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JFK sold us on space because "we choose to do these things because they are hard." It was an aspirational exploratory message. The reality is that we are in sp

JFK sold us on space because "we choose to do these things because they are hard." It was an aspirational exploratory message. The reality is that we are in space because it is required for great power contests. I'm mired in space as a DoD executive, so I promise you space - at least inside the GEO orbits - is extremely practical. Starlink is honestly amazing. Mars though? I've steel-manned that one and I don't see it as anything more than what JFK did. Tickling the never-ending exploration/expansion desires of humanity. I say it frequently: Outside of the sun exploding or the moon crashing into earth, there is no future event that would make earth as uninhabitable as Mars is today.

wrsh07 7y ago
Is that true of nuclear winter or a major impact event? Wouldn't either of those render the Earth temporarily uninhabitable? Is the argument that it would be easy enough to build on Earth places to survive such events rather than going to Mars?
- rubidium 7y ago
  A massive, underground biodome would be cheaper and easier.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    Can't fall behind on the mineshaft gap.
- msl 7y ago
  > Is the argument that it would be easy enough to build on Earth places to survive such events rather than going to Mars? I'd say the argument is that Mars is currently a (much) less hospitable place for life as we know it than the Earth in any nuclear winter scenario that I know of.
- jcranmer 7y ago
  Nuclear winter is probably quite survivable. Its mechanisms are the same as volcanic winters, with the caveat that it requires the assumption that nuclear weapons will result in uncontrollably large fires in cities that are as effective stratospheric soot pumps as volcanoes. And the worst volcanic winter in recorded history was in 1816, and the fact that you probably never learned anything about it in your history class should give you some indication of how close it was to a humanity extinction event.
- jacobush 7y ago
  No, the Earth after nuclear winter or just about any disaster is still more hospitable than Mars. I still would like to live to see Mars colonized.
- AndrewKemendo 7y ago
  Yes it includes all those examples. Humans could endeavor to build many vast underground or undersea habitats (mineshaft gap!) that serve as a protective function for, I dunno 1 millionth(?) the cost of sending a terraform crew Mars with probably a million X more capacity to support humanity, plus the ability to use it and iterate on it right now. Doesn't sound very sexy though right? Kind of like all the data engineering, infrastructure plumbing I do to help our data scientists and ML folks do the sexy inference work. I'll do a little pre-buttal here about what kind of science we're "losing out on" by not pursuing more space: Building for underground or undersea habitats has significantly less research put into it than space habitation, so you'd see an equivalent boom in research/technology development that has dual use as we did in the 1950s likely.
  - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
    Mars has a built-in advantage of distance from the hordes of desperate people who would destroy a too-small or half-done habitat if it helps them survive next week (if disaster strikes before you are ready for example). Nobody can blame them, yet it is a valid and expected hazard.
  - dwild 7y ago
    > I'll do a little pre-buttal here about what kind of science we're "losing out on" by not pursuing more space: Building for underground or undersea habitats has significantly less research put into it than space habitation, so you'd see an equivalent boom in research/technology development that has dual use as we did in the 1950s likely. This is so absurd. You aren't losing anything by pursuing more space. What's up with all the binary stuff in theses discussions? Why every time someone talks about no doing something, the argument are that binary? You know you can do both right? It's not space or water. We don't have a thresold where we have to choose between one or the other. Research into underground and undersea habitats doesn't happen because we are unable to make them happen, not because we love space. Our society is interested into space, just like you said, it's "sexy". It's also filled with potential, space mining for example is worth trillions. It's also filled with unknown, there's reasons why stars are so much filled with legends, stories and mythology. That's what make space something that sell, unlike underground or undersea. So the alternative isn't underground or undersea research, it's no research at all. You can make undeground or undersea research sexy. Go for it! I'll be the first one to support your cause, more research is always better. Please stop arguing for less research....
- keanzu 7y ago
  The only thing that I can think of to make Mars a better option than Earth is if Earth is struck by some truly gigantic asteroid. But it would have to be big enough to seriously damage a 1,000 trillion metric ton ball (we'll take it as given that the Earth isn't flat) of iron. Merely stripping the atmosphere wouldn't be enough - you need to fundamentally compromise the structural integrity of the planet to make it as unlivable as Mars.
