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>Just try to think about this: how bad do the conditions on Earth have to get before it makes sense to try to move to a planet that is essentially uninhabitable

>Just try to think about this: how bad do the conditions on Earth have to get before it makes sense to try to move to a planet that is essentially uninhabitable? Where even in the best scenarios we would live really harsh lives after a long and dangerous voyage. The point of colonizing Mars (for Musk) is not to move there when Earth becomes inhabitable. It's too remove the single point of failure for the species that Earth currently represents. With a self-sustainable (even if harsh) Mars colony, a nuclear war on Earth no longer necessarily means the end of humanity.

leto_ii 7y ago
> The point of colonizing Mars (for Musk) is not to move there when Earth becomes inhabitable. It's too remove the single point of failure for the species that Earth currently represents. Fair point. However it's sad to think that as a species we're so petty and narrow-minded that we need a backup in case we fuck this planet up ourselves. Maybe I'm too harsh, but I almost feel that we don't even deserve a backup if we can't avoid a nuclear holocaust or environmental collapse here on Earth.
- dfcowell 7y ago
  The backup is not necessarily against a man-made catastrophe. A stray asteroid in the right place at the wrong time is perfectly capable of fucking up Earth without our assistance.
  - ryandvm 7y ago
    Surviving even a Cretaceous–Tertiary sized extinction event on Earth would be a hell of a lot easier than trying to terraform and permanently colonize a planet like Mars that is missing its magnetic shield.
    - DarthGhandi 7y ago
      In a Lagrange point it's actually quite trivial to create a man made magnetic field to protect the planet. Dr Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA worked on it and fleshed out the details, it's viable and would actually restore a lot of the atmosphere stripped away constantly. As far as colonisation problems go the magnetic field is far down the list. There's a lot of work being done in this field. https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmosphere.html https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmo...
  - DerekL 7y ago
    Why don't we put effort into identifying and diverting the asteroids?
ThrowawayR2 7y ago
> "With a self-sustainable (even if harsh) Mars colony, a nuclear war on Earth no longer necessarily means the end of humanity." At least in terms of radiation, living on Mars seems less likely to be survivable than a nuclear war on Earth since fallout decays away but the space-based radiation bathing Mars is moderately high and permanent. See: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/death-on-mars1/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/death-on...
rapnie 7y ago
> With a self-sustainable (even if harsh) Mars colony How realistic is this self-sustainability? Where any moderately complex spare parts can be produced on Mars, instead of having to be supplied from Earth with yet another ultra-expensive supplies mission? Imho we are talking hundreds of years here. Until then our burning home base Earth remains a single point of failure. Better douse the fire first. Until then putting some people on Mars as a symbolic gesture to show humanity is still capable of grand achievements may be fine, esp. if that gives us hope we can tackle our other more immediate problems (though for me that is not needed).
- CrazyStat 7y ago
  Relying on spare parts from Earth for anything important is impossible, since it takes months to years for a one-way trip depending on where in their orbits the two planets are. I'm just speculating now, but I think this might be one reason Musk is so interested in robotic manufacturing (e.g. the failed "alien dreadnought" vision for the Model 3 production line). If you have mostly automated, flexible manufacturing systems that can be computer controlled and require minimal human expertise to operate then all you need is the computer files for whatever spare part you need to build. Set up 3-4 of these manufacturing centers at different spots for redundancy and you don't have to worry so much about spare part availability. The first effort (Model 3 assembly) was a disaster though.
- dwild 7y ago
  > Imho we are talking hundreds of years here. So we are already hundreds of years late, aren't we? Let's start right now to make this happen. > Better douse the fire first. Here we are again... the good old, well there's something else wrong, lets just fix that other thing wrong and ignore everything else. Why not working on both? What stop us from working on both? I would be happy to be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that you could do more to "douse the fire". We sadly can't stop doing 100% of what we do to fix everything.

leto_ii 7y ago

> The point of colonizing Mars (for Musk) is not to move there when Earth becomes inhabitable. It's too remove the single point of failure for the species that Earth currently represents. Fair point. However it's sad to think that as a species we're so petty and narrow-minded that we need a backup in case we fuck this planet up ourselves. Maybe I'm too harsh, but I almost feel that we don't even deserve a backup if we can't avoid a nuclear holocaust or environmental collapse here on Earth.

dfcowell 7y ago
The backup is not necessarily against a man-made catastrophe. A stray asteroid in the right place at the wrong time is perfectly capable of fucking up Earth without our assistance.
- ryandvm 7y ago
  Surviving even a Cretaceous–Tertiary sized extinction event on Earth would be a hell of a lot easier than trying to terraform and permanently colonize a planet like Mars that is missing its magnetic shield.
  - DarthGhandi 7y ago
    In a Lagrange point it's actually quite trivial to create a man made magnetic field to protect the planet. Dr Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA worked on it and fleshed out the details, it's viable and would actually restore a lot of the atmosphere stripped away constantly. As far as colonisation problems go the magnetic field is far down the list. There's a lot of work being done in this field. https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmosphere.html https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmo...
- DerekL 7y ago
  Why don't we put effort into identifying and diverting the asteroids?

ThrowawayR2 7y ago

> "With a self-sustainable (even if harsh) Mars colony, a nuclear war on Earth no longer necessarily means the end of humanity." At least in terms of radiation, living on Mars seems less likely to be survivable than a nuclear war on Earth since fallout decays away but the space-based radiation bathing Mars is moderately high and permanent. See: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/death-on-mars1/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/death-on...

rapnie 7y ago

> With a self-sustainable (even if harsh) Mars colony How realistic is this self-sustainability? Where any moderately complex spare parts can be produced on Mars, instead of having to be supplied from Earth with yet another ultra-expensive supplies mission? Imho we are talking hundreds of years here. Until then our burning home base Earth remains a single point of failure. Better douse the fire first. Until then putting some people on Mars as a symbolic gesture to show humanity is still capable of grand achievements may be fine, esp. if that gives us hope we can tackle our other more immediate problems (though for me that is not needed).

CrazyStat 7y ago
Relying on spare parts from Earth for anything important is impossible, since it takes months to years for a one-way trip depending on where in their orbits the two planets are. I'm just speculating now, but I think this might be one reason Musk is so interested in robotic manufacturing (e.g. the failed "alien dreadnought" vision for the Model 3 production line). If you have mostly automated, flexible manufacturing systems that can be computer controlled and require minimal human expertise to operate then all you need is the computer files for whatever spare part you need to build. Set up 3-4 of these manufacturing centers at different spots for redundancy and you don't have to worry so much about spare part availability. The first effort (Model 3 assembly) was a disaster though.
dwild 7y ago
> Imho we are talking hundreds of years here. So we are already hundreds of years late, aren't we? Let's start right now to make this happen. > Better douse the fire first. Here we are again... the good old, well there's something else wrong, lets just fix that other thing wrong and ignore everything else. Why not working on both? What stop us from working on both? I would be happy to be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that you could do more to "douse the fire". We sadly can't stop doing 100% of what we do to fix everything.