project. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/875770056323420160 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/875770056323420160 [2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/875913504451985411 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/875913504451985411
hoodoof 9y ago
I can see value in going to visit but the idea of colonization of any extra terrestrial body is foolish.
- andrewflnr 9y ago
  Visiting and colonization are points on a spectrum.
Eerie 9y ago
Funny how there are people with much more money than Musk, who do absolutely nothing useful with it, but Musk draws criticism for details. Oh, why Mars, why not Moon, or Ceres, or O'Neill cylinders, or lets colonize the Sahara desert first, or lets solve world hunger and poverty (which is a 100% political problem, not technological, BTW) blah, blah, blah, blah... Musk is doing SOMETHING, at least. The technology that SpaceX develops can and will be used for much more than just Elon's particular vision of Mars colony.
- grondilu 9y ago
  > Funny how there are people with much more money than Musk, who do absolutely nothing useful with it, but Musk draws criticism for details. There are other billionaires that do useful stuff. If they grab less attention it's probably because they are less controversial, and probably because what they make more sense. For instance, the breakthrough starship initiative, to remain in the space exploration domain, is also funded by a billionaire.
  - prawn 9y ago
    probably because what they do makes more sense More sense than electric vehicles, solar tiles, solar chargers, space transport, etc? OP's point wasn't that there were no other billionaires doing something, but that billionaires exist doing very little to push humanity forward.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    It's also because they are better at PR. Bill Gate is a terrible person but he is managing to make people believe is a saint these days.
    - paulddraper 9y ago
      What makes Bill Gates a terrible person these days?
      - valuearb 9y ago
wuschel 9y ago
SpaceX certainly makes interesting marketing publications regarding the colonization of other planets. Unfortunately, that does not change that our species of ape decendents is stripping and destroying its single, most precious planetary habitat, creates great social divides, and behaves in a most unsustainable way. That is one of the major problems for me. Edit: Why the downvotes? Colonization of different planets will not solve some of our systemic problems.
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  I think colonizing other planets may be one of the most important means we have for addressing systematic problems on earth: Populating new places can enable a new start and experimentation with new forms of social organisation. Escape from the momentum of tradition. This isn't just speculation. We've already seen demonstrations of this, like the founding of the United States and the democratic system they put in place there. This sort of thing could help us address the sort of problems you mention. Like with the case of the US, successful new ideas can be transplanted back to other places. Also the fact that in the long term colonization may help with overpopulation on Earth. (I heard this viewpoint from reading Robert Zubrin's "The Case For Mars" https://www.amazon.com/Case-Mars-Plan-Settle-Planet/dp/145160811X https://www.amazon.com/Case-Mars-Plan-Settle-Planet/dp/14516...)
  - babyrainbow 9y ago
    >a new start and experimentation with new forms of social organisation. What options do we have? I mean, have anyone really thought up an alternative social/economic system that could work, given the human nature?
    - grondilu 9y ago
      Many people have, but putting them in practice usually leads to totalitarism.
    - jamesrcole 9y ago
      If you look at the way economies are currently run, they are, in a lot of ways, at odds with what economists think are the best way to run them (I think this can be easily explained by the fact that often what economists think are good ideas are not politically very popular). A fresh start might enable some of those things to be tested out. In terms of social organisation, the thing is that we don't really know for sure. You have to do experiments and see how things work. You can't say, before the fact, that it definitely will or won't work. Being able to experiment is really important for progress, but it's really hard to do within established systems.
infodroid 9y ago
Please append [pdf] to the title.
spodek 9y ago
This community is so fast to say Mars is possible. Mention any problem and it will start with the belief it's solvable and figure out how: "We can do it!" Mention the idea of lowering the population on Earth to allow more resources per person or consuming less to pollute less and it's "It's against human nature" and "Absolutely impossible" and "Fusion or fission will make that unnecessary, we should grow forever." I wish people here looked at reducing growth and consumption here -- changing mental models from growth to "enough" -- as something as attainable as terraforming another planet, or even with enthusiasm.