11 ms·

Mars Is No Earth

64 points by ForHackernews 6y ago

fourseventy 6y ago
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
- vagrantJin 6y ago
  TR would not have said it in better circumstances than now, when man's solemn plight to leave the planet is being pondered in earnest.
- LeifCarrotson 6y ago
  For others who didn't recognize this quote, it's from Theodore Roosevelt's speech "Citizenship in a Republic" from 1910; full text here: https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Learn-About-TR/TR-Encyclopedia/Culture-and-Society/Man-in-the-Arena.aspx https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Learn-About-TR/TR-En...
- bwestergard 6y ago
  This is fantastic rhetoric in the service of a fundamentally anti-intellectual point. Note first that it proves too much. Richard Nixon referenced this speech as he was resigning the presidency after Watergate. Was Nixon the "man in the arena" who deserved praise for "striving valiantly"? He thought so. Not also that it assumes what it is trying to prove: that the critic does not have practical experience, that the cause of the criticized is "worthy", and that "daring greatly" is more important than daring correctly. But perhaps most importantly, it assumes that critique is epiphenomenal, that it will not have any effect on the course of events. But we know this isn't true. In this case, many of those critiquing the project of manned planetary exploration are experts in the field. They are in the arena as much as those being critiqued.
  - billoday 6y ago
    In THIS case, a writer for the Atlantic with a bio of "Shannon Stirone is a freelance science writer based in the Bay Area" is criticizing. If we had an expert in planetary exploration doing the criticism, I think it would be a more interesting conversation, even if I feel that conversation would be FAR more nuanced than - "Mars bad. Elon Musk bad." Which is what I read here. If I agree with Elon's vision or not is immaterial - he's executing, I'm not, neither is the author. If I have a better idea, I should do it, or at least get it to a point of doable, then we can discuss if they are mutually exclusive or at cross purposes.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
Tiktaalik 6y ago
The myth of a wonderful terraformed Mars must be pushed as part of capitalist technosaviourism. If we recklessly consume Earth into dust that's actually ok because technology can save us as we simply load into rocket ships for a new life on the offworld colonies. If we accept the notion that actually there's only one Earth, that we already live on a paradise planet and that we must protect what we have then going hand and hand with that is the notion that we'd have to halt much of what we've been doing doing for the last decades to save paradise. The acceptance of one planet that must be conserved at all costs suggests that there could be even be limits to production which is antithetical and untenable to capitalists.
- iab 6y ago
  Extra-planetary colonization is so far-fetched given our impending climate crisis. We will struggle to adapt to the oncoming environmental changes in a planet that we have completely adapted do. The thought that leaving this custom bubble for one that is actively hostile, and thriving there, is a grand delusion. I admire the explorative & scientific nature of space missions, but I am also pro-reality.
  - vagrantJin 6y ago
    Can you imagine going back 500 years and telling the Kings of the world in their courts - with a straight face- that man in the future will send humans to the moon. And he will get there, take pictures, ride around a moon buggy, and come back safe and sound. Not only will you be drawn and quartered for blaspheming, some might just kill you out of pity. The poor mad thing. Today a 7 year old can say that with as much non-chalance as you please. And yet - Mars is impossible. A delusion. Surely you jest.
    - iab 6y ago
      I think the issue is that we face truly existential environmental crises in the near-to-mid term, which has not been the predominant cause of strife for our history thus far (world wars, the thread of nuclear exchanges, etc.). So it is hard to say it is impossible, but it is even harder to say that it will be achievable.
netsec_burn 6y ago
Yet? It seems the writer is debating a view that Elon doesn't have. His goal is to begin the process of making Mars habitable, I'm not aware of anyone with the position that Mars is currently as nice as Earth. Terraforming Mars is a long term vision and not one we'll see in our lifetimes. If we don't take steps towards achieving that goal then of course it will always seem lofty. Martian greenhouses may sooner emulate the feeling of being on Earth until it gets sufficiently habitable. As long as there are sufficient resources to start colonizing it, I don't see any points made as to "why not".
- iab 6y ago