est31 7y ago
The US federal government owns roughly a quarter of the US territory and most of it can't really be utilized for something. Technology to terraform it into arable land would unlock tremendous value.
- rgblambda 7y ago
  At the risk of reducing the reflectiveness of said land from the rays of the sun and causing an increase in global temperatures.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    You could of course increase it instead.
  - est31 7y ago
    Biomatter (plants) also captures carbon. What if you used half of the biomatter output generated this way to sequester CO2?
- neaden 7y ago
  It's kind of sad that you consider land being left in it's natural state as a waste. We have more then enough land for crops and everything else, we can just let some of it exist.
  - est31 7y ago
    Not all of the federal lands are national parks. I'm not advocating for their dissolval. Only talking about the parts that are literally barren. You could e.g. put solar farms there that generate H2 or methane and fix the renewable energy problem. If you check the satellite photographs, so many parts of earth are yellow. I want them to be green and teeming with life, just like the other parts.
    - neaden 7y ago
      Nothing is literally barren though. They still have life of some kind there, even the desert does. Nature isn't just the stuff that is green and teeming with life.
londons_explore 7y ago
There could be strategic military advantages to having people on Mars. Nuclear mutual assured destruction doesn't work if one side has a base on mars, where it would take 6+ months for any fired nuke to arrive. Having people in spacecraft could be a good place for high-importance leaders - nearly no bunker is nuke-proof, but a spacecraft far away is far harder to hit.
- emiliobumachar 7y ago
  Could you please spell out how would nuclear MAD stop working? The way I see it, the Mars base could be ignored for MAD purposes unless it's self sufficient and large enough to be considered civilizational survival. By the point it can no longer be ignored, the other side will just aim a couple nukes at it - what will the colonists do, move the base in months? (Also, tangentially, I don't think the whole transit time would apply to something expected to blow up on arrival. It doesn't need to slow down enough to land, just enough to survive plowing trough Mars' thin atmosphere before slamming extra hard on the ground. Heh, for a small enough base the attacker might skip the actual nuclear warhead altogether.)
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    > what will the colonists do, move the base in months? Yes. If you knew that your city would be destroyed in 6 months, you'd build a new one elsewhere. People on earth don't have that privilege due to not having 6 months notice.
    - jcranmer 7y ago
      How long do you think it takes to build a city?
    - est31 7y ago
      The 6 months travel time are with current technology, and in a few decades we might be able to have better propulsion systems. It's like saying that keeping the MAD threat alive is expensive because you have to refuel those bombers that circle over the arctic... eventually you find better tech. Also, once the nuke rocket is near mars, it takes only a signal at light speed to re-direct it at whatever settlement you want to target.
keanzu 7y ago
> I don't see it as anything more than what JFK did. Tickling the never-ending exploration/expansion desires of humanity. I would agree. This is what fuels SpaceX. Aspiration. He's generated excitement and interest in space that rivals what JFK did, it doesn't have to be more. People in my life with no previous interest in the subject now want to hear all about it.
Waterluvian 7y ago
I feel that JFK could give such a rousing speech that touched our spirits because he already had the Soviet threat with which to touch our pocketbooks. I imagine the closest Musk has is the threat of climate disaster?
- mr_toad 7y ago
  JFK had to justify huge public expenditure to the American public. Musk only needs to sell it to the board.
njb311 7y ago
I agree, earth orbit is great for deploying tech that helps us on the surface. The moon may prove useful if there's something of sufficient value to bring back. Mars is pure 'human endeavour', putting it kindly. Some individuals with large egos and wallets are pursuing it just because they can. Any sense in which Mars could be 'colonised' is indeed fantasy unless we are talking over a hundreds-to-thousands-of-years timescale, and you can be sure that it wouldn't be some haven. For one thing, the military would be the first to occupy, and if that was the military of one country you can be sure that they'd be joined by another fairly soon, and then... Given we seem to struggle with working out how humans will get on okay on earth in the coming decades, we should not be distracting resources (our own and our planet's) until we have solved some more pressing issues. Given most of the 'wealth' that we have today has been created by exploiting fossil fuels (or exists only within financial systems), we have a huge job ahead in transforming society into something more sustainable. > there is no future event that would make earth as uninhabitable as Mars is today As I heard someone say recently: while we think about terra-forming Mars, we are busy Mars-forming Earth.
