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Im no less a science fiction fan than the next person but the whole “colonize Mars” thing is stupid and wasteful and arrogant and really pounds the message that

Im no less a science fiction fan than the next person but the whole “colonize Mars” thing is stupid and wasteful and arrogant and really pounds the message that billionaires are deeply deeply out of touch with the rest of society. Not only will colonizing Mars never work, there’s no reason at all to want to. What a dead, barren place. And in the meantime back down to earth people are really starting to care about inequality. Meanwhile billionaires pour resources into childish flights of fancy when the world is literally burning. Ugh. I really think billionaires have a place in our society but these sorts of projects make me understand why others question whether some people should have such huge control of resources. No one is even visiting Mars, let alone colonizing it.

zozbot234 7y ago
Yes, we aren't colonizing the Gobi Desert and we're supposed to colonize Mars? What a silly idea.
- Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
  We did colonize Dubai, that was a desert... Israel was a pretty deserty place too a while ago...
- wongarsu 7y ago
  Running out of room on Earth isn't the issue here. And as the other comment notes, we are pretty good at colonizing deserts if we want to (we are also good at making deserts, but that's another problem).
- NikolaeVarius 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobi_Desert#European_exploration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobi_Desert#European_explorati... > The Gobi had a long history of human habitation, mostly by nomadic peoples. By the early 20th century, the region was under the nominal control of Manchu-China, and inhabited mostly by Mongols, Uyghurs, and Kazakhs.
bobcostas55 7y ago
Buddy, we're gonna dysonsphere every sun in the galaxy. Mars isn't arrogant, it's just that we have to learn to crawl before we start running.
- Udik 7y ago
  Should we wait until we get a warp drive engine? Because thinking of reaching anything further than our solar system with our current physics (not technology- that we can improve by building stuff) is more silly than trying to cross the Pacific ocean with help of a floating rubber duck.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mkl 7y ago
    Even at (way) sub-light speeds, it's probably possible. Whether it's automated self-replicating ships (possibly carrying humans as gene sequences), or generation ships (seems pretty hellish!), a number of people have estimated mathematically that it's doable. Estimates vary wildly, of course, as there are many unknowns, but basically exponential growth gets unintuitively fast. Some links (there are many more pages too): https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-self-replicating-spacecraft-could-take-over-the-gal-1463732482?IR=T https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-self-replicating-spacecraft-coul... https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/science/physics-and-astronomy/how-long-would-it-take-colonise-the-galaxy https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/scie...
    - Udik 7y ago
      This is not "travelling" any more. This is sending spores hoping they will take root somewhere, but they will be forever disconnected from us, in space and, more importantly, in time. What's this mania you have of disseminating yourself? Even if you build ships that carry human genes sequences and send them on a million years trip, who is going to benefit? The sequences you sent?
Udik 7y ago
I think the idea of colonizing Mars only makes sense in the head of a teenager who read to much bad sf. Our whole idea of spaceships crossing empty space and founding colonies on other planets is just a projection on the past successes of the age of discoveries, when actual ships crossed the oceans and reached new continents. But those continents were perfectly habitable, with tons of resources, plants and animals that forever changed the way we live. While Mars is utterly barren, inhospitable and dead. On the other hand, I admire Musk for being a great engineer and businessman with the dreams of a teenager; even if the idea of thriving colonies on Mars is a cheap fantasy, I understand that you need to set yourself exciting goals to drive your ambition.
- heavyset_go 7y ago
  Musk isn't an engineer.
  - varjag 7y ago
    About time you edit his Wikipedia page then.
  - NikolaeVarius 7y ago
    I always wonder what threshold people use for this term . This is a site where a person with 4 weeks bootcamp experience call themselves a software engineer
    - heavyset_go 7y ago
      Someone who graduated from an accredited engineering program and is a licensed professional engineer, neither of which Musk did or is.
  - Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
    Just listen to 15 minutes him answering questions in any but the most mainstream (thus: time-limited, chunked into 10-seconds slots) channel and you will see that he has most accurate technical information and numbers and tradeoffs and materials etc. in his head than most engineers with 10 year experience. Say what you want about the stock price, about whether you agree with his policies, about his personality, but if you say something so blatantly obviously wrong as "he is not an engineer", it just tells everyone that you haven't done even a 15 minutes of proper research about him.
missosoup 7y ago
Of all the wealthy 'out of touch' people to complain about, you choose the one guy with a risky but rewarding vision that will benefit all of our species if achieved, instead of everyone else sailing on their super yachts and buying elections and molesting children?