  I take your point; I think maybe this line of discourse is to prevent the "savior" line of thinking, whereby all manner of ills will be addressed by technological advancement, and the day-to-day drudgery of improving our current situation is lessened. The aspirational nature of it is - of course - grand, but maybe a more inward, introspective, look at our current situation would be better in the long-term.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    See I think exploring space IS understanding ourselves just like exploring our biology is. We've been doing the "spiritualism self understanding" thing for 100,000 years and it's just let to wars, virgin sacrifices, and other dumb human outcomes. It's not even clear what "understanding ourselves" means. I'd argue that Science has led to more enlightenment and improvement of the human condition than spiritualism ever has.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      > We've been doing the "spiritualism self understanding" thing for 100,000 years and it's just let to wars, virgin sacrifices, and other dumb human outcomes. Indeed. At some point, if you stare inwards hard enough, you just end up divining patterns in a random number generator.
      - 6y ago
nickthemagicman 6y ago
If you think on a large scale, humanity has a limited number of years left until the heat death of the sun... so this planet..and us..arent going to be here forever. And that's if we don't nuke each other first. Humans are very minimally removed from violent monkeys evolutionarily. It's not far-fetched to imagine a nuclear war being started simply by an insult to a mentally unstable world leader. It took humans 100,000 years to go from spears and caves to developing portable phones to surf cat videos. So we have a lot of work to do to get to interstellar travel.
- staticman2 6y ago
  Your genes might compel you to try to leave the planet and keep mating after our sun dies, but our species will inevitably be dead once entropy kicks in at the heat death of the universe. Ultimately we are going to go extinct and there is no point to the colonization scheme other than delusions of grandeur.
  - apocalypstyx 6y ago
    Well, to be fair, we're still within the margin of error for a Big Crunch or a Big Rip, as well. (Maybe we'll even get lucky and not get to see a Vacuum Decay coming.)
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    By this logic, there's no point to anything.
    - apocalypstyx 6y ago
      There is either existential nihilism or there is God. And God may be the more horrific of the two. (Or the unknown unknown third option may yet still be worse, who knows? The calculation of it being better just leads back to God, so the construction collapses back into two poles.)
    - lom888 6y ago
      The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.
elsonrodriguez 6y ago
> Someone in his position could do so many things on our little blue dot itself to help those in need. The entire article boils down to this one tired old argument. And in the case of Musk, while Teslas don't help people in need directly, the adoption of electric cars and other electric transportation will help the entire world population by reducing air pollution and climate change. So, whynotboth.jpg.
- qayxc 6y ago
  > the adoption of electric cars and other electric transportation will help the entire world population by reducing air pollution and climate change. This one tired old argument again. While reducing air pollution is a plus (at least in city centres), electric cars are nothing but green washing. If you really are concerned about climate change and pollution, reduce the need for cars and own no car. Abandon Euclidian- and single-use zoning (i.e. reverse urban sprawl and make cities liveable again), improve public transport, make cities walkable, improve bike infrastructure, etc. etc. In other words, put in the actual work instead of shifting the problem around and creating even more intrusive infrastructure that needs to be built and maintained ("tunnels", "hyperloops", blah).
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    The perfect is the enemy of the good. - Voltaire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy
    - qayxc 6y ago
      Haha - that can easily backfire, because by that logic wouldn't it be much easier to just demand better filters and higher norms for ICE cars? You don't even have to change anything if you just keep driving your 2010 ICE car until it literally rusts away under your buttocks instead of buying a new car (electric or not). It'd be interesting to compare the actual CO² and energy use difference (including manufacturing costs for the new car) between driving an existing ICE car less frequently and keeping it longer versus buying a new electric car while keeping the the same driving habits.
sandworm101 6y ago
>> Why does Elon Musk want to send humans to a hellhole planet? Showmanship, and the inescapable realities of rocket science. The truth is that it is technologically easier to land on mars than the moon. The delta-V requirements are less because of aerobraking into the mars atmosphere. And you don't need to worry about restarting big landing engines in zero gravity. So it is easier to put an object to the surface of mars than to put something on the surface of the moon. Landing on Venus is off the table and everything else is too far away. Mars is therefore the easiest target for anyone wanting to make a show. Imho we will have an easier time living on our moon or any number of asteroids. Even Mar's moons would probably be easier than getting back and forth from Mar's surface.
andrewfromx 6y ago