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Mention the idea of lowering the population on Earth to allow more resources per person or consuming less to pollute less and it's "It's against human nature" and "Absolutely impossible" and "Fusion or fission will make that unnecessary, we should grow forever." Eugenics is edgy and the idea deserves an edgy death. I hate to give a glib dismissal, but what else is there to say on that topic? No one can do it short of becoming the next AI overlord empire. It's like wishing for anti-gravity. It'd be quite convenient, but how? We've also seen how well China's "one child per family" mandate worked out, so we even have evidence that it doesn't seem to work. I almost don't want to entertain the question due to the trainwreck of a thread that might ensue, but I've been pleasantly surprised by HN before. I think prompting can make the difference. So: If we all promise to be very substantive, how might it be possible to implement "population control"? This is probably the ultimate test of self-control, too. Can intellectualism prevail over the urge to strike down an idea? Let's find out. You'll need to be very substantive in your response if you're to have any hope of thoughtful conversation, so please don't put in a halfhearted effort into the opportunity of your choosing. Everyone's listening -- what do you propose?
  - protonfish 9y ago
    Except we already see negative population growth in all countries with a reasonable standard of living. The USA (and many European countries) would not be growing were it not for immigration. Places with high birth rates are often correlated with a stressful environment like war and extreme poverty. (When you can't be certain how much time you have left to live or how many of your children will survive, it makes sense to have any many children as soon as possible.) Also, the efforts against access to birth control by organizations like the Catholic Church or Texas's "abstinence only education" can unnaturally increase birth rates. Reducing population growth is the struggle to reduce poverty, war, and oppression against women. We also would need to confront powerful organizations with anti-birth control agendas.
Someone 9y ago
I can see that we should want to into space, also think it should be on the list of thing to work on now (we are plenty rich enough to tackle other problems in parallel), and trust this paper in its technical aspects (it requires lots of work, but not to the extent that _I_ would say it is unachievable). However, I think this paper is glaring a bit over the psychological aspects. The crew compartment of the spaceship is 17 meters diameter (max) and, judging from figure 13, about 15 meters high. That's around 3000 cubic meters. A hundred passengers would have about 30 cubic meters each, or the equivalent of a 3 by 4 meter room; less personal space if, as promised, "the crew compartment or the occupant compartment is set up so that you can do zero-gravity games—you can float around. There will be movies, lecture halls, cabins, and a restaurant." There also would be a fair bit of noise and vibrations, I guess (I didn't read about windows in the spaceship, but I hope there will be, as those likely will be way better, psychologically, than cameras showing the same view) On top of that, your companions would be self-selected among those wanting to leave earth behind and, I expect, fairly anxious about the future. So, I seriously doubt "It will be really fun to go. You are going to have a great time!"
- valuearb 9y ago
  It's not going to be a cruise ship. Assuming most of the crew was couples, 10-15 cubic meters is more than enough for two person bed + personal area/storage. Communal bathrooms will work, say 200 cubic meters. Another 100 cubic meters for the control room. That leaves 1200 cubic meters for the cafeteria/rec rooms/group areas. Or one huge 4 meter by 10 meter by 30 meter room. That should be plenty of room for a few months. I assume most people are just going to pair of up for low gravity swinger's parties in each others rooms anyways.
fallingfrog 9y ago
The plan Elon has set out is for the transportation to mars- and its very impressive. He hasn't made any attempt at a colonization plan, but at least we've got an idea how the transportation might work. Colonization would be a much much harder problem. Every person you send to mars needs food, water, air, heat, and shelter from day one. If they're going to maintain their own habitat then you're talking about mining equipment, metal foundries, glass making, rubber for gaskets, fertilizer, etc etc etc. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it might take a significant portion of the world GDP to get that set up for a million colonists- a million dollars per colonist seems very low and that's a trillion dollars altogether.
- averagewall 9y ago
  So we can send and support a million people on Mars for the cost of the Iraq war? Obviously affordable for a government or a large enough group of motivated people. It's not going to bankrupt the world by any stretch. Perhaps there are 1 million millionaires in the world willing to pay their own way. Back in the days of colonizing countries, people did that. Even though their destinations were closer and more habitable, they also had more primitive technology so it was still a massive challenge by today's standards. No fridges, cars, or radio communications. Travel time was several months between countries compared to about a year to get to Mars. I wouldn't say it's obviously unachievable at all.
  - jamesrcole 9y ago
    > Even though their destinations were closer and more habitable I actually (genuinely) wonder about that those two. Distance isn't the right metric - it's difficulty of making the journey. Ocean travel is taken for granted these days. In the past it was a lot more difficult and dangerous. How did those difficulties then compare to interplanetary travel today? (I'm genuinely asking). And similar applies to how habitable the destination was. I remember reading about the initial English colonies in America, and all difficulties they had with things like trying to grow crops. How do those difficulties compare to the difficulties we'd face for Mars? (again, I don't know the answer, but I'm curious as to what it might be).
