6 ms·

If we're going to live in underground habitats on Mars for humanity-backup, isn't it easier to just build underground habitats on Earth? A few hundreds of mete

If we're going to live in underground habitats on Mars for humanity-backup, isn't it easier to just build underground habitats on Earth? A few hundreds of meters down and the nuke risk is negligible. You can stockpile enough for hundreds of years at ~0 shipping cost. You can set up fortified ducts/purification systems to get oxygen from the surface -- with backup allowing a small population to live long enough for the surface to get tolerable. Heck, even a full blown self-sustaining underground habitat doesn't seem out of question, since there's water readily available, plenty of perhaps geothermal or nuclear power power, and construction minerals. Destroying the Mars habitat might not be too much more difficult comparing to destroying this colony. If it has less than 10,000 or so colonists the US gov. or similar might even have a chance of keeping its location in secrecy. Sure it doesn't cover all possible scenarios, but in terms of backup a conflict-resistant habitat here on Earth seems like the best bang for your buck. Welcome to Zion.

cwkoss 8y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if several of these exist already.
- jeffbax 8y ago
  Maybe that's where all of North Korea's nighttime electricity and lighting goes
d0lph 8y ago
Always keep an offsite backup.
- vkou 8y ago
  If keeping an offsite backup only let you back up 0.001% of your data, and cost you 1x of your annual revenue, your employer wouldn't keep one either.
  - rossdavidh 8y ago
    I would say it's more like keeping a zip file of your data. It may not be as usable, but if you lose your primary you can reinflate it and it will do just fine.
    - bdamm 8y ago
      The water bears can re-inflate and the future of life on earth will be some other evolutionary tract. No worries mate. Why is humanity so important anyway?
      - limaoscarjuliet 8y ago
        It's the towels.
      - chriskanan 8y ago
        Some theories posit that Earth may contain the only life nearby (or possibly in the universe) [0]. Since we are the only space faring species on our planet, the water bears would need our help to preserve their genetic record. Life on Earth has less than 2 billion years left, but the universe in general has a lot more than that left. https://www.space.com/41080-alien-life-may-be-rare-today.html https://www.space.com/41080-alien-life-may-be-rare-today.htm...
    - posting2fast 8y ago
      Not if you the data loss is caused by an error or virus in the software, and you use that same software to access your "backup".
    - cm2187 8y ago
      If we die, does it matter to us than the human species survives somewhere? Like if it’s not going to protect me, why should it matter that much to me that I should support the effort?
  - Anarch157a 8y ago
    Our data is in our DNA. A population of a few thousand would pretty much guarantee a 100% backup.
logfromblammo 8y ago
In the long run, ensuring the continued survival of humanity is not sufficient. We must also preserve our space-launch capabilities. It's a lot more difficult to launch through a rock ceiling, radioactive atmosphere, and a cloud of Kessler Syndrome fragments, from a gravity well 1G deep, than it is to launch from the surface of a rock with barely any atmosphere, a bare handful of satellites, in a well only 0.38G deep. Also, bear in mind that you won't just be stockpiling food, but sufficient biodiversity to reassemble a viable ecosystem, and sufficient industry and education to preserve a viable economy. Otherwise, you still die when the nutri-mat and atmo-pure machines finally break down. It's certainly easier to dig a deep hole and build a bunker in it, but that expense does not advance the end goal. It is merely insurance against a temporary setback. You still need to establish a launch-capable society on another planet, or everything dies anyway when the sun expands. Then, after that happens, someone will still be around to say, "It would be cheaper and easier to colonize and terraform Venus than to send generation ships every which way."....
- bdamm 8y ago
  > dig a deep hole and build a bunker in it But isn't that what colonizing Mars is, anyway? Mars has no biodiversity to speak of and won't be a host to ours without significant evolution or resources, so what's the plan there? Earth isn't just a convenient place to live. It's the only planet we can live on. Until we get warp drive or are much farther along in making a profit colonizing the solar system, not to mention in building better governments, it's just far too early to discuss colonizing Mars. Dreams are great but let's not get blinded by the hopes here. Let's plan a visit, and plan another visit 50 years after that.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  >and a cloud of Kessler Syndrome fragments Ugh, don't get me started there. Musk wanting to do all these internet satellites interests me but seriously gives me nightmares too in regards to Kessler syndrome.
  - baq 8y ago
