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>What's riskier, setting up a colony on Mars with untested ecosystem technology, or testing the technology here on Earth first? The technology is fine though,

>What's riskier, setting up a colony on Mars with untested ecosystem technology, or testing the technology here on Earth first? The technology is fine though, we already have every kind of industry on earth... on earth. >What justifies the expenditure of putting a self-sustaining colony on Mars? The self-sustaining part is the expensive part, not the space part. Want to build modern processors? just the fab facility is ballpark $20 to 25 billion USD (using TSMC's future fab as a cost estimate), not counting any of the rest of the supply chain or ongoing operations cost. And that's just one type of factory. At least off-planet there's unclaimed territory with resources to exploit, a truly independent node on earth would not be compatible with existing borders and mineral rights. >We have oil platforms in the ocean. People live/work there for a few months, then cycle back These are not self-sufficient though - you might be able to live on it in isolation via fishing and some kind of evaporation still to get drinking water, but if cut off from civilisation you would not be able to maintain oil drilling operations for more than (my guesstimate) a couple of weeks, maybe a month. You'd run out of lubricant or fuel very quickly. Not to mention civilisation would regress e.g. you simply can't have any significant manufacturing / agriculture / medical facility / etc. on board - to be truly independent would require a footprint the size of multiple cities. >If the justification is to save humanity from a large number of possible extinction-level events, then some of those can be averted by having on-Earth isolated ecosystems. It seems very unlikely that any disaster sufficient to wipe out all of humanity would spare these independent nodes. Even events like plague that would theoretically leave the node untouched (assuming they go hermetic soon enough) are likely to lead to the nodes destruction when the surrounding nation-states dissolve into chaos, or some other unforeseen consequence. Meanwhile the closest possible approach to mars is ~39 days, if there was a plague then that is plenty of time for incubation and symptoms to show.

eesmith 6y ago
> we already have every kind of industry on earth I don't know where you're going with "industry." I was talking about ecosystem technology to allow a self-sufficient colony. We don't have that at all on Earth, other than Earth itself. So no, we don't have an industry which can build self-contained ecosystems. > These are not self-sufficient though My example was to question what "justify the expenditure" meant. If the justification is "prevent humanity from Earth-only calamities" then the same justification can be used to develop those technologies on Earth first, in order to And don't say that Argentina wouldn't like to have a self-supporting Esperanza Base (which should be cheaper as only food and power need to be self-supporting, not air or water), instead o f subsidizing their colonization effort in Antarctica. That is, there are intermediate stages which are wanted here on Earth. > you simply can't have any significant manufacturing / agriculture / medical facility / etc. on board - to be truly independent would require a footprint the size of multiple cities Which was part of the point of my objection to this paper about worldships, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23210515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23210515 . > It seems very unlikely .. It seems very unlikely that we would ever set up a colony which was sufficiently isolated from the Earth that it would be able to survive an Earth-only extinction event. Unless it became a matter of religion, there will almost certainly be interconnections, resulting in a single cultural ecosystem. (Because we don't have an economic system which cares about long term species survival.) Eg, there will only be a few facilities on Earth which produce the quantum neurons needed for the fusion reactors on Mars. > if there was a plague then that is plenty of time for incubation and symptoms to show. That's a supposition. The Super-AIDS pandemic of 2103 will have a incubation period of 15 months, with a morality of 95% before a viable phage therapy was developed. Only the isolated hermitages on Earth survive intact, with the organizational structure to guide reconstruction. It's not hard to come up with more scenarios - I've read a lot of SF. (Consider the apert schedule of the concents in "Anathem", though they were not ecologically isolated.)

eesmith 6y ago

> we already have every kind of industry on earth I don't know where you're going with "industry." I was talking about ecosystem technology to allow a self-sufficient colony. We don't have that at all on Earth, other than Earth itself. So no, we don't have an industry which can build self-contained ecosystems. > These are not self-sufficient though My example was to question what "justify the expenditure" meant. If the justification is "prevent humanity from Earth-only calamities" then the same justification can be used to develop those technologies on Earth first, in order to And don't say that Argentina wouldn't like to have a self-supporting Esperanza Base (which should be cheaper as only food and power need to be self-supporting, not air or water), instead o f subsidizing their colonization effort in Antarctica. That is, there are intermediate stages which are wanted here on Earth. > you simply can't have any significant manufacturing / agriculture / medical facility / etc. on board - to be truly independent would require a footprint the size of multiple cities Which was part of the point of my objection to this paper about worldships, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23210515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23210515 . > It seems very unlikely .. It seems very unlikely that we would ever set up a colony which was sufficiently isolated from the Earth that it would be able to survive an Earth-only extinction event. Unless it became a matter of religion, there will almost certainly be interconnections, resulting in a single cultural ecosystem. (Because we don't have an economic system which cares about long term species survival.) Eg, there will only be a few facilities on Earth which produce the quantum neurons needed for the fusion reactors on Mars. > if there was a plague then that is plenty of time for incubation and symptoms to show. That's a supposition. The Super-AIDS pandemic of 2103 will have a incubation period of 15 months, with a morality of 95% before a viable phage therapy was developed. Only the isolated hermitages on Earth survive intact, with the organizational structure to guide reconstruction. It's not hard to come up with more scenarios - I've read a lot of SF. (Consider the apert schedule of the concents in "Anathem", though they were not ecologically isolated.)