zucchini_head 9y ago
Elon's Mars ideas has been a real hot topic on HN recently, and generally on average the most upvoted comments seem to be those deriding his ambitions. I think that's fair. They seem quite bonkers at times. Most of the reasons being that it's "ridiculous", "pointless", "a waste of money", "impossible", and so on and so on. Essentially the overriding HN opinion _seems_ to be that something that sounds for the most part irrational, should never be attempted until we have first completed every single possible "rational" incremental step beforehand, so that eventually we've learnt enough to make the initially irrational idea more plausible and therefore rational. For example, on HN i've seen such steps being "colonising the Sahara Desert", "then colonising the moon" , and so on. I really disagree with this view as a whole. It's unsustainable and in the end unproductive. It seems ridiculous to say, and maybe a touch over-zealous I admit, but we as humans could still be simple hunter-gatherers like tens of thousands of year ago, if it wasn't for that one guy who everybody laughed at for mixing mud and water and burning it with fire - which initially seems absolutely bonkers - but actually makes clay. At the end of this ramble is maybe a little sense. Robert Zubrin and similar people love to bash the ISS and the Space Shuttle as complete failures. After all, it _appears_ that they are a step back from the "good old Apollo days", and in some respects that is probably true. But if we didn't try new things, try things that initially seem to have little benefit, then we'd go nowhere, or at least excel much slower. They called JFK mad for asking the US to go from never having sent a man above a few ten thousand feet to over 1.2 billion feet to the moon in under a decade. I think we need a fair balance of rationalism and irrationalism (or at least "optimistic ambition") in technology, since sometimes the best things in life come from a witches-brew of the two. We keep the ambition irrational, the math and science rational, as my Professor always said.
FrozenVoid 9y ago
All of this speculation neglects that 1.Chemical rockets are still absurdly expensive, slow and unreliable. 2a.Terraforming Mars requires megatons of new materials/tools/robots, international/business cooperation(who owns mars?) within the context of "wild west" on Mars. 2b.Creating populated domed stations on Mars is a gimmick and lacks any cost/benefit analysis(a job better dealt with robots). Its equivalent to Antarctic stations without air. 3.People wouldn't move to Mars just because of novelty(which would wear off in a few year), there wouldn't be any tangible advantages(lower gravity=weaker bones,muscles,weak magnetic field=more radiation, less stable/diluted atmosphere) and the cost of moving or traveling to/from mars is high due #1. In summary money is better spent on developing non-chemical spaceflight first.
Nomentatus 9y ago
Kudos, Musk is willing to embarrass himself if necessary in a good cause. Thanks. But I'm not overly fond of the paper. No mention of asteroids when discussing other destinations, or re refueling. No mention of refueling from lunar sources (oxygen - you could haul hydrogen from Mars or Earth. Plus structural matter, solar cells, soil or even food.) Transporters that actually land on Mars - a la the first lunar return trip plans which landing everything on the moon that would return. It's surely more likely that there will be dedicated Earth-Mars transporters for that distance that don't land at either end. Way more economical. But others have covered this in more detail: http://www.science20.com/robert_inventor/case_for_moon_open_ended_positive_future_for_humans_based_on_planetary_protection_executive_summary-170088 http://www.science20.com/robert_inventor/case_for_moon_open_...
valuearb 9y ago
He makes two mistakes. 1) Nuckear thermal rockets are proven to be more than twice as efficient as chemical rockets, and he doesn't consider them as options. 2) Asteroids are far more resource rich, provide better living habitats and are immensely cheaper to reach than Mars. Even those in the belt are at least 10 Kilometres/Sec easier to reach than Mars. Other than those quibbles, a fantastic read.
RichardHeart 9y ago
I hope to read one day "Making Humans Multi-century individuals" one day. Easier to get to Mars when you don't run out of time and die before you get there.
baron816 9y ago
A much more practical goal would be to colonize the bottom of the ocean. Not that colonizing the bottom of the ocean would be very practical, just more practical relative to Mars. The ocean is much more accessible, has life already down there, there is some oxygen, it's not radioactive, and it has a level of gravity that humans evolved to over their entire existence. You'd also be able to get internet access down there. Plus, it's probably much more interesting as there are far more things left to discover down there. Mars is just a super shitty desert. People only want to go there because no one's ever been, but once they go, they won't care anymore.
- dTal 9y ago
  Colonizing the bottom of the ocean would have many of the same practical benefits of colonizing Mars, as well. It won't save the human race if the entire planet is destroyed, but short of that it offers some protection from most of the other existential threats (disease, nuclear war, asteroid strike). That being said, it's not clear what would sustain an undersea colony. Only a fully self-sufficient geothermal-powered setup would be properly effective as species-insurance.