- keanzu 7y ago
  > the military would be the first to occupy What's your reasoning here? The purpose of the military is to defend valuables from others. Deploying military to Mars is as likely as deploying military to the Antarctic. Scientists will be the first and probably last to occupy. Difficult to imagine it will ever expand much beyond research missions. The Antarctic environment is far less harsh than Mars and no-one maintains a permanent base there.
  - mynegation 7y ago
    Not because of the lack of trying though: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_activity_in_the_Antarctic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_activity_in_the_Ant...
    - keanzu 7y ago
      Text from that link: As Antarctica has never been permanently settled by humans, there has historically been little military activity in the Antarctic. Because the Antarctic Treaty, which came into effect on June 23, 1961, bans military activity in Antarctica, military personnel and equipment may only be used for scientific research or any other peaceful purpose (such as delivering supplies) on the continent.
ShorsHammer 7y ago
Am not American, am not old. That entire speech at Rice University gives me goosebumps everytime, it's historic and set in motion events that changed the world forever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ateh7hnEnik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ateh7hnEnik
34679 7y ago
> there is no future event that would make earth as uninhabitable as Mars is today. Wouldn't that imply if we can make Mars habitable, then we'll be capable of dealing with whatever problems arise here on Earth? Think of it as a nice test run without the immediate fate of humanity's only biosphere at stake.
- AndrewKemendo 7y ago
  The costs involved in turning Mars into an experimental environment, call it a "twin", would likely eclipse the sum total of human activity to date (300k years worth) by several orders of magnitude.
  - 34679 7y ago
    That's fine, unless we have something better to do. If it takes 10,000 years or 100,000 years, it doesn't matter, unless the work being done is detracting from more important work. Many people, myself included, would struggle to think of more impactful goals for humanity to accomplish. Feeding, clothing, and housing everyone would be nice, but those things are still far more personal than any project that aims to prolong our very existence as a species.
    - AndrewKemendo 7y ago
      I argue we should be building a more capable and survivable successor to biological intelligence that can survive beyond traditional biological extinction periods (M of years).
      - cgriswald 7y ago
        It's a bit of a false dichotomy to suggest we have to choose between the two, but... If we must choose, we should choose to colonize Mars. Statistically speaking, an asteroid impact is inevitable. Time is the relevant variable. The sooner humanity can be a multi-world species, the sooner we are more robust against that threat. The same will be true of our successors who will necessarily have less time than we to spread from Earth. If we manage to spread to other worlds and Earth is destroyed, we will still be around to develop our successors (and will also have a leg up on spreading to ever more worlds). If we manage to create our successors and the Earth is destroyed before we get to other worlds, it's game over.
JulianMorrison 7y ago
I think he wants to be Emperor Elon the first of Mars. It would be convenient for tax purposes, and there's lots of real estate to sell. Mars at ground level may be an uninhabitable dump, but Mars orbit is very strategic. And of course, a rocket that gets you to Mars gets you a lot of places. Like mineral-rich asteroids. Who would probably trans-ship minerals via Mars orbit.
robomartin 7y ago
I agree with your views. I think there's far more to gain, at many levels, from going to the moon and getting good at it. NASA's Artemis project is a bold and interesting proposal for our return to the moon (full disclosure, I might soon be neck-deep in a project connected to Artemis). One thing people who are not exposed to the realities of aerospace don't understand is just how difficult and improbable this stuff can be. As complex as it is, going to the ISS is child's play when compared to the moon and beyond. For one thing, the earth's magnetic field and atmosphere provide valuable protection in near space. Once you leave that protective blanket, as I like to say, everything out there is trying to kill you and drill holes into you at the speed of light. I think we can, with effort and investment, achieve regular missions to the moon and slowly build-up our knowledge as well as a solid base of operations. In, perhaps, 25 years or more, we could consider launching into deeper space from the moon. I just don't see the value of risking so much just to set foot on Mars. People are far more likely to die a horrible death due to our hubris than anything else. The risk would reduce substantially if we could prove we are capable of reliable and safe missions to the moon. There is no way I would want to send people to mars without first demonstrating exceptional capabilities and safety on the moon.