just look at https://i.ytimg.com/vi/p5fdbowk7X8/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/p5fdbowk7X8/maxresdefault.jpg yucatan peninsula crater photo and try and picture the Dinosaurs and that big boom, cloud of dust and it's like c'mon, no brainer. We need N planets not just 1 planet.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  It might be easier to survive on earth engulfed in a dust cloud than Mars.
  - andrewfromx 6y ago
    Touché. That's the best argument I've heard yet. Tsunamis too I guess. Everything that killed the Dinos we humans can protect against easier than living on mars?
    - dehrmann 6y ago
      Check out the Wikipedia page on living fossils: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_fossil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_fossil There are a number of species alive today that existed in a similar form when the dinosaurs were alive.
  - elsonrodriguez 6y ago
    Yes and no. Society won't survive on earth because earth's society is dependent on fragile supply chains which in turn depend on everything being ok. A Martian society would survive by virtue of already being equipped to operate in a hellscape.
    - andrewfromx 6y ago
      yeah but dehrmann is saying, changing Earth to operate in a hellscape level A is way easier than solving the mars hellscape level B...
bcatanzaro 6y ago
I am really sad that so much of our elite media institutions are deeply Luddite. They wear their anti-technology, anti-progress biases like badges of honor. It’s likely a signaling mechanism. The elite doesn’t need technology because they don’t need change. So opposing change signals that things are good for you already. I don’t love Elon Musk but at least he dreams big and has a change-positive attitude. Because I think things do need to change.
- quantummkv 6y ago
  It's not that the elite media institutions are Luddite. It's that a lot of tech people don't give elite media the proper respect it thinks it demands. And that turns into a cycle where media then lashes out with hurt egos, further flaming it, like with this article. It's clear from reading the article that the real issue in the article is not Mars or Earth or Carl Sagan, it's Elon Musk. Or more specifically, the complete lack of respect Elon publicly gives to elite media.
- narrator 6y ago
  All the elite needs is fewer people taking up resources. Otherwise, everything is perfect for them. The status quo could last from now to eternity. This is kind of how the Egyptian civilization worked. They went 2000 years without a lot of change. Just an endless "sustainable" cycle. I like the comparison between the Canaanite religion and Judaism. The elites are Canaanites and dealt with their not being enough for everyone by having the lower classes sacrifice their children to Mammon. This is the equivalent of the endless complaining about useless eaters and overpopulation by extremely wealthy people. The Jews, and the rest of the Abrahamic religions on the other hand, let the people who properly prepared survive (e.g Noah), with a few carveouts, such as the gleanings for those that didn't. The king could never take your property without just compensation. The priest could never ask you to sacrifice your children. This individualistic struggle to survive is what culturally has led to the huge technological innovations in the west.
  - fallingfrog 6y ago
    “ This individualistic struggle to survive is what culturally has led to the huge technological innovations in the west.” I don’t think that is the consensus view. It was more to do with the university system, the scientific method, and the invention of capital markets. That and a huge influx of free resources and gold that came from the discovery of the Americas. Also of course the Middle East was annihilated by Ghengis Khan and Western Europe wasn’t. A lot of historical factors were at play.
bryanlarsen 6y ago
> Someone in his position could do so many things on our little blue dot itself to help those in need. She's talking about the man who accelerated our transition to electric cars by years, who is significantly lowering the cost and acceptability of solar power, is enabling the transition of the grid to renewables through the Tesla Megapacks, is pouring billions into battery R&D which will be critical to a green transition, is sponsoring a $100 million prize into carbon capture and is researching the production of fossil fuel replacements from carbon dioxide. Who has done more?
- sdht0 6y ago
  Not to forget the push for universal satellite-based internet.
- ldbooth 6y ago
  Lowered the cost of solar power? He acquired his cousins company and idled it, tough business, resi, more of a securitization play. I support the mans intent nonetheless, hard to hit all homeruns at his scale. But for the record you could say Germany (paying high FIT conract rates) and China (scaling module mfg capacity) did a lot more for solar, granted those are nation states it should still be a complement. But ze electric cars and push to megapaks.. No one!
  - simonebrunozzi 6y ago
    You're comparing an entire country vs a single man. Not fair.
    - ldbooth 6y ago