126 points by arikr 9y ago

Yeah, we'd better start ASAP. Otherwise "the first woodpecker (asteroid large enough) that came along would destroy civilization."

jondubois 9y ago
How many billions of dollars will it cost to start a Mars colony? How many people could be lifted out of poverty here on earth with that same money? The only thing this project would really achieve is further inflate the ego of a few billionaires. It's such a messed up system of values. It makes me wonder if humanity is actually worth saving.
- jbreckmckye 9y ago
  > Are we the kind of species that would sacrifice the lives of so many of its own just to satisfy the ego of a few billionaires? yes
  - jondubois 9y ago
    I hope that scientists will soon prove that the universe will end... It might change our system of values if we know for sure that everything we do amounts to nothing.
- gogopuppygogo 9y ago
  Historically speaking we are exactly the kind of species that would sacrifice the lives of many to satisfy the lives of a few.
- skookumchuck 9y ago
  You could say that about most advancements - they started out being laughed at as foolish wastes of money and time.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
    There have definitely been many more foolish wastes of time that were laughed at than there have been advancements.
- binarytransform 9y ago
  Half a trillion dollars is spent every year in advertising to those poor people to buy things. Trillions of dollars were spent on chasing jihadis around the desert for 16 years. There is enough money floating around currently spent on nonsense to achieve both yours and Musk's goals. And if you do not see the potential for positive externalities created here on Earth by arguably the most ambitious project mankind has ever endeavored to undertake, your aperture on the world is quite narrow.
  - babyrainbow 9y ago
    >your aperture on the world is quite narrow. May be that is why they can filter out the bullshit....
JoeDaDude 9y ago
Whenever the topic of dangerous asteroids comes up, I remind myself how much money was raised to save civilization [1] from such a threat. If that were really a concern for Musk, he could pay for something like this many times over. [1]. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-defend-earth-against-asteroid-threats#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-defend-earth-against...

deleted 9y ago

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humanfromearth 9y ago

I don't get the fascination with this barren gravity well called Mars. Other than scientific curiosity there is nothing there of value that is not 1 billion times more abundant in the belt. I genuinely don't understand why there is this need to be multi-planetery species and not just space-fairing civ? the tech we need for either seems kind of the same to me, but the belt has a much higher return so what am I missing?

devoply 9y ago
It's an interesting point. The potential advantage would be if Mars has resources like water and hydrogen that we can use to colonize it which would not be possible in the barren expanse of space. Also radiation and gravity have a rather large effect on human physiology...
dhruvarora013 9y ago
I think you're mistaking Mars to be an end goal. Much like the Moon exploration missions, it's only an extension of the frontier and another rotation in the humanity progress wheel. You're absolutely right in terms of absolute financial value the belt is a better bet, but the goal is more of if we can, and starting the effort of spreading humanity beyond Earth permanently. Mars isn't the end goal. It's just the closest starting point.
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  I interpreted @humanfromearth as not talking about end goals either: presumably setting up shop on some near earth asteroids is easier than Mars. It is arguably more useful too. So yeah: I suspect that in 1000 years time when we look back at the history of space colonisation (however the heck it happens) my guess is that Mars will not figure strongly in the story until we are much more advanced than we are now.
- babyrainbow 9y ago
  > It's just the closest starting point. The closest starting point is right here on earth. Are we yet able to make it work here? I don't think so.