- tsimionescu 7y ago
  The whole point of the parent comment was that there is no benefit for 'our species' if a handful of us get to visit Mars, or even if there were a small colony there. What would benefit our species is drastically reworking the economy to stop the massive waste and production of greenhouse gasses (which Musk may have slightly improved with Tesla, credit where credit is due). Also, putting more economic and political power in the hands of the many instead of concentrating it all in afew hundreds or thousands of people would go a much longer way towards improving our species than some 'colony' on Mars.
  - missosoup 7y ago
    > The whole point of the parent comment was that there is no benefit for 'our species' Spreading across n>1 planets would literally move our species up on the Kardashev scale. Achieving that is one of the very few things anyone is doing on this planet, which is fundamentally beneficial to our species. > Also, putting more economic and political power in the hands of the many instead of concentrating it all in afew hundreds or thousands of people would go a much longer way towards improving our species. “The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” - Winston Churchill. I'm not defending the actions of most of those wealthy individuals, but handing the reigns of power to the masses is a historically proven recipe for failure. Moreso now than ever with the advent of ML driven voter manipulation. And singling out Musk is laughable. Musk and Gates are perhaps the only two that aren't cartoon level evil villains. I don't understand how anyone could possibly be shitting on Musk for his Mars vision, even if it's folly, when all the other people with comparable wealth are too busy rigging elections, fucking up the poor, and destroying our natural resources.
    - 7y ago
namaemuta 7y ago
What a short-sighted attitude. Colonizing Mars opens the door to a lot of advances in many, many fields. At first it will be difficult and expensive as it has happened with every new advance in the past. Precisely because of it, people will think of ideas to improve all the process and related problems. And presenting those new problems that we aren't facing now can lead to solutions that could be used in other common areas that we are used to and are kind of stuck.
- anoncake 7y ago
  Can you give some examples please? I'd be particularly interested in ways colonizing Mars would help us solve the serious problems we already have like bigotry, inequality, the climate catastrophe...
  - ben_w 7y ago
    Mars is significantly less hospitable than either the summit of Mt Everest or Antarctica; by developing the necessary tech to colonise Mars, you could re-populate the Earth after any environmental catastrophe short of the planet being physically dismantled. One more immediate benefit is that the ability to refuel on Mars is identical to the ability to take CO2 out of the air and turn it into (un)natural gas. Doesn’t do much for bigotry or inequality though.
    - anoncake 7y ago
      It's not about Earth, it's about the humans on it. Being able to repopulate Earth after they all died isn't all that helpful.
      - TomMarius 7y ago
        Then it seems beneficial to have some somewhere else
        anoncake 7y ago
tasogare 7y ago
It’s "only" a three months travel. In prehistoric time or even modern times it was dream to even go to space, yet people step on the Moon. It will be costly, there will be deads but it the next frontier humanity has to cross before spreading further.
justanotherc 7y ago
The world will never agree on the best way to spend money. So why don't we just let people spend their own money the way they choose?
- IanCal 7y ago
  This argument only really works when there's less inequality. There's a focus on what these ultra wealthy people are spending their money on because they have world-changing amounts of it. To put it another way, myself and Bezos are not equally free to spend Apollo mission money on solving problems.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    I’m wondering if inequality is an example of Simpson's paradox: inequality in rich nations is going up but inequality worldwide is going down? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/12/Global-inequality-in-1800-1975-and-2015-324x550.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/12/Global-inequality... https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Public%20Sector/Our%20Insights/Inequality%20A%20persisting%20challenge%20and%20its%20implications/SVGZ-MGI-Inequality-Ex2.ashx https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Public%...
JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
“A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure.” Add it to the long list of things Blade Runner got so right about the future. I stopped reading this article because in all the rocket talk, nowhere did it acknowledge just how completely inhospitable Mars will be once you finally get it there. Every single aspect of the planet is not conducive to life. I don’t doubt that one day extremely rich people will (very far in the future, far past Elon Musk’s lifespan) live there and the toil of humans here will fund the exotic ways they deal with the massive radiation there etc. Just so they can not be around the poor serfs back on the planet custom made for life.
- Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