      > granted those are nation states it should still be a complement. To be fair then: Tom Werner of Sunpower, Dan Shugar of NextTracker, Employees at Bell Laboratories (created the first solar cell), Employees at SunEdison (created the Solar PPA, the backbone of even Musk's solar financing) all have done more for Solar Photovoltaics. I don't know who to credit at First Solar but, surely someone: these are all the Solar OG's.
Diederich 6y ago
Another quote from Carl Sagan: For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. The appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. *Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game, none of them lasts forever. Your own life, or your band's, or even your species, might be owed to a restless few, drawn by a craving that they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands, and new worlds.* Herman Melville in Moby Dick spoke for wanderers in all epoch and meridians. He said, "I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas." Maybe it's a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds, promising untold opportunities, beckon. Silently, they orbit the sun. Waiting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH3c1QZzRK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH3c1QZzRK4
- zepto 6y ago
  Something tells me a trip to Mars and life inside an artificial habitat won’t feel like the open road.
  - yencabulator 6y ago
    And a lone ship in the middle of a vast sea is somehow different?
rotexo 6y ago
I like Kim Stanley Robinson’s take: that humanity’s off-planet presence will be like our presence in Antarctica. We will put a bunch of scientists there and continue to actively support them there, because self-sufficiency is unlikely in such a hostile environment. It is hard to imagine anything else in my children’s or grandchildren’s lifetimes. All the arguments about colonization of other planets strike me as tautological. We should have people on other planets because it would be good to have people on other planets, or we shouldn’t because we don’t have people on other planets and we do have them on Earth. So people will argue, and each side will direct the resources they have to their side of the argument. Not sure what else there is to be said.
- josefresco 6y ago
  Having just finished a few of Robinson's books, your comment reminded me of (I believe) "Red Mars" in which there was a part where the first settlers returned to their camp from exploring Mars and remarked (rather sadly) how dirty and terrible looking their encampment was, in contrast with the beauty of unspoiled mars. They compared it to scientific outposts on Antarctica.
  - rotexo 6y ago
    Indeed! KSR has clearly had a change of thinking about terraforming since the Mars trilogy. I asked him about it at a reading he did from Red Moon, and he responded with the Antarctica analogy I described above.
frogpelt 6y ago
All it took for someone to write an article about what a terrible idea Mars is, was Elon Musk to promote it.
Diederich 6y ago
> Someone in his position could do so many things on our little blue dot itself to help those in need. Does accelerating the transition to renewable energy count? Of course, reasonable people can differ on how big a difference Tesla Motors has made, but it's undeniable that Musk took an enormous risk with a large chunk of his then available assets.
zokier 6y ago
> Someone in his position could do so many things on our little blue dot itself to help those in need So all the hand-wringing about the inhospitality of Mars is just fluff, this is really the gist of the article. The "fault" of Musk is not that he is pushing humans to Mars but that he is not "helping those in need", whatever that means. Are people like Bezos, Ellison, Cook, Zuckerberg, Page, Brin etc (arguably group who are more in position to help) really "helping those in need" so much more that Musk deserves to be singled out, just because he doesn't use his wealth buying frivolous tropical islands but is executing his vision (misguided or not)?
- zepto 6y ago
  Cook really isn’t that rich compared to the others.
kr99x 6y ago
People saying that we should not bother colonizing Mars at all are clearly wrong. I can buy the argument that we should not yet do it, but come on. The Earth will one day be dust, whether by astronomical disaster or by the sun's natural lifecycle moving to later stages. We live on the Earth. If we do not go elsewhere, we will be dust at that time. So for self-preservation, we'll need to go elsewhere eventually. Mars is elsewhere, and is much easier to reach/terraform/colonize than say... Proxima Centauri B. Mars is a good "practice" shot at being elsewhere. So obviously, we should go to Mars. It's just a question of when.
gmuslera 6y ago
Going to mars is something we must do if we want really long time survival as species/culture. But it is not a solution for our relatively short time problems (100-200 years). It won't solve global warming, nor will be an alternative for mankind against what global warming will do this century here.
ldbooth 6y ago
I think she missed the better point: are we at a critical time in Earth's history focusing too many smart people on getting to space than first saving our home planet from some unknown 'new look'. We're on the clock on one problem. Not a popular opinion among rocket surgeons but you know what they say about hindsight.