wrsh07 7y ago

Is that true of nuclear winter or a major impact event? Wouldn't either of those render the Earth temporarily uninhabitable? Is the argument that it would be easy enough to build on Earth places to survive such events rather than going to Mars?

rubidium 7y ago
A massive, underground biodome would be cheaper and easier.
- jacobush 7y ago
  Can't fall behind on the mineshaft gap.
msl 7y ago
> Is the argument that it would be easy enough to build on Earth places to survive such events rather than going to Mars? I'd say the argument is that Mars is currently a (much) less hospitable place for life as we know it than the Earth in any nuclear winter scenario that I know of.
jcranmer 7y ago
Nuclear winter is probably quite survivable. Its mechanisms are the same as volcanic winters, with the caveat that it requires the assumption that nuclear weapons will result in uncontrollably large fires in cities that are as effective stratospheric soot pumps as volcanoes. And the worst volcanic winter in recorded history was in 1816, and the fact that you probably never learned anything about it in your history class should give you some indication of how close it was to a humanity extinction event.
jacobush 7y ago
No, the Earth after nuclear winter or just about any disaster is still more hospitable than Mars. I still would like to live to see Mars colonized.
AndrewKemendo 7y ago
Yes it includes all those examples. Humans could endeavor to build many vast underground or undersea habitats (mineshaft gap!) that serve as a protective function for, I dunno 1 millionth(?) the cost of sending a terraform crew Mars with probably a million X more capacity to support humanity, plus the ability to use it and iterate on it right now. Doesn't sound very sexy though right? Kind of like all the data engineering, infrastructure plumbing I do to help our data scientists and ML folks do the sexy inference work. I'll do a little pre-buttal here about what kind of science we're "losing out on" by not pursuing more space: Building for underground or undersea habitats has significantly less research put into it than space habitation, so you'd see an equivalent boom in research/technology development that has dual use as we did in the 1950s likely.
- UnFleshedOne 7y ago
  Mars has a built-in advantage of distance from the hordes of desperate people who would destroy a too-small or half-done habitat if it helps them survive next week (if disaster strikes before you are ready for example). Nobody can blame them, yet it is a valid and expected hazard.
- dwild 7y ago
  > I'll do a little pre-buttal here about what kind of science we're "losing out on" by not pursuing more space: Building for underground or undersea habitats has significantly less research put into it than space habitation, so you'd see an equivalent boom in research/technology development that has dual use as we did in the 1950s likely. This is so absurd. You aren't losing anything by pursuing more space. What's up with all the binary stuff in theses discussions? Why every time someone talks about no doing something, the argument are that binary? You know you can do both right? It's not space or water. We don't have a thresold where we have to choose between one or the other. Research into underground and undersea habitats doesn't happen because we are unable to make them happen, not because we love space. Our society is interested into space, just like you said, it's "sexy". It's also filled with potential, space mining for example is worth trillions. It's also filled with unknown, there's reasons why stars are so much filled with legends, stories and mythology. That's what make space something that sell, unlike underground or undersea. So the alternative isn't underground or undersea research, it's no research at all. You can make undeground or undersea research sexy. Go for it! I'll be the first one to support your cause, more research is always better. Please stop arguing for less research....
keanzu 7y ago
The only thing that I can think of to make Mars a better option than Earth is if Earth is struck by some truly gigantic asteroid. But it would have to be big enough to seriously damage a 1,000 trillion metric ton ball (we'll take it as given that the Earth isn't flat) of iron. Merely stripping the atmosphere wouldn't be enough - you need to fundamentally compromise the structural integrity of the planet to make it as unlivable as Mars.

est31 7y ago

The US federal government owns roughly a quarter of the US territory and most of it can't really be utilized for something. Technology to terraform it into arable land would unlock tremendous value.