Animats 9y ago

The worst real estate on Earth is more habitable than the best real estate on Mars.

candiodari 9y ago
This is something I wonder about. The colonists will have children. I believe the question "do I want to be in this situation" is an obvious and easy one for 99.999% of the population at least, and therefore one should assume that these children will be incredibly unhappy. And sadly, for good reason. Those children will be born in a small room, surrounded by metal and aluminum, maybe a blow-up shelter, and will never once in their life leave those surroundings. They will never once breathe fresh air. They will live and die in an area of a total size of perhaps a small football field, divided into minimal rooms (so there'd be as many of them as possible), with minimal energy. And that's just the beginning. From what we've seen happening to astronauts it is blatantly obvious that you do not want to subject a growing human body to gravity even slightly different from earth surface, to do otherwise will at the very least have serious consequences for their bones. It is likely in the extreme that it'll have extreme medical consequences amounting to serious physical handicaps, even if they are born on the surface of Mars. If they are born in zero gravity, it seems unlikely that they'll ever even see adulthood. But if they survive, it'll be in a small compound. Metal and stone around them, all the time, everywhere, and not much of it. Accidents will be as lethal as they are on a submarine and therefore they'll require the iron discipline (including the rare to occasional decision to leave someone behind to drown/suffocate when the situation requires it). They will be locked into this situation by physics, with absolutely no way to fix it. Even if terraforming ever works, it will take centuries. Dozens of generations. They won't just be old when things change, they will never live long enough to see children that will set a foot outside. They will see DVDs, and will get the phenomenon we see in the third world. DVD players showing them the vast fjords of Norway. The immense flats in middle America. And let's be realistic here: spending a week in Death Valley will look like an incredibly attractive prospect for them, but even dying of exposure there will be utterly out of reach. Let's face facts here: these people will have lives that solitary confined prisoners would not trade place with. We are the ones, along with their parents, who will have "done this" to them. Their parents will be forgiven, as they have made a mistake, listening to the misrepresentations of people like Elon Musk. We, however, "could fix this", with incredibly massive energy expenditure to get a few thousand people back from another planet, and we'll choose not to. Why not ? It'll make the Moon landings look incredibly cheap, hell it'll make WWII look incredibly cheap, and even if we do it, it'll take decades for the transport to actually happen. Even if we choose to have a kid come back, the kid won't be back until (s)he's in their forties at least. We are probably a decade, maybe 2 or 3 removed from having built "general AI" individuals, who would have no more trouble walking in robot bodies on Mars or Venus than we do on earth. As in, a bit of planning would be required, and you'd do well to have some basic preparations and shelter ready, but failing that will be unpleasant, not deadly, and it would take weeks of exposure and deprivation to kill them. Besides, such individuals would be programs walking around in robot bodies. If they really got into trouble they could just transmit themselves to safety. Since these will easily colonize the solar system, and humans won't, not now, not ever, even if we manage to get a tiny Mars colony going, why not just wait ? Bots, AIs, cylons, machines, or whatever we choose to call these individuals will far outnumber people on Mars (Given the surface size, a Mars colony should expand to about 6 billion people, but it will take a little under 1500 years to get to that point, so even if we start with 1000 individuals (100 is more likely), machines will start to colonize Mars (and other planets) when there's less than 10k humans)

AdamTReineke 9y ago

This is a paper version of his talk [0] from International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico on Sept. 27, 2016. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9olSzNOh8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9olSzNOh8s He teased on Twitter [1,2] that there are major updates coming to the plan, especially around funding the project. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/875770056323420160 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/875770056323420160 [2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/875913504451985411 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/875913504451985411

hoodoof 9y ago

I can see value in going to visit but the idea of colonization of any extra terrestrial body is foolish.

andrewflnr 9y ago
Visiting and colonization are points on a spectrum.