64 points by ForHackernews 6y ago

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

vagrantJin 6y ago
TR would not have said it in better circumstances than now, when man's solemn plight to leave the planet is being pondered in earnest.
LeifCarrotson 6y ago
For others who didn't recognize this quote, it's from Theodore Roosevelt's speech "Citizenship in a Republic" from 1910; full text here: https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Learn-About-TR/TR-Encyclopedia/Culture-and-Society/Man-in-the-Arena.aspx https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Learn-About-TR/TR-En...
bwestergard 6y ago
This is fantastic rhetoric in the service of a fundamentally anti-intellectual point. Note first that it proves too much. Richard Nixon referenced this speech as he was resigning the presidency after Watergate. Was Nixon the "man in the arena" who deserved praise for "striving valiantly"? He thought so. Not also that it assumes what it is trying to prove: that the critic does not have practical experience, that the cause of the criticized is "worthy", and that "daring greatly" is more important than daring correctly. But perhaps most importantly, it assumes that critique is epiphenomenal, that it will not have any effect on the course of events. But we know this isn't true. In this case, many of those critiquing the project of manned planetary exploration are experts in the field. They are in the arena as much as those being critiqued.
- billoday 6y ago
  In THIS case, a writer for the Atlantic with a bio of "Shannon Stirone is a freelance science writer based in the Bay Area" is criticizing. If we had an expert in planetary exploration doing the criticism, I think it would be a more interesting conversation, even if I feel that conversation would be FAR more nuanced than - "Mars bad. Elon Musk bad." Which is what I read here. If I agree with Elon's vision or not is immaterial - he's executing, I'm not, neither is the author. If I have a better idea, I should do it, or at least get it to a point of doable, then we can discuss if they are mutually exclusive or at cross purposes.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

Tiktaalik 6y ago

The myth of a wonderful terraformed Mars must be pushed as part of capitalist technosaviourism. If we recklessly consume Earth into dust that's actually ok because technology can save us as we simply load into rocket ships for a new life on the offworld colonies. If we accept the notion that actually there's only one Earth, that we already live on a paradise planet and that we must protect what we have then going hand and hand with that is the notion that we'd have to halt much of what we've been doing doing for the last decades to save paradise. The acceptance of one planet that must be conserved at all costs suggests that there could be even be limits to production which is antithetical and untenable to capitalists.

iab 6y ago
Extra-planetary colonization is so far-fetched given our impending climate crisis. We will struggle to adapt to the oncoming environmental changes in a planet that we have completely adapted do. The thought that leaving this custom bubble for one that is actively hostile, and thriving there, is a grand delusion. I admire the explorative & scientific nature of space missions, but I am also pro-reality.
- vagrantJin 6y ago
  Can you imagine going back 500 years and telling the Kings of the world in their courts - with a straight face- that man in the future will send humans to the moon. And he will get there, take pictures, ride around a moon buggy, and come back safe and sound. Not only will you be drawn and quartered for blaspheming, some might just kill you out of pity. The poor mad thing. Today a 7 year old can say that with as much non-chalance as you please. And yet - Mars is impossible. A delusion. Surely you jest.
  - iab 6y ago
    I think the issue is that we face truly existential environmental crises in the near-to-mid term, which has not been the predominant cause of strife for our history thus far (world wars, the thread of nuclear exchanges, etc.). So it is hard to say it is impossible, but it is even harder to say that it will be achievable.