  > nowhere did it acknowledge just how completely inhospitable Mars will be once you finally get it there And you really legitimately think that they did not know about this piece of information from the children's book about space? They don't mention it because it is so ubiquitous and common sense that they assume everyone knows it, not because they managed to "miss the memo" about Mars. The idea is that we terraform Mars with technology to make it liveable, not that we just go there and try to build a hut from dirt and call it a day.
- DennisP 7y ago
  The author didn't write about that in this particular article because, as mentioned and linked in the first line, he has a whole series of space articles. Here's his article about radiation on Mars: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/omg-space-is-full-of-radiation-and-why-im-not-worried/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/omg-space-is-f... And here, on terraforming Mars: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2018/08/05/atmospheres-and-terraforming/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2018/08/05/atmospheres-an... And on the immense infrastructure we'd need for a sustainable colony: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/01/20/what-would-it-be-like-to-work-on-mars/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/01/20/what-would-it-...
yakz 7y ago
Why do you think it is even possible to effectively redirect and utilize those resources for the projects that you don't consider to be childish flights of fancy? It sounds like you're making an argument to stop tangible progress in favor of just trying something different because the progress being made isn't the right kind for you.
_ph_ 7y ago
First of all, the SpaceX plans on colonizing Mars are not built onto the asumption, that the project is funded by the taxpayer, that is, draining the resources of a nation. They plan to fund the project by the money they are making, like for example enabling global internet access via Starlink. So even if SpaceX never makes it to Mark, it would be a benefit. And of course, reaching Mars would indeed have many benefits for humankind. First, there is science of course. Why are people living at the south pole, there are nicer places on Earth? Science. Then there is the huge gain in perspective. Even if the direct utility of all the space missions might not be large, looking onto our planet has given us a clear perspective. That we shouldn't waste this precious place. Finally, not at least trying to go to Mars and beyond would have a negative impact on the long-time development of the species. We either eventually leave this planet or eventually will be consumed by the expanding sun. Sure, there is plenty of time till then and I hope there are others why try to make humankind eventually an interstellar species. But if we don't even try, because it is "stupid and wasteful", we already have lost. And I am sure, even if the colony on Mars might not do anything useful in the short term, just having space launch capability available as the article describes, will find many other beneficial uses.
snowwrestler 7y ago
I think you’ll get downvoted but I largely agree with you about the futility of the exercise. The complexity of the Earth’s system for sustaining life still far exceeds our understanding, and I think going to Mars will at best turn out to be a powerful way to learn that we cannot replicate it. The typical moral justification is that the Earth may be threatened and so it would be prudent to have some humans somewhere else in the solar system. Well the number one threat to Earth is an impact event. If we can hypothesize a rapidly growing lift capacity, why not use that mass budget to develop a solar-system-wide system for detecting and if necessary altering the trajectory of potential impacting objects? It would be WAY better to protect the Earth than any other backup plan. The other big threat to the Earth would be a fast gamma ray burst but that would very likely get Mars and any other human colony as well. The reality is that people want to go to Mars for the same reason people want to go climb mountains: because it is there. Our economic system provides a very few people with the resources to pursue those dreams. Whether that takes away from everyone else depends on how you think about the economy—to what extent you believe it is zero-sum. Personally I think we should go to Mars for the simple purpose of going—I like exploration and climbing mountains too—but not fool ourselves about establishing a new human society there. To me it’s like say let’s establish a new human society on the summit of Everest. Which would be way easier than doing so on Mars, by the way!
- DennisP 7y ago
  In the absence of a thriving civilization in space, I don't have any confidence in governments to actually maintain adequate asteroid defense for the long term.
- samatman 7y ago
  > Well the number one threat to Earth is an impact event. If we can hypothesize a rapidly growing lift capacity, why not use that mass budget to develop a solar-system-wide system for detecting and if necessary altering the trajectory of potential impacting objects? It would be WAY better to protect the Earth than any other backup plan. Detection is a solved problem. Altering the trajectory of an asteroid requires a large amount of lifting capacity to be available on relatively short notice. That is, it has to already exist when the crisis is identified. Congratulations. You've identified a positive externality of Starship.
An1ms 7y ago
This is what they call slave morality.
edouard-harris 7y ago
> these sorts of projects make me understand why others question whether some people should have such huge control of resources. It's worth pointing out that, had Elon Musk not dedicated 17 years of his life to building those very resources, they likely wouldn't now be available to anyone at all.