Eerie 9y ago

Funny how there are people with much more money than Musk, who do absolutely nothing useful with it, but Musk draws criticism for details. Oh, why Mars, why not Moon, or Ceres, or O'Neill cylinders, or lets colonize the Sahara desert first, or lets solve world hunger and poverty (which is a 100% political problem, not technological, BTW) blah, blah, blah, blah... Musk is doing SOMETHING, at least. The technology that SpaceX develops can and will be used for much more than just Elon's particular vision of Mars colony.

grondilu 9y ago
> Funny how there are people with much more money than Musk, who do absolutely nothing useful with it, but Musk draws criticism for details. There are other billionaires that do useful stuff. If they grab less attention it's probably because they are less controversial, and probably because what they make more sense. For instance, the breakthrough starship initiative, to remain in the space exploration domain, is also funded by a billionaire.
- prawn 9y ago
  probably because what they do makes more sense More sense than electric vehicles, solar tiles, solar chargers, space transport, etc? OP's point wasn't that there were no other billionaires doing something, but that billionaires exist doing very little to push humanity forward.
- sametmax 9y ago
  It's also because they are better at PR. Bill Gate is a terrible person but he is managing to make people believe is a saint these days.
  - paulddraper 9y ago
    What makes Bill Gates a terrible person these days?
    - valuearb 9y ago

wuschel 9y ago

SpaceX certainly makes interesting marketing publications regarding the colonization of other planets. Unfortunately, that does not change that our species of ape decendents is stripping and destroying its single, most precious planetary habitat, creates great social divides, and behaves in a most unsustainable way. That is one of the major problems for me. Edit: Why the downvotes? Colonization of different planets will not solve some of our systemic problems.

jamesrcole 9y ago
I think colonizing other planets may be one of the most important means we have for addressing systematic problems on earth: Populating new places can enable a new start and experimentation with new forms of social organisation. Escape from the momentum of tradition. This isn't just speculation. We've already seen demonstrations of this, like the founding of the United States and the democratic system they put in place there. This sort of thing could help us address the sort of problems you mention. Like with the case of the US, successful new ideas can be transplanted back to other places. Also the fact that in the long term colonization may help with overpopulation on Earth. (I heard this viewpoint from reading Robert Zubrin's "The Case For Mars" https://www.amazon.com/Case-Mars-Plan-Settle-Planet/dp/145160811X https://www.amazon.com/Case-Mars-Plan-Settle-Planet/dp/14516...)
- babyrainbow 9y ago
  >a new start and experimentation with new forms of social organisation. What options do we have? I mean, have anyone really thought up an alternative social/economic system that could work, given the human nature?
  - grondilu 9y ago
    Many people have, but putting them in practice usually leads to totalitarism.
  - jamesrcole 9y ago
    If you look at the way economies are currently run, they are, in a lot of ways, at odds with what economists think are the best way to run them (I think this can be easily explained by the fact that often what economists think are good ideas are not politically very popular). A fresh start might enable some of those things to be tested out. In terms of social organisation, the thing is that we don't really know for sure. You have to do experiments and see how things work. You can't say, before the fact, that it definitely will or won't work. Being able to experiment is really important for progress, but it's really hard to do within established systems.

infodroid 9y ago

Please append [pdf] to the title.

spodek 9y ago

This community is so fast to say Mars is possible. Mention any problem and it will start with the belief it's solvable and figure out how: "We can do it!" Mention the idea of lowering the population on Earth to allow more resources per person or consuming less to pollute less and it's "It's against human nature" and "Absolutely impossible" and "Fusion or fission will make that unnecessary, we should grow forever." I wish people here looked at reducing growth and consumption here -- changing mental models from growth to "enough" -- as something as attainable as terraforming another planet, or even with enthusiasm.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Mention the idea of lowering the population on Earth to allow more resources per person or consuming less to pollute less and it's "It's against human nature" and "Absolutely impossible" and "Fusion or fission will make that unnecessary, we should grow forever." Eugenics is edgy and the idea deserves an edgy death. I hate to give a glib dismissal, but what else is there to say on that topic? No one can do it short of becoming the next AI overlord empire. It's like wishing for anti-gravity. It'd be quite convenient, but how? We've also seen how well China's "one child per family" mandate worked out, so we even have evidence that it doesn't seem to work. I almost don't want to entertain the question due to the trainwreck of a thread that might ensue, but I've been pleasantly surprised by HN before. I think prompting can make the difference. So: If we all promise to be very substantive, how might it be possible to implement "population control"? This is probably the ultimate test of self-control, too. Can intellectualism prevail over the urge to strike down an idea? Let's find out. You'll need to be very substantive in your response if you're to have any hope of thoughtful conversation, so please don't put in a halfhearted effort into the opportunity of your choosing. Everyone's listening -- what do you propose?
- protonfish 9y ago
  Except we already see negative population growth in all countries with a reasonable standard of living. The USA (and many European countries) would not be growing were it not for immigration. Places with high birth rates are often correlated with a stressful environment like war and extreme poverty. (When you can't be certain how much time you have left to live or how many of your children will survive, it makes sense to have any many children as soon as possible.) Also, the efforts against access to birth control by organizations like the Catholic Church or Texas's "abstinence only education" can unnaturally increase birth rates. Reducing population growth is the struggle to reduce poverty, war, and oppression against women. We also would need to confront powerful organizations with anti-birth control agendas.