    Starlink's birds are, according to publicly available information, to be put in a quicky decaying orbit.
tajen 8y ago
What would be interesting in such a colony is space is constrained much faster than on the surface of Earth. Birth doesn’t become something poetic but « Who will have to die for this child to live ». We’ll have to find the courage to tell people that one new inhabitant is not free of charge, as opposed to now. That constraint alone may set us in a much better mindset for solving problems when it comes to repopulating the surface.
vkou 8y ago
> If we're going to live in underground habitats on Mars for humanity-backup, isn't it easier to just build underground habitats on Earth? It is, unless the scenario you are hoping to survive is "Hordes of proles at the gates."
tomrod 8y ago
We should do both.
jandrese 8y ago
The only scenario I can imagine where underground habitats won't cut it is if we turn the Earth into another Venus. In that case the heat would eventually cook the underground habitats and kill everyone off. While global warming is by most accounts as bad or worse than the worst predictions thus far, we aren't quite to the absolute out of control greenhouse effect of Venus.
- hasseio 8y ago
  Additionally, if the Venus scenario became a possibility, then I would expect a WWII level effort (5-10 trillion dollars) in extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, convert to diamond and dump in the oceans.
windows_tips 8y ago
Is Mars tectonic? Living underground on Earth risks becoming stuck or crushed.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  Some people have tossed the idea out, with science, that Mars was once tectonically active, see https://www.space.com/9683-surface-mars-possibly-shaped-plate-tectonics.html https://www.space.com/9683-surface-mars-possibly-shaped-plat... and https://www.space.com/17087-mars-surface-marsquakes-plate-tectonics.html https://www.space.com/17087-mars-surface-marsquakes-plate-te...
dalore 8y ago
You're saying like it's an either or situation. For sure it's cheap to build underground bunkers and stockpile. I wouldn't be surprised if there already isn't. So colonising somewhere other then Earth should also be a priority. A big risk are meteors. Just like the dinosaurs.
- Steko 8y ago
  OTOH a big risk to colonization is more advanced civilizations see other space colonizing species as a threat and decide to annihilate them.
- calcifer 8y ago
  > A big risk are meteors No they aren't. ~1km wide asteroids impact the Earth on average every 500,000 years and even then, it's too small to be an extinction level event. Not to mention all NEOs around that size are constantly monitored.
  - dalore 8y ago
    If you think we are monitoring all PHO (potentially hazardous object) then you're mistaken. We can't possibly do that. Too many of them, sky is too big, and they don't give off anything. It's estimated we've only found 20-30% of these objects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentially_hazardous_object https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentially_hazardous_object
  - jnurmine 8y ago
    A 1 km asteroid would do a lot of damage. It would not be a directly ELE but the consequences would be nevertheless large. Depending on where it hits, it might even lead to a complete collapse of a country or countries. Though the direct effects would be mostly local, the systemic effects would reverberate globally since in the modern world things (such as food production, supply chains, etc.) are so meshed together. Draw a 300 km circle at your chosen impact point, then say bye to everything inside the first 150 km. The rest of the circle would be damaged to a varying degree. You can easily find places for impact points which, although not an ELE, would still turn many, many people's lives nasty.
hyperpallium 8y ago
And even with nuclear winter, super-volcano, giant meteorite or other extinction-level event, the least hospitable places on Earth still beat Mars. Sure, an extra backup on Mars helps... but let's keep the backups we can do now, first. Also: spaceships... and tunnels. Next Elon enterprises should include underwater, Antartica or mountain-top habitats... and good practice for a Mars colony.
jnurmine 8y ago
Surviving an extinction-level event would necessitate a fully self-sufficient colony, but could such an underground base keep on sustaining itself, let alone grow and develop for as long as it takes for the dust to settle, so to say? The timescales could be very long, I have no idea how long but possibly thousands of years could be too short. A self-sufficient offworld colony is the best bet for normalcy and sounds like an overall faster and workable way for bootstrapping things again. Also, the technology developed as a precursor for offworld colonies would likely aid in things like detecting and diverting asteroids. Colonizing the difficult places on the Earth, such as seabeds, sea bottoms and places deep underground, would be a good way to practise for the everyday life offworld (can't go out just like that, all food farmed indoors, strict trash recycling regimes, etc.) but I don't think it would be equivalent as a "backup".

