5 ms·

If people look at creating a Mars colony as a voluntary extreme sport, like climbing Everest, BASE jumping, or wingsuit flying, with their corresponding death r

If people look at creating a Mars colony as a voluntary extreme sport, like climbing Everest, BASE jumping, or wingsuit flying, with their corresponding death rates, you might understand the motivation of the people wanting to go to mars a bit better. For those types of people risking death to do something extreme is fun and going to Mars would be both very high risk and extreme. A safety first attitude won't build a spacefaring civilization, but hopefully the Elon Musk anti-hype squad does not stop people from using their own resources to try and build one. You won't know the what the severe issues are till you are there and trying to stay alive will be a great motivator to solve problems quickly. Simulating Mars gravity on Earth is impossible so Mars is going to be the best place to build a working model of a Mars colony.

apocalypstyx 8y ago
> For those types of people risking death to do something extreme is fun and going to Mars would be both very high risk and extreme. Getting there would be. Living there would be constant danger plus tedium, the space equivalent of working on a farm barely making ends meet for the rest of your life. Such lives don't have enough dopamine hits to keep people of such dispositions around long.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  Getting there would be lots of tedium, too.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    One could try to turn it into a nonstop zero-G orgy. But that would become lots of tedium too.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Real life in the West is an unending stream of tedium, ocassionally interrupted by something exciting on TV. Humans, somehow, manage.
- peterlk 8y ago
  > Living there would be constant danger plus tedium, the space equivalent of working on a farm barely making ends meet for the rest of your life. Such lives don't have enough dopamine hits to keep people of such dispositions around long. Training for ultra-marathons (and running them) is painful and tedious. The thing that people need are goals. For example "survive on Mars for 2 months". Then the next person will come along and say "I bet I can do in for 3". Then 6, then 12. And if enough people do it, suddenly you have a "base camp" from which to run your extreme survival competitions. The dopamine drip will last a long time. Eventually, someone will fall in love with Mars in the same way they fall in love with Everest or El Capitan, or whatever, and then a colony can start. Humans are crazy, and a subset of us enjoy pushing past the boundaries merely to prove that it is possible to ourselves. To prove that we have no limits. I think those people should be given every opportunity that humanity can afford to give them to push the limits of human capability.
maxxxxx 8y ago
"You won't know the what the severe issues are till you are there and trying to stay alive will be a great motivator to solve problems quickly. Simulating Mars gravity on Earth is impossible so Mars is going to be the best place to build a working model of a Mars colony. " Gravity is probably one of the smaller problems. I don't see the point of going to Mars until we have a lot of experience doing similar things on the Moon or just on Earth. We should also have done a lot of long-distance flights like going to an Asteroid or just orbiting Mars first. Right now a Mars colony would be plain suicide.
- hutzlibu 8y ago
  "Right now a Mars colony would be plain suicide. " If the plan is to have a self-sustaining colony, then yes. But if supply flights are guarantied, I don't see the problem. You can grow food in space. We do. We just can't have a enclosed system yet and are probably quite far away from it. But I agree, that I think it makes much sense to do more ground- and moonwork first.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > But if supply flights are guarantied Nothing in spaceflight is guaranteed, and Earth-Mars spaceflight is a lot less subject to guarantee than Earth-ISS spaceflight, which hasn't been trouble free.
    - hutzlibu 8y ago
      Sure, but supplies last a bit and can be made reduntant. So as long as there is a steady stream, wheter every half year or 2 years .. it is possible. Expensive, sure, but possible.

apocalypstyx 8y ago

> For those types of people risking death to do something extreme is fun and going to Mars would be both very high risk and extreme. Getting there would be. Living there would be constant danger plus tedium, the space equivalent of working on a farm barely making ends meet for the rest of your life. Such lives don't have enough dopamine hits to keep people of such dispositions around long.

dragonwriter 8y ago
Getting there would be lots of tedium, too.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  One could try to turn it into a nonstop zero-G orgy. But that would become lots of tedium too.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Real life in the West is an unending stream of tedium, ocassionally interrupted by something exciting on TV. Humans, somehow, manage.
peterlk 8y ago
> Living there would be constant danger plus tedium, the space equivalent of working on a farm barely making ends meet for the rest of your life. Such lives don't have enough dopamine hits to keep people of such dispositions around long. Training for ultra-marathons (and running them) is painful and tedious. The thing that people need are goals. For example "survive on Mars for 2 months". Then the next person will come along and say "I bet I can do in for 3". Then 6, then 12. And if enough people do it, suddenly you have a "base camp" from which to run your extreme survival competitions. The dopamine drip will last a long time. Eventually, someone will fall in love with Mars in the same way they fall in love with Everest or El Capitan, or whatever, and then a colony can start. Humans are crazy, and a subset of us enjoy pushing past the boundaries merely to prove that it is possible to ourselves. To prove that we have no limits. I think those people should be given every opportunity that humanity can afford to give them to push the limits of human capability.

maxxxxx 8y ago

"You won't know the what the severe issues are till you are there and trying to stay alive will be a great motivator to solve problems quickly. Simulating Mars gravity on Earth is impossible so Mars is going to be the best place to build a working model of a Mars colony. " Gravity is probably one of the smaller problems. I don't see the point of going to Mars until we have a lot of experience doing similar things on the Moon or just on Earth. We should also have done a lot of long-distance flights like going to an Asteroid or just orbiting Mars first. Right now a Mars colony would be plain suicide.

hutzlibu 8y ago
"Right now a Mars colony would be plain suicide. " If the plan is to have a self-sustaining colony, then yes. But if supply flights are guarantied, I don't see the problem. You can grow food in space. We do. We just can't have a enclosed system yet and are probably quite far away from it. But I agree, that I think it makes much sense to do more ground- and moonwork first.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > But if supply flights are guarantied Nothing in spaceflight is guaranteed, and Earth-Mars spaceflight is a lot less subject to guarantee than Earth-ISS spaceflight, which hasn't been trouble free.
  - hutzlibu 8y ago
    Sure, but supplies last a bit and can be made reduntant. So as long as there is a steady stream, wheter every half year or 2 years .. it is possible. Expensive, sure, but possible.