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I honestly don’t see any benefits to living on Mars until every inch of space on Earth is used up. Everything about living on Mars is hostile to life. Doing a

I honestly don’t see any benefits to living on Mars until every inch of space on Earth is used up. Everything about living on Mars is hostile to life. Doing anything there like mining and manufacturing will be orders of magnitude more difficult and for what? To say we are somewhere else that looks like the Atacama but infinitely more difficult to get to? It seems silly to be trying to rush to a place that wants to kill you when we have a great place here already that we could just stop messing up.

simplicio 8y ago
Yea, I think a good demonstration is Antarctica. Antarctica is both much more accessible and much more hospitable than Mars. But there's very little human activity there. It's hard to imagine there's an economic case for Mars or the Moon while Antarctica remains undeveloped.
- jpatokal 8y ago
  It's worth noting that Antarctica remains undeveloped in large part because the Antarctic Treaty System bans commercial exploitation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System Not that there would be much going on without the treaties, but it would likely be commercially viable for oil exploration or maybe mining.
- goshx 8y ago
  Colonizing Mars and others is not about the economy. It is about survival of the human race.
- russdill 8y ago
  Not necessarily true. The artic and Antarctic destroy structures over time. It's also dark for several months at a time.
  - simonh 8y ago
    No light for part of the year vs no air ever. Hmm, let me think about that one for a minute. I think settling Mars will and should happen, but anyone who doesn’t realise it will be thousands of times more expensive, risky and dependent on external support than eg Antarctica I think isn’t really grasping the difference in scale of the problem.
    - simplicio 8y ago
      Yea, I mean, just as far as accessibility, it costs 10,000 times more to deliver a pound of cargo to the ISS vs McMurdo station in antartica. I don't have numbers for the building and maintenance of the two stations, but presumably its even more than that.
    - anticensor 8y ago
      Mars does have an atmosphere, although unbreathable.
      - anoncake 8y ago
        I don't think it's called air if you can't breath it.
- dwaltrip 8y ago
  Antartica is not a stepping stone to further and greater endeavors out into the cosmos It's more of a "dead end", cosmically speaking. This is why it doesn't have same interest or appeal. There are also other reasons. You can't learn about the possibility of life on other planets in Antartica, and seek to answer one of the greatest questions of all time: "are we alone?". You can't closely study another planet in Antartica. You can't be a brave new explorer seeing incredible places for the very first time in Antartica. There are far less new scientific and engineering challenges in Antartica whose solutions will greatly benefit everyone here on Earth. And so on. Note, these things are true for any next-gen space endeavor in our corner of the solar system. It doesn't have to be Mars, or even just Mars. For example, we could build larger and more advanced facilities and machinery in LEO, while also building a small base on the moon and exploring Mars for the first time.
  - greglindahl 8y ago
    Antarctica is a great place to do science, and the majority of the activity at the US South Pole base is currently astronomy. Mars and the Moon will pass through that sort of phase before they might become actual colonies.
    - dwaltrip 8y ago
      Yeah, I don't mean to put down Antartica. I think the research we do there is very cool, and we should keep doing what we can there. But it isn't even close to an alternative to humanity pushing further out into space.
  - anoncake 8y ago
    > There are also other reasons. You can't learn about the possibility of life on other planets in Antartica, and seek to answer one of the greatest questions of all time: "are we alone?". You can't closely study another planet in Antartica. You can't be a brave new explorer seeing incredible places for the very first time in Antartica. There are far less new scientific and engineering challenges in Antartica whose solutions will greatly benefit everyone here on Earth. And so on. That's an argument against research on Antarctica, but that's the one thing humans do there.
goshx 8y ago
If we all wait to start anything in Mars when it is too late for our planet, well... humans won’t be around anymore. Think about Mars as redundancy site for the human race.
- JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
  But our "redundancy site" is awful for human life. Imagine if we just worked on fixing up the place we live on already that has air we can breathe, abundant liquid water, and isn't inundated with deadly radiation. We will need to leave Earth in 5 billion years when the sun goes red giant. 5 billion years is an INCREDIBLE amount of time. Things we do in 2019 will have zero influence on those times. It is much more likely we annihilate ourselves with nuclear weapons or global climate change and pollution way before then. In my opinion, it is better to spend money that would be spent on a silly Mars pipedream to put out those fires first.
  - goshx 8y ago
    > It is much more likely we annihilate ourselves with nuclear weapons or global climate change and pollution way before then That’s the point.
  - trainingaccount 8y ago
    It's actually in about 100 million years as the sun gradually increases in luminosity.
    - isostatic 8y ago
      Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu, Einstein, Morobuto, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes .. and all of this .. all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars."
    - 8y ago
fooker 8y ago
We do not have the technology to settle every inch of space on Earth in a sustainable manner. We also do not have the tech to live on Mars. There is a good chance that creating the tech for the later will make the former possible, but not vice versa.
7952 8y ago
The irony is that this kind of technology could be important on earth now. From an environmental perspective a closed ecological system could be very beneficial. A system where resources are not wasted or allowed to pollute. And where all outputs are used as an input for something else.
- imtringued 8y ago
  We already had this but then we decided to dig out fossil fuels and we could no longer go back to the previous life style.
z3phyr 8y ago
The benefit of going to mars is that it opens up knowledge and know how / experience upon the human race to go further beyond. Spreading our species gives an evolutionary advantage.
stcredzero 8y ago
Everything about living on Mars is hostile to life. Doing anything there like mining and manufacturing will be orders of magnitude more difficult and for what? Wasn't there a fair bit of difficulty involved in building fleets of sailing ships and exploring the Earth? As it so happens, the reward for doing so was to become dominant in the new global geopolitical context. There's an incentive to keep up in the new expansion of context to keep from being left behind and engulfed in a larger context. The potential total population of the solar system, even based on just on foreseeable technologies, asteroid resources, and solar power could easily be in the hundreds of billions. Fusion power increases that potential by orders of magnitude. It seems silly to be trying to rush to a place that wants to kill you when we have a great place here already that we could just stop messing up. These aren't mutually exclusive things. And make no mistake: Many things involving ocean travel prior to the industrial revolution literally involved rushing to places that want to kill you, via another place that wants to kill you. Isn't rushing to a place that wants to kill you another kind of "doing things that don't scale (at first)?" If it means eventual geopolitical dominance in a future larger context, there will be wealthy nations willing to foot the bill.
- greedo 8y ago
  It's been claimed that the high demand for timber is partially responsible for much of the deforestation of the British Isles. In fact, the demand was so high that the Colonies also provided a significant quantity. http://www.wou.edu/history/files/2015/08/Melby-Patrick.pdf http://www.wou.edu/history/files/2015/08/Melby-Patrick.pdf
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    The performance of the large American frigates may be partially attributable to the characteristics of American timber. https://www.quora.com/Why-did-USS-Constitution-bounce-cannon-balls-off-of-her-hull-Was-she-really-so-superior https://www.quora.com/Why-did-USS-Constitution-bounce-cannon... In Roman times, the British Isles were also a significant source of lead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Roman_Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Roman_Britain