rgblambda 7y ago
At the risk of reducing the reflectiveness of said land from the rays of the sun and causing an increase in global temperatures.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  You could of course increase it instead.
- est31 7y ago
  Biomatter (plants) also captures carbon. What if you used half of the biomatter output generated this way to sequester CO2?
neaden 7y ago
It's kind of sad that you consider land being left in it's natural state as a waste. We have more then enough land for crops and everything else, we can just let some of it exist.
- est31 7y ago
  Not all of the federal lands are national parks. I'm not advocating for their dissolval. Only talking about the parts that are literally barren. You could e.g. put solar farms there that generate H2 or methane and fix the renewable energy problem. If you check the satellite photographs, so many parts of earth are yellow. I want them to be green and teeming with life, just like the other parts.
  - neaden 7y ago
    Nothing is literally barren though. They still have life of some kind there, even the desert does. Nature isn't just the stuff that is green and teeming with life.

londons_explore 7y ago

There could be strategic military advantages to having people on Mars. Nuclear mutual assured destruction doesn't work if one side has a base on mars, where it would take 6+ months for any fired nuke to arrive. Having people in spacecraft could be a good place for high-importance leaders - nearly no bunker is nuke-proof, but a spacecraft far away is far harder to hit.

emiliobumachar 7y ago
Could you please spell out how would nuclear MAD stop working? The way I see it, the Mars base could be ignored for MAD purposes unless it's self sufficient and large enough to be considered civilizational survival. By the point it can no longer be ignored, the other side will just aim a couple nukes at it - what will the colonists do, move the base in months? (Also, tangentially, I don't think the whole transit time would apply to something expected to blow up on arrival. It doesn't need to slow down enough to land, just enough to survive plowing trough Mars' thin atmosphere before slamming extra hard on the ground. Heh, for a small enough base the attacker might skip the actual nuclear warhead altogether.)
- londons_explore 7y ago
  > what will the colonists do, move the base in months? Yes. If you knew that your city would be destroyed in 6 months, you'd build a new one elsewhere. People on earth don't have that privilege due to not having 6 months notice.
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    How long do you think it takes to build a city?
  - est31 7y ago
    The 6 months travel time are with current technology, and in a few decades we might be able to have better propulsion systems. It's like saying that keeping the MAD threat alive is expensive because you have to refuel those bombers that circle over the arctic... eventually you find better tech. Also, once the nuke rocket is near mars, it takes only a signal at light speed to re-direct it at whatever settlement you want to target.

keanzu 7y ago

> I don't see it as anything more than what JFK did. Tickling the never-ending exploration/expansion desires of humanity. I would agree. This is what fuels SpaceX. Aspiration. He's generated excitement and interest in space that rivals what JFK did, it doesn't have to be more. People in my life with no previous interest in the subject now want to hear all about it.

Waterluvian 7y ago

I feel that JFK could give such a rousing speech that touched our spirits because he already had the Soviet threat with which to touch our pocketbooks. I imagine the closest Musk has is the threat of climate disaster?

mr_toad 7y ago
JFK had to justify huge public expenditure to the American public. Musk only needs to sell it to the board.

njb311 7y ago

I agree, earth orbit is great for deploying tech that helps us on the surface. The moon may prove useful if there's something of sufficient value to bring back. Mars is pure 'human endeavour', putting it kindly. Some individuals with large egos and wallets are pursuing it just because they can. Any sense in which Mars could be 'colonised' is indeed fantasy unless we are talking over a hundreds-to-thousands-of-years timescale, and you can be sure that it wouldn't be some haven. For one thing, the military would be the first to occupy, and if that was the military of one country you can be sure that they'd be joined by another fairly soon, and then... Given we seem to struggle with working out how humans will get on okay on earth in the coming decades, we should not be distracting resources (our own and our planet's) until we have solved some more pressing issues. Given most of the 'wealth' that we have today has been created by exploiting fossil fuels (or exists only within financial systems), we have a huge job ahead in transforming society into something more sustainable. > there is no future event that would make earth as uninhabitable as Mars is today As I heard someone say recently: while we think about terra-forming Mars, we are busy Mars-forming Earth.