cwkoss 8y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if several of these exist already.

jeffbax 8y ago
Maybe that's where all of North Korea's nighttime electricity and lighting goes

d0lph 8y ago

Always keep an offsite backup.

vkou 8y ago
If keeping an offsite backup only let you back up 0.001% of your data, and cost you 1x of your annual revenue, your employer wouldn't keep one either.
- rossdavidh 8y ago
  I would say it's more like keeping a zip file of your data. It may not be as usable, but if you lose your primary you can reinflate it and it will do just fine.
  - bdamm 8y ago
    The water bears can re-inflate and the future of life on earth will be some other evolutionary tract. No worries mate. Why is humanity so important anyway?
    - limaoscarjuliet 8y ago
      It's the towels.
    - chriskanan 8y ago
      Some theories posit that Earth may contain the only life nearby (or possibly in the universe) [0]. Since we are the only space faring species on our planet, the water bears would need our help to preserve their genetic record. Life on Earth has less than 2 billion years left, but the universe in general has a lot more than that left. https://www.space.com/41080-alien-life-may-be-rare-today.html https://www.space.com/41080-alien-life-may-be-rare-today.htm...
  - posting2fast 8y ago
    Not if you the data loss is caused by an error or virus in the software, and you use that same software to access your "backup".
  - cm2187 8y ago
    If we die, does it matter to us than the human species survives somewhere? Like if it’s not going to protect me, why should it matter that much to me that I should support the effort?
- Anarch157a 8y ago
  Our data is in our DNA. A population of a few thousand would pretty much guarantee a 100% backup.

logfromblammo 8y ago

In the long run, ensuring the continued survival of humanity is not sufficient. We must also preserve our space-launch capabilities. It's a lot more difficult to launch through a rock ceiling, radioactive atmosphere, and a cloud of Kessler Syndrome fragments, from a gravity well 1G deep, than it is to launch from the surface of a rock with barely any atmosphere, a bare handful of satellites, in a well only 0.38G deep. Also, bear in mind that you won't just be stockpiling food, but sufficient biodiversity to reassemble a viable ecosystem, and sufficient industry and education to preserve a viable economy. Otherwise, you still die when the nutri-mat and atmo-pure machines finally break down. It's certainly easier to dig a deep hole and build a bunker in it, but that expense does not advance the end goal. It is merely insurance against a temporary setback. You still need to establish a launch-capable society on another planet, or everything dies anyway when the sun expands. Then, after that happens, someone will still be around to say, "It would be cheaper and easier to colonize and terraform Venus than to send generation ships every which way."....

bdamm 8y ago
> dig a deep hole and build a bunker in it But isn't that what colonizing Mars is, anyway? Mars has no biodiversity to speak of and won't be a host to ours without significant evolution or resources, so what's the plan there? Earth isn't just a convenient place to live. It's the only planet we can live on. Until we get warp drive or are much farther along in making a profit colonizing the solar system, not to mention in building better governments, it's just far too early to discuss colonizing Mars. Dreams are great but let's not get blinded by the hopes here. Let's plan a visit, and plan another visit 50 years after that.
ryanmercer 8y ago
>and a cloud of Kessler Syndrome fragments Ugh, don't get me started there. Musk wanting to do all these internet satellites interests me but seriously gives me nightmares too in regards to Kessler syndrome.
- baq 8y ago
  Starlink's birds are, according to publicly available information, to be put in a quicky decaying orbit.