Someone 9y ago

I can see that we should want to into space, also think it should be on the list of thing to work on now (we are plenty rich enough to tackle other problems in parallel), and trust this paper in its technical aspects (it requires lots of work, but not to the extent that _I_ would say it is unachievable). However, I think this paper is glaring a bit over the psychological aspects. The crew compartment of the spaceship is 17 meters diameter (max) and, judging from figure 13, about 15 meters high. That's around 3000 cubic meters. A hundred passengers would have about 30 cubic meters each, or the equivalent of a 3 by 4 meter room; less personal space if, as promised, "the crew compartment or the occupant compartment is set up so that you can do zero-gravity games—you can float around. There will be movies, lecture halls, cabins, and a restaurant." There also would be a fair bit of noise and vibrations, I guess (I didn't read about windows in the spaceship, but I hope there will be, as those likely will be way better, psychologically, than cameras showing the same view) On top of that, your companions would be self-selected among those wanting to leave earth behind and, I expect, fairly anxious about the future. So, I seriously doubt "It will be really fun to go. You are going to have a great time!"

valuearb 9y ago
It's not going to be a cruise ship. Assuming most of the crew was couples, 10-15 cubic meters is more than enough for two person bed + personal area/storage. Communal bathrooms will work, say 200 cubic meters. Another 100 cubic meters for the control room. That leaves 1200 cubic meters for the cafeteria/rec rooms/group areas. Or one huge 4 meter by 10 meter by 30 meter room. That should be plenty of room for a few months. I assume most people are just going to pair of up for low gravity swinger's parties in each others rooms anyways.

fallingfrog 9y ago

The plan Elon has set out is for the transportation to mars- and its very impressive. He hasn't made any attempt at a colonization plan, but at least we've got an idea how the transportation might work. Colonization would be a much much harder problem. Every person you send to mars needs food, water, air, heat, and shelter from day one. If they're going to maintain their own habitat then you're talking about mining equipment, metal foundries, glass making, rubber for gaskets, fertilizer, etc etc etc. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it might take a significant portion of the world GDP to get that set up for a million colonists- a million dollars per colonist seems very low and that's a trillion dollars altogether.

averagewall 9y ago
So we can send and support a million people on Mars for the cost of the Iraq war? Obviously affordable for a government or a large enough group of motivated people. It's not going to bankrupt the world by any stretch. Perhaps there are 1 million millionaires in the world willing to pay their own way. Back in the days of colonizing countries, people did that. Even though their destinations were closer and more habitable, they also had more primitive technology so it was still a massive challenge by today's standards. No fridges, cars, or radio communications. Travel time was several months between countries compared to about a year to get to Mars. I wouldn't say it's obviously unachievable at all.
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  > Even though their destinations were closer and more habitable I actually (genuinely) wonder about that those two. Distance isn't the right metric - it's difficulty of making the journey. Ocean travel is taken for granted these days. In the past it was a lot more difficult and dangerous. How did those difficulties then compare to interplanetary travel today? (I'm genuinely asking). And similar applies to how habitable the destination was. I remember reading about the initial English colonies in America, and all difficulties they had with things like trying to grow crops. How do those difficulties compare to the difficulties we'd face for Mars? (again, I don't know the answer, but I'm curious as to what it might be).