keanzu 7y ago
> the military would be the first to occupy What's your reasoning here? The purpose of the military is to defend valuables from others. Deploying military to Mars is as likely as deploying military to the Antarctic. Scientists will be the first and probably last to occupy. Difficult to imagine it will ever expand much beyond research missions. The Antarctic environment is far less harsh than Mars and no-one maintains a permanent base there.
- mynegation 7y ago
  Not because of the lack of trying though: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_activity_in_the_Antarctic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_activity_in_the_Ant...
  - keanzu 7y ago
    Text from that link: As Antarctica has never been permanently settled by humans, there has historically been little military activity in the Antarctic. Because the Antarctic Treaty, which came into effect on June 23, 1961, bans military activity in Antarctica, military personnel and equipment may only be used for scientific research or any other peaceful purpose (such as delivering supplies) on the continent.

ShorsHammer 7y ago

Am not American, am not old. That entire speech at Rice University gives me goosebumps everytime, it's historic and set in motion events that changed the world forever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ateh7hnEnik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ateh7hnEnik

34679 7y ago

> there is no future event that would make earth as uninhabitable as Mars is today. Wouldn't that imply if we can make Mars habitable, then we'll be capable of dealing with whatever problems arise here on Earth? Think of it as a nice test run without the immediate fate of humanity's only biosphere at stake.

AndrewKemendo 7y ago
The costs involved in turning Mars into an experimental environment, call it a "twin", would likely eclipse the sum total of human activity to date (300k years worth) by several orders of magnitude.
- 34679 7y ago
  That's fine, unless we have something better to do. If it takes 10,000 years or 100,000 years, it doesn't matter, unless the work being done is detracting from more important work. Many people, myself included, would struggle to think of more impactful goals for humanity to accomplish. Feeding, clothing, and housing everyone would be nice, but those things are still far more personal than any project that aims to prolong our very existence as a species.
  - AndrewKemendo 7y ago
    I argue we should be building a more capable and survivable successor to biological intelligence that can survive beyond traditional biological extinction periods (M of years).
    - cgriswald 7y ago
      It's a bit of a false dichotomy to suggest we have to choose between the two, but... If we must choose, we should choose to colonize Mars. Statistically speaking, an asteroid impact is inevitable. Time is the relevant variable. The sooner humanity can be a multi-world species, the sooner we are more robust against that threat. The same will be true of our successors who will necessarily have less time than we to spread from Earth. If we manage to spread to other worlds and Earth is destroyed, we will still be around to develop our successors (and will also have a leg up on spreading to ever more worlds). If we manage to create our successors and the Earth is destroyed before we get to other worlds, it's game over.

JulianMorrison 7y ago

I think he wants to be Emperor Elon the first of Mars. It would be convenient for tax purposes, and there's lots of real estate to sell. Mars at ground level may be an uninhabitable dump, but Mars orbit is very strategic. And of course, a rocket that gets you to Mars gets you a lot of places. Like mineral-rich asteroids. Who would probably trans-ship minerals via Mars orbit.

robomartin 7y ago

I agree with your views. I think there's far more to gain, at many levels, from going to the moon and getting good at it. NASA's Artemis project is a bold and interesting proposal for our return to the moon (full disclosure, I might soon be neck-deep in a project connected to Artemis). One thing people who are not exposed to the realities of aerospace don't understand is just how difficult and improbable this stuff can be. As complex as it is, going to the ISS is child's play when compared to the moon and beyond. For one thing, the earth's magnetic field and atmosphere provide valuable protection in near space. Once you leave that protective blanket, as I like to say, everything out there is trying to kill you and drill holes into you at the speed of light. I think we can, with effort and investment, achieve regular missions to the moon and slowly build-up our knowledge as well as a solid base of operations. In, perhaps, 25 years or more, we could consider launching into deeper space from the moon. I just don't see the value of risking so much just to set foot on Mars. People are far more likely to die a horrible death due to our hubris than anything else. The risk would reduce substantially if we could prove we are capable of reliable and safe missions to the moon. There is no way I would want to send people to mars without first demonstrating exceptional capabilities and safety on the moon.