zozbot234 7y ago

Yes, we aren't colonizing the Gobi Desert and we're supposed to colonize Mars? What a silly idea.

Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
We did colonize Dubai, that was a desert... Israel was a pretty deserty place too a while ago...
wongarsu 7y ago
Running out of room on Earth isn't the issue here. And as the other comment notes, we are pretty good at colonizing deserts if we want to (we are also good at making deserts, but that's another problem).
NikolaeVarius 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobi_Desert#European_exploration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobi_Desert#European_explorati... > The Gobi had a long history of human habitation, mostly by nomadic peoples. By the early 20th century, the region was under the nominal control of Manchu-China, and inhabited mostly by Mongols, Uyghurs, and Kazakhs.

bobcostas55 7y ago

Buddy, we're gonna dysonsphere every sun in the galaxy. Mars isn't arrogant, it's just that we have to learn to crawl before we start running.

Udik 7y ago
Should we wait until we get a warp drive engine? Because thinking of reaching anything further than our solar system with our current physics (not technology- that we can improve by building stuff) is more silly than trying to cross the Pacific ocean with help of a floating rubber duck.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mkl 7y ago
  Even at (way) sub-light speeds, it's probably possible. Whether it's automated self-replicating ships (possibly carrying humans as gene sequences), or generation ships (seems pretty hellish!), a number of people have estimated mathematically that it's doable. Estimates vary wildly, of course, as there are many unknowns, but basically exponential growth gets unintuitively fast. Some links (there are many more pages too): https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-self-replicating-spacecraft-could-take-over-the-gal-1463732482?IR=T https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-self-replicating-spacecraft-coul... https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/science/physics-and-astronomy/how-long-would-it-take-colonise-the-galaxy https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/scie...
  - Udik 7y ago
    This is not "travelling" any more. This is sending spores hoping they will take root somewhere, but they will be forever disconnected from us, in space and, more importantly, in time. What's this mania you have of disseminating yourself? Even if you build ships that carry human genes sequences and send them on a million years trip, who is going to benefit? The sequences you sent?

Udik 7y ago

I think the idea of colonizing Mars only makes sense in the head of a teenager who read to much bad sf. Our whole idea of spaceships crossing empty space and founding colonies on other planets is just a projection on the past successes of the age of discoveries, when actual ships crossed the oceans and reached new continents. But those continents were perfectly habitable, with tons of resources, plants and animals that forever changed the way we live. While Mars is utterly barren, inhospitable and dead. On the other hand, I admire Musk for being a great engineer and businessman with the dreams of a teenager; even if the idea of thriving colonies on Mars is a cheap fantasy, I understand that you need to set yourself exciting goals to drive your ambition.

heavyset_go 7y ago
Musk isn't an engineer.
- varjag 7y ago
  About time you edit his Wikipedia page then.
- NikolaeVarius 7y ago
  I always wonder what threshold people use for this term . This is a site where a person with 4 weeks bootcamp experience call themselves a software engineer
  - heavyset_go 7y ago
    Someone who graduated from an accredited engineering program and is a licensed professional engineer, neither of which Musk did or is.
- Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
  Just listen to 15 minutes him answering questions in any but the most mainstream (thus: time-limited, chunked into 10-seconds slots) channel and you will see that he has most accurate technical information and numbers and tradeoffs and materials etc. in his head than most engineers with 10 year experience. Say what you want about the stock price, about whether you agree with his policies, about his personality, but if you say something so blatantly obviously wrong as "he is not an engineer", it just tells everyone that you haven't done even a 15 minutes of proper research about him.

missosoup 7y ago

Of all the wealthy 'out of touch' people to complain about, you choose the one guy with a risky but rewarding vision that will benefit all of our species if achieved, instead of everyone else sailing on their super yachts and buying elections and molesting children?