netsec_burn 6y ago

Yet? It seems the writer is debating a view that Elon doesn't have. His goal is to begin the process of making Mars habitable, I'm not aware of anyone with the position that Mars is currently as nice as Earth. Terraforming Mars is a long term vision and not one we'll see in our lifetimes. If we don't take steps towards achieving that goal then of course it will always seem lofty. Martian greenhouses may sooner emulate the feeling of being on Earth until it gets sufficiently habitable. As long as there are sufficient resources to start colonizing it, I don't see any points made as to "why not".

iab 6y ago
I take your point; I think maybe this line of discourse is to prevent the "savior" line of thinking, whereby all manner of ills will be addressed by technological advancement, and the day-to-day drudgery of improving our current situation is lessened. The aspirational nature of it is - of course - grand, but maybe a more inward, introspective, look at our current situation would be better in the long-term.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  See I think exploring space IS understanding ourselves just like exploring our biology is. We've been doing the "spiritualism self understanding" thing for 100,000 years and it's just let to wars, virgin sacrifices, and other dumb human outcomes. It's not even clear what "understanding ourselves" means. I'd argue that Science has led to more enlightenment and improvement of the human condition than spiritualism ever has.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > We've been doing the "spiritualism self understanding" thing for 100,000 years and it's just let to wars, virgin sacrifices, and other dumb human outcomes. Indeed. At some point, if you stare inwards hard enough, you just end up divining patterns in a random number generator.
    - 6y ago

nickthemagicman 6y ago

If you think on a large scale, humanity has a limited number of years left until the heat death of the sun... so this planet..and us..arent going to be here forever. And that's if we don't nuke each other first. Humans are very minimally removed from violent monkeys evolutionarily. It's not far-fetched to imagine a nuclear war being started simply by an insult to a mentally unstable world leader. It took humans 100,000 years to go from spears and caves to developing portable phones to surf cat videos. So we have a lot of work to do to get to interstellar travel.

staticman2 6y ago
Your genes might compel you to try to leave the planet and keep mating after our sun dies, but our species will inevitably be dead once entropy kicks in at the heat death of the universe. Ultimately we are going to go extinct and there is no point to the colonization scheme other than delusions of grandeur.
- apocalypstyx 6y ago
  Well, to be fair, we're still within the margin of error for a Big Crunch or a Big Rip, as well. (Maybe we'll even get lucky and not get to see a Vacuum Decay coming.)
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  By this logic, there's no point to anything.
  - apocalypstyx 6y ago
    There is either existential nihilism or there is God. And God may be the more horrific of the two. (Or the unknown unknown third option may yet still be worse, who knows? The calculation of it being better just leads back to God, so the construction collapses back into two poles.)
  - lom888 6y ago
    The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.

elsonrodriguez 6y ago

> Someone in his position could do so many things on our little blue dot itself to help those in need. The entire article boils down to this one tired old argument. And in the case of Musk, while Teslas don't help people in need directly, the adoption of electric cars and other electric transportation will help the entire world population by reducing air pollution and climate change. So, whynotboth.jpg.