zucchini_head 9y ago

Elon's Mars ideas has been a real hot topic on HN recently, and generally on average the most upvoted comments seem to be those deriding his ambitions. I think that's fair. They seem quite bonkers at times. Most of the reasons being that it's "ridiculous", "pointless", "a waste of money", "impossible", and so on and so on. Essentially the overriding HN opinion _seems_ to be that something that sounds for the most part irrational, should never be attempted until we have first completed every single possible "rational" incremental step beforehand, so that eventually we've learnt enough to make the initially irrational idea more plausible and therefore rational. For example, on HN i've seen such steps being "colonising the Sahara Desert", "then colonising the moon" , and so on. I really disagree with this view as a whole. It's unsustainable and in the end unproductive. It seems ridiculous to say, and maybe a touch over-zealous I admit, but we as humans could still be simple hunter-gatherers like tens of thousands of year ago, if it wasn't for that one guy who everybody laughed at for mixing mud and water and burning it with fire - which initially seems absolutely bonkers - but actually makes clay. At the end of this ramble is maybe a little sense. Robert Zubrin and similar people love to bash the ISS and the Space Shuttle as complete failures. After all, it _appears_ that they are a step back from the "good old Apollo days", and in some respects that is probably true. But if we didn't try new things, try things that initially seem to have little benefit, then we'd go nowhere, or at least excel much slower. They called JFK mad for asking the US to go from never having sent a man above a few ten thousand feet to over 1.2 billion feet to the moon in under a decade. I think we need a fair balance of rationalism and irrationalism (or at least "optimistic ambition") in technology, since sometimes the best things in life come from a witches-brew of the two. We keep the ambition irrational, the math and science rational, as my Professor always said.

FrozenVoid 9y ago

All of this speculation neglects that 1.Chemical rockets are still absurdly expensive, slow and unreliable. 2a.Terraforming Mars requires megatons of new materials/tools/robots, international/business cooperation(who owns mars?) within the context of "wild west" on Mars. 2b.Creating populated domed stations on Mars is a gimmick and lacks any cost/benefit analysis(a job better dealt with robots). Its equivalent to Antarctic stations without air. 3.People wouldn't move to Mars just because of novelty(which would wear off in a few year), there wouldn't be any tangible advantages(lower gravity=weaker bones,muscles,weak magnetic field=more radiation, less stable/diluted atmosphere) and the cost of moving or traveling to/from mars is high due #1. In summary money is better spent on developing non-chemical spaceflight first.

Nomentatus 9y ago

Kudos, Musk is willing to embarrass himself if necessary in a good cause. Thanks. But I'm not overly fond of the paper. No mention of asteroids when discussing other destinations, or re refueling. No mention of refueling from lunar sources (oxygen - you could haul hydrogen from Mars or Earth. Plus structural matter, solar cells, soil or even food.) Transporters that actually land on Mars - a la the first lunar return trip plans which landing everything on the moon that would return. It's surely more likely that there will be dedicated Earth-Mars transporters for that distance that don't land at either end. Way more economical. But others have covered this in more detail: http://www.science20.com/robert_inventor/case_for_moon_open_ended_positive_future_for_humans_based_on_planetary_protection_executive_summary-170088 http://www.science20.com/robert_inventor/case_for_moon_open_...

valuearb 9y ago

He makes two mistakes. 1) Nuckear thermal rockets are proven to be more than twice as efficient as chemical rockets, and he doesn't consider them as options. 2) Asteroids are far more resource rich, provide better living habitats and are immensely cheaper to reach than Mars. Even those in the belt are at least 10 Kilometres/Sec easier to reach than Mars. Other than those quibbles, a fantastic read.

RichardHeart 9y ago

I hope to read one day "Making Humans Multi-century individuals" one day. Easier to get to Mars when you don't run out of time and die before you get there.

baron816 9y ago

A much more practical goal would be to colonize the bottom of the ocean. Not that colonizing the bottom of the ocean would be very practical, just more practical relative to Mars. The ocean is much more accessible, has life already down there, there is some oxygen, it's not radioactive, and it has a level of gravity that humans evolved to over their entire existence. You'd also be able to get internet access down there. Plus, it's probably much more interesting as there are far more things left to discover down there. Mars is just a super shitty desert. People only want to go there because no one's ever been, but once they go, they won't care anymore.

dTal 9y ago
Colonizing the bottom of the ocean would have many of the same practical benefits of colonizing Mars, as well. It won't save the human race if the entire planet is destroyed, but short of that it offers some protection from most of the other existential threats (disease, nuclear war, asteroid strike). That being said, it's not clear what would sustain an undersea colony. Only a fully self-sufficient geothermal-powered setup would be properly effective as species-insurance.