simplicio 8y ago

Yea, I think a good demonstration is Antarctica. Antarctica is both much more accessible and much more hospitable than Mars. But there's very little human activity there. It's hard to imagine there's an economic case for Mars or the Moon while Antarctica remains undeveloped.

jpatokal 8y ago
It's worth noting that Antarctica remains undeveloped in large part because the Antarctic Treaty System bans commercial exploitation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System Not that there would be much going on without the treaties, but it would likely be commercially viable for oil exploration or maybe mining.
goshx 8y ago
Colonizing Mars and others is not about the economy. It is about survival of the human race.
russdill 8y ago
Not necessarily true. The artic and Antarctic destroy structures over time. It's also dark for several months at a time.
- simonh 8y ago
  No light for part of the year vs no air ever. Hmm, let me think about that one for a minute. I think settling Mars will and should happen, but anyone who doesn’t realise it will be thousands of times more expensive, risky and dependent on external support than eg Antarctica I think isn’t really grasping the difference in scale of the problem.
  - simplicio 8y ago
    Yea, I mean, just as far as accessibility, it costs 10,000 times more to deliver a pound of cargo to the ISS vs McMurdo station in antartica. I don't have numbers for the building and maintenance of the two stations, but presumably its even more than that.
  - anticensor 8y ago
    Mars does have an atmosphere, although unbreathable.
    - anoncake 8y ago
      I don't think it's called air if you can't breath it.
dwaltrip 8y ago
Antartica is not a stepping stone to further and greater endeavors out into the cosmos It's more of a "dead end", cosmically speaking. This is why it doesn't have same interest or appeal. There are also other reasons. You can't learn about the possibility of life on other planets in Antartica, and seek to answer one of the greatest questions of all time: "are we alone?". You can't closely study another planet in Antartica. You can't be a brave new explorer seeing incredible places for the very first time in Antartica. There are far less new scientific and engineering challenges in Antartica whose solutions will greatly benefit everyone here on Earth. And so on. Note, these things are true for any next-gen space endeavor in our corner of the solar system. It doesn't have to be Mars, or even just Mars. For example, we could build larger and more advanced facilities and machinery in LEO, while also building a small base on the moon and exploring Mars for the first time.
- greglindahl 8y ago
  Antarctica is a great place to do science, and the majority of the activity at the US South Pole base is currently astronomy. Mars and the Moon will pass through that sort of phase before they might become actual colonies.
  - dwaltrip 8y ago
    Yeah, I don't mean to put down Antartica. I think the research we do there is very cool, and we should keep doing what we can there. But it isn't even close to an alternative to humanity pushing further out into space.
- anoncake 8y ago
  > There are also other reasons. You can't learn about the possibility of life on other planets in Antartica, and seek to answer one of the greatest questions of all time: "are we alone?". You can't closely study another planet in Antartica. You can't be a brave new explorer seeing incredible places for the very first time in Antartica. There are far less new scientific and engineering challenges in Antartica whose solutions will greatly benefit everyone here on Earth. And so on. That's an argument against research on Antarctica, but that's the one thing humans do there.

