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> 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
by 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 agoThe 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 agoSurviving 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 agoIn 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 agoWhy don't we put effort into identifying and diverting the asteroids?