tsimionescu 7y ago
The whole point of the parent comment was that there is no benefit for 'our species' if a handful of us get to visit Mars, or even if there were a small colony there. What would benefit our species is drastically reworking the economy to stop the massive waste and production of greenhouse gasses (which Musk may have slightly improved with Tesla, credit where credit is due). Also, putting more economic and political power in the hands of the many instead of concentrating it all in afew hundreds or thousands of people would go a much longer way towards improving our species than some 'colony' on Mars.
- missosoup 7y ago
  > The whole point of the parent comment was that there is no benefit for 'our species' Spreading across n>1 planets would literally move our species up on the Kardashev scale. Achieving that is one of the very few things anyone is doing on this planet, which is fundamentally beneficial to our species. > Also, putting more economic and political power in the hands of the many instead of concentrating it all in afew hundreds or thousands of people would go a much longer way towards improving our species. “The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” - Winston Churchill. I'm not defending the actions of most of those wealthy individuals, but handing the reigns of power to the masses is a historically proven recipe for failure. Moreso now than ever with the advent of ML driven voter manipulation. And singling out Musk is laughable. Musk and Gates are perhaps the only two that aren't cartoon level evil villains. I don't understand how anyone could possibly be shitting on Musk for his Mars vision, even if it's folly, when all the other people with comparable wealth are too busy rigging elections, fucking up the poor, and destroying our natural resources.
  - 7y ago

namaemuta 7y ago

What a short-sighted attitude. Colonizing Mars opens the door to a lot of advances in many, many fields. At first it will be difficult and expensive as it has happened with every new advance in the past. Precisely because of it, people will think of ideas to improve all the process and related problems. And presenting those new problems that we aren't facing now can lead to solutions that could be used in other common areas that we are used to and are kind of stuck.

anoncake 7y ago
Can you give some examples please? I'd be particularly interested in ways colonizing Mars would help us solve the serious problems we already have like bigotry, inequality, the climate catastrophe...
- ben_w 7y ago
  Mars is significantly less hospitable than either the summit of Mt Everest or Antarctica; by developing the necessary tech to colonise Mars, you could re-populate the Earth after any environmental catastrophe short of the planet being physically dismantled. One more immediate benefit is that the ability to refuel on Mars is identical to the ability to take CO2 out of the air and turn it into (un)natural gas. Doesn’t do much for bigotry or inequality though.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    It's not about Earth, it's about the humans on it. Being able to repopulate Earth after they all died isn't all that helpful.
    - TomMarius 7y ago
      Then it seems beneficial to have some somewhere else
      - anoncake 7y ago

tasogare 7y ago

It’s "only" a three months travel. In prehistoric time or even modern times it was dream to even go to space, yet people step on the Moon. It will be costly, there will be deads but it the next frontier humanity has to cross before spreading further.

justanotherc 7y ago

The world will never agree on the best way to spend money. So why don't we just let people spend their own money the way they choose?

IanCal 7y ago
This argument only really works when there's less inequality. There's a focus on what these ultra wealthy people are spending their money on because they have world-changing amounts of it. To put it another way, myself and Bezos are not equally free to spend Apollo mission money on solving problems.
- ben_w 7y ago
  I’m wondering if inequality is an example of Simpson's paradox: inequality in rich nations is going up but inequality worldwide is going down? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/12/Global-inequality-in-1800-1975-and-2015-324x550.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/12/Global-inequality... https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Public%20Sector/Our%20Insights/Inequality%20A%20persisting%20challenge%20and%20its%20implications/SVGZ-MGI-Inequality-Ex2.ashx https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Public%...

JohnJamesRambo 7y ago

“A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure.” Add it to the long list of things Blade Runner got so right about the future. I stopped reading this article because in all the rocket talk, nowhere did it acknowledge just how completely inhospitable Mars will be once you finally get it there. Every single aspect of the planet is not conducive to life. I don’t doubt that one day extremely rich people will (very far in the future, far past Elon Musk’s lifespan) live there and the toil of humans here will fund the exotic ways they deal with the massive radiation there etc. Just so they can not be around the poor serfs back on the planet custom made for life.

Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
> nowhere did it acknowledge just how completely inhospitable Mars will be once you finally get it there And you really legitimately think that they did not know about this piece of information from the children's book about space? They don't mention it because it is so ubiquitous and common sense that they assume everyone knows it, not because they managed to "miss the memo" about Mars. The idea is that we terraform Mars with technology to make it liveable, not that we just go there and try to build a hut from dirt and call it a day.
DennisP 7y ago
The author didn't write about that in this particular article because, as mentioned and linked in the first line, he has a whole series of space articles. Here's his article about radiation on Mars: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/omg-space-is-full-of-radiation-and-why-im-not-worried/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/omg-space-is-f... And here, on terraforming Mars: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2018/08/05/atmospheres-and-terraforming/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2018/08/05/atmospheres-an... And on the immense infrastructure we'd need for a sustainable colony: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/01/20/what-would-it-be-like-to-work-on-mars/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/01/20/what-would-it-...

yakz 7y ago

Why do you think it is even possible to effectively redirect and utilize those resources for the projects that you don't consider to be childish flights of fancy? It sounds like you're making an argument to stop tangible progress in favor of just trying something different because the progress being made isn't the right kind for you.

_ph_ 7y ago

First of all, the SpaceX plans on colonizing Mars are not built onto the asumption, that the project is funded by the taxpayer, that is, draining the resources of a nation. They plan to fund the project by the money they are making, like for example enabling global internet access via Starlink. So even if SpaceX never makes it to Mark, it would be a benefit. And of course, reaching Mars would indeed have many benefits for humankind. First, there is science of course. Why are people living at the south pole, there are nicer places on Earth? Science. Then there is the huge gain in perspective. Even if the direct utility of all the space missions might not be large, looking onto our planet has given us a clear perspective. That we shouldn't waste this precious place. Finally, not at least trying to go to Mars and beyond would have a negative impact on the long-time development of the species. We either eventually leave this planet or eventually will be consumed by the expanding sun. Sure, there is plenty of time till then and I hope there are others why try to make humankind eventually an interstellar species. But if we don't even try, because it is "stupid and wasteful", we already have lost. And I am sure, even if the colony on Mars might not do anything useful in the short term, just having space launch capability available as the article describes, will find many other beneficial uses.

snowwrestler 7y ago

I think you’ll get downvoted but I largely agree with you about the futility of the exercise. The complexity of the Earth’s system for sustaining life still far exceeds our understanding, and I think going to Mars will at best turn out to be a powerful way to learn that we cannot replicate it. The typical moral justification is that the Earth may be threatened and so it would be prudent to have some humans somewhere else in the solar system. Well the number one threat to Earth is an impact event. If we can hypothesize a rapidly growing lift capacity, why not use that mass budget to develop a solar-system-wide system for detecting and if necessary altering the trajectory of potential impacting objects? It would be WAY better to protect the Earth than any other backup plan. The other big threat to the Earth would be a fast gamma ray burst but that would very likely get Mars and any other human colony as well. The reality is that people want to go to Mars for the same reason people want to go climb mountains: because it is there. Our economic system provides a very few people with the resources to pursue those dreams. Whether that takes away from everyone else depends on how you think about the economy—to what extent you believe it is zero-sum. Personally I think we should go to Mars for the simple purpose of going—I like exploration and climbing mountains too—but not fool ourselves about establishing a new human society there. To me it’s like say let’s establish a new human society on the summit of Everest. Which would be way easier than doing so on Mars, by the way!

DennisP 7y ago
In the absence of a thriving civilization in space, I don't have any confidence in governments to actually maintain adequate asteroid defense for the long term.
samatman 7y ago
> Well the number one threat to Earth is an impact event. If we can hypothesize a rapidly growing lift capacity, why not use that mass budget to develop a solar-system-wide system for detecting and if necessary altering the trajectory of potential impacting objects? It would be WAY better to protect the Earth than any other backup plan. Detection is a solved problem. Altering the trajectory of an asteroid requires a large amount of lifting capacity to be available on relatively short notice. That is, it has to already exist when the crisis is identified. Congratulations. You've identified a positive externality of Starship.

An1ms 7y ago

This is what they call slave morality.

edouard-harris 7y ago

> these sorts of projects make me understand why others question whether some people should have such huge control of resources. It's worth pointing out that, had Elon Musk not dedicated 17 years of his life to building those very resources, they likely wouldn't now be available to anyone at all.