qayxc 6y ago
> the adoption of electric cars and other electric transportation will help the entire world population by reducing air pollution and climate change. This one tired old argument again. While reducing air pollution is a plus (at least in city centres), electric cars are nothing but green washing. If you really are concerned about climate change and pollution, reduce the need for cars and own no car. Abandon Euclidian- and single-use zoning (i.e. reverse urban sprawl and make cities liveable again), improve public transport, make cities walkable, improve bike infrastructure, etc. etc. In other words, put in the actual work instead of shifting the problem around and creating even more intrusive infrastructure that needs to be built and maintained ("tunnels", "hyperloops", blah).
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  The perfect is the enemy of the good. - Voltaire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy
  - qayxc 6y ago
    Haha - that can easily backfire, because by that logic wouldn't it be much easier to just demand better filters and higher norms for ICE cars? You don't even have to change anything if you just keep driving your 2010 ICE car until it literally rusts away under your buttocks instead of buying a new car (electric or not). It'd be interesting to compare the actual CO² and energy use difference (including manufacturing costs for the new car) between driving an existing ICE car less frequently and keeping it longer versus buying a new electric car while keeping the the same driving habits.

sandworm101 6y ago

>> Why does Elon Musk want to send humans to a hellhole planet? Showmanship, and the inescapable realities of rocket science. The truth is that it is technologically easier to land on mars than the moon. The delta-V requirements are less because of aerobraking into the mars atmosphere. And you don't need to worry about restarting big landing engines in zero gravity. So it is easier to put an object to the surface of mars than to put something on the surface of the moon. Landing on Venus is off the table and everything else is too far away. Mars is therefore the easiest target for anyone wanting to make a show. Imho we will have an easier time living on our moon or any number of asteroids. Even Mar's moons would probably be easier than getting back and forth from Mar's surface.

andrewfromx 6y ago

just look at https://i.ytimg.com/vi/p5fdbowk7X8/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/p5fdbowk7X8/maxresdefault.jpg yucatan peninsula crater photo and try and picture the Dinosaurs and that big boom, cloud of dust and it's like c'mon, no brainer. We need N planets not just 1 planet.

dehrmann 6y ago
It might be easier to survive on earth engulfed in a dust cloud than Mars.
- andrewfromx 6y ago
  Touché. That's the best argument I've heard yet. Tsunamis too I guess. Everything that killed the Dinos we humans can protect against easier than living on mars?
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    Check out the Wikipedia page on living fossils: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_fossil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_fossil There are a number of species alive today that existed in a similar form when the dinosaurs were alive.
- elsonrodriguez 6y ago
  Yes and no. Society won't survive on earth because earth's society is dependent on fragile supply chains which in turn depend on everything being ok. A Martian society would survive by virtue of already being equipped to operate in a hellscape.
  - andrewfromx 6y ago
    yeah but dehrmann is saying, changing Earth to operate in a hellscape level A is way easier than solving the mars hellscape level B...

bcatanzaro 6y ago

I am really sad that so much of our elite media institutions are deeply Luddite. They wear their anti-technology, anti-progress biases like badges of honor. It’s likely a signaling mechanism. The elite doesn’t need technology because they don’t need change. So opposing change signals that things are good for you already. I don’t love Elon Musk but at least he dreams big and has a change-positive attitude. Because I think things do need to change.

quantummkv 6y ago
It's not that the elite media institutions are Luddite. It's that a lot of tech people don't give elite media the proper respect it thinks it demands. And that turns into a cycle where media then lashes out with hurt egos, further flaming it, like with this article. It's clear from reading the article that the real issue in the article is not Mars or Earth or Carl Sagan, it's Elon Musk. Or more specifically, the complete lack of respect Elon publicly gives to elite media.
narrator 6y ago
All the elite needs is fewer people taking up resources. Otherwise, everything is perfect for them. The status quo could last from now to eternity. This is kind of how the Egyptian civilization worked. They went 2000 years without a lot of change. Just an endless "sustainable" cycle. I like the comparison between the Canaanite religion and Judaism. The elites are Canaanites and dealt with their not being enough for everyone by having the lower classes sacrifice their children to Mammon. This is the equivalent of the endless complaining about useless eaters and overpopulation by extremely wealthy people. The Jews, and the rest of the Abrahamic religions on the other hand, let the people who properly prepared survive (e.g Noah), with a few carveouts, such as the gleanings for those that didn't. The king could never take your property without just compensation. The priest could never ask you to sacrifice your children. This individualistic struggle to survive is what culturally has led to the huge technological innovations in the west.
- fallingfrog 6y ago
  “ This individualistic struggle to survive is what culturally has led to the huge technological innovations in the west.” I don’t think that is the consensus view. It was more to do with the university system, the scientific method, and the invention of capital markets. That and a huge influx of free resources and gold that came from the discovery of the Americas. Also of course the Middle East was annihilated by Ghengis Khan and Western Europe wasn’t. A lot of historical factors were at play.