tajen 8y ago

What would be interesting in such a colony is space is constrained much faster than on the surface of Earth. Birth doesn’t become something poetic but « Who will have to die for this child to live ». We’ll have to find the courage to tell people that one new inhabitant is not free of charge, as opposed to now. That constraint alone may set us in a much better mindset for solving problems when it comes to repopulating the surface.

vkou 8y ago

> If we're going to live in underground habitats on Mars for humanity-backup, isn't it easier to just build underground habitats on Earth? It is, unless the scenario you are hoping to survive is "Hordes of proles at the gates."

tomrod 8y ago

We should do both.

jandrese 8y ago

The only scenario I can imagine where underground habitats won't cut it is if we turn the Earth into another Venus. In that case the heat would eventually cook the underground habitats and kill everyone off. While global warming is by most accounts as bad or worse than the worst predictions thus far, we aren't quite to the absolute out of control greenhouse effect of Venus.

hasseio 8y ago
Additionally, if the Venus scenario became a possibility, then I would expect a WWII level effort (5-10 trillion dollars) in extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, convert to diamond and dump in the oceans.

windows_tips 8y ago

Is Mars tectonic? Living underground on Earth risks becoming stuck or crushed.

ryanmercer 8y ago
Some people have tossed the idea out, with science, that Mars was once tectonically active, see https://www.space.com/9683-surface-mars-possibly-shaped-plate-tectonics.html https://www.space.com/9683-surface-mars-possibly-shaped-plat... and https://www.space.com/17087-mars-surface-marsquakes-plate-tectonics.html https://www.space.com/17087-mars-surface-marsquakes-plate-te...

dalore 8y ago

You're saying like it's an either or situation. For sure it's cheap to build underground bunkers and stockpile. I wouldn't be surprised if there already isn't. So colonising somewhere other then Earth should also be a priority. A big risk are meteors. Just like the dinosaurs.

Steko 8y ago
OTOH a big risk to colonization is more advanced civilizations see other space colonizing species as a threat and decide to annihilate them.
calcifer 8y ago
> A big risk are meteors No they aren't. ~1km wide asteroids impact the Earth on average every 500,000 years and even then, it's too small to be an extinction level event. Not to mention all NEOs around that size are constantly monitored.
- dalore 8y ago
  If you think we are monitoring all PHO (potentially hazardous object) then you're mistaken. We can't possibly do that. Too many of them, sky is too big, and they don't give off anything. It's estimated we've only found 20-30% of these objects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentially_hazardous_object https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentially_hazardous_object
- jnurmine 8y ago
  A 1 km asteroid would do a lot of damage. It would not be a directly ELE but the consequences would be nevertheless large. Depending on where it hits, it might even lead to a complete collapse of a country or countries. Though the direct effects would be mostly local, the systemic effects would reverberate globally since in the modern world things (such as food production, supply chains, etc.) are so meshed together. Draw a 300 km circle at your chosen impact point, then say bye to everything inside the first 150 km. The rest of the circle would be damaged to a varying degree. You can easily find places for impact points which, although not an ELE, would still turn many, many people's lives nasty.

hyperpallium 8y ago

And even with nuclear winter, super-volcano, giant meteorite or other extinction-level event, the least hospitable places on Earth still beat Mars. Sure, an extra backup on Mars helps... but let's keep the backups we can do now, first. Also: spaceships... and tunnels. Next Elon enterprises should include underwater, Antartica or mountain-top habitats... and good practice for a Mars colony.

jnurmine 8y ago

Surviving an extinction-level event would necessitate a fully self-sufficient colony, but could such an underground base keep on sustaining itself, let alone grow and develop for as long as it takes for the dust to settle, so to say? The timescales could be very long, I have no idea how long but possibly thousands of years could be too short. A self-sufficient offworld colony is the best bet for normalcy and sounds like an overall faster and workable way for bootstrapping things again. Also, the technology developed as a precursor for offworld colonies would likely aid in things like detecting and diverting asteroids. Colonizing the difficult places on the Earth, such as seabeds, sea bottoms and places deep underground, would be a good way to practise for the everyday life offworld (can't go out just like that, all food farmed indoors, strict trash recycling regimes, etc.) but I don't think it would be equivalent as a "backup".