goshx 8y ago

If we all wait to start anything in Mars when it is too late for our planet, well... humans won’t be around anymore. Think about Mars as redundancy site for the human race.

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
But our "redundancy site" is awful for human life. Imagine if we just worked on fixing up the place we live on already that has air we can breathe, abundant liquid water, and isn't inundated with deadly radiation. We will need to leave Earth in 5 billion years when the sun goes red giant. 5 billion years is an INCREDIBLE amount of time. Things we do in 2019 will have zero influence on those times. It is much more likely we annihilate ourselves with nuclear weapons or global climate change and pollution way before then. In my opinion, it is better to spend money that would be spent on a silly Mars pipedream to put out those fires first.
- goshx 8y ago
  > It is much more likely we annihilate ourselves with nuclear weapons or global climate change and pollution way before then That’s the point.
- trainingaccount 8y ago
  It's actually in about 100 million years as the sun gradually increases in luminosity.
  - isostatic 8y ago
    Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu, Einstein, Morobuto, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes .. and all of this .. all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars."
  - 8y ago

fooker 8y ago

We do not have the technology to settle every inch of space on Earth in a sustainable manner. We also do not have the tech to live on Mars. There is a good chance that creating the tech for the later will make the former possible, but not vice versa.

7952 8y ago

The irony is that this kind of technology could be important on earth now. From an environmental perspective a closed ecological system could be very beneficial. A system where resources are not wasted or allowed to pollute. And where all outputs are used as an input for something else.

imtringued 8y ago
We already had this but then we decided to dig out fossil fuels and we could no longer go back to the previous life style.

z3phyr 8y ago

The benefit of going to mars is that it opens up knowledge and know how / experience upon the human race to go further beyond. Spreading our species gives an evolutionary advantage.

stcredzero 8y ago

Everything about living on Mars is hostile to life. Doing anything there like mining and manufacturing will be orders of magnitude more difficult and for what? Wasn't there a fair bit of difficulty involved in building fleets of sailing ships and exploring the Earth? As it so happens, the reward for doing so was to become dominant in the new global geopolitical context. There's an incentive to keep up in the new expansion of context to keep from being left behind and engulfed in a larger context. The potential total population of the solar system, even based on just on foreseeable technologies, asteroid resources, and solar power could easily be in the hundreds of billions. Fusion power increases that potential by orders of magnitude. It seems silly to be trying to rush to a place that wants to kill you when we have a great place here already that we could just stop messing up. These aren't mutually exclusive things. And make no mistake: Many things involving ocean travel prior to the industrial revolution literally involved rushing to places that want to kill you, via another place that wants to kill you. Isn't rushing to a place that wants to kill you another kind of "doing things that don't scale (at first)?" If it means eventual geopolitical dominance in a future larger context, there will be wealthy nations willing to foot the bill.

greedo 8y ago
It's been claimed that the high demand for timber is partially responsible for much of the deforestation of the British Isles. In fact, the demand was so high that the Colonies also provided a significant quantity. http://www.wou.edu/history/files/2015/08/Melby-Patrick.pdf http://www.wou.edu/history/files/2015/08/Melby-Patrick.pdf
- stcredzero 8y ago
  The performance of the large American frigates may be partially attributable to the characteristics of American timber. https://www.quora.com/Why-did-USS-Constitution-bounce-cannon-balls-off-of-her-hull-Was-she-really-so-superior https://www.quora.com/Why-did-USS-Constitution-bounce-cannon... In Roman times, the British Isles were also a significant source of lead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Roman_Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Roman_Britain