bryanlarsen 6y ago

> Someone in his position could do so many things on our little blue dot itself to help those in need. She's talking about the man who accelerated our transition to electric cars by years, who is significantly lowering the cost and acceptability of solar power, is enabling the transition of the grid to renewables through the Tesla Megapacks, is pouring billions into battery R&D which will be critical to a green transition, is sponsoring a $100 million prize into carbon capture and is researching the production of fossil fuel replacements from carbon dioxide. Who has done more?

sdht0 6y ago
Not to forget the push for universal satellite-based internet.
ldbooth 6y ago
Lowered the cost of solar power? He acquired his cousins company and idled it, tough business, resi, more of a securitization play. I support the mans intent nonetheless, hard to hit all homeruns at his scale. But for the record you could say Germany (paying high FIT conract rates) and China (scaling module mfg capacity) did a lot more for solar, granted those are nation states it should still be a complement. But ze electric cars and push to megapaks.. No one!
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  You're comparing an entire country vs a single man. Not fair.
  - ldbooth 6y ago
    > granted those are nation states it should still be a complement. To be fair then: Tom Werner of Sunpower, Dan Shugar of NextTracker, Employees at Bell Laboratories (created the first solar cell), Employees at SunEdison (created the Solar PPA, the backbone of even Musk's solar financing) all have done more for Solar Photovoltaics. I don't know who to credit at First Solar but, surely someone: these are all the Solar OG's.

Diederich 6y ago

Another quote from Carl Sagan: For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. The appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. *Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game, none of them lasts forever. Your own life, or your band's, or even your species, might be owed to a restless few, drawn by a craving that they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands, and new worlds.* Herman Melville in Moby Dick spoke for wanderers in all epoch and meridians. He said, "I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas." Maybe it's a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds, promising untold opportunities, beckon. Silently, they orbit the sun. Waiting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH3c1QZzRK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH3c1QZzRK4

zepto 6y ago
Something tells me a trip to Mars and life inside an artificial habitat won’t feel like the open road.
- yencabulator 6y ago
  And a lone ship in the middle of a vast sea is somehow different?

rotexo 6y ago

I like Kim Stanley Robinson’s take: that humanity’s off-planet presence will be like our presence in Antarctica. We will put a bunch of scientists there and continue to actively support them there, because self-sufficiency is unlikely in such a hostile environment. It is hard to imagine anything else in my children’s or grandchildren’s lifetimes. All the arguments about colonization of other planets strike me as tautological. We should have people on other planets because it would be good to have people on other planets, or we shouldn’t because we don’t have people on other planets and we do have them on Earth. So people will argue, and each side will direct the resources they have to their side of the argument. Not sure what else there is to be said.

josefresco 6y ago
Having just finished a few of Robinson's books, your comment reminded me of (I believe) "Red Mars" in which there was a part where the first settlers returned to their camp from exploring Mars and remarked (rather sadly) how dirty and terrible looking their encampment was, in contrast with the beauty of unspoiled mars. They compared it to scientific outposts on Antarctica.
- rotexo 6y ago
  Indeed! KSR has clearly had a change of thinking about terraforming since the Mars trilogy. I asked him about it at a reading he did from Red Moon, and he responded with the Antarctica analogy I described above.

frogpelt 6y ago

All it took for someone to write an article about what a terrible idea Mars is, was Elon Musk to promote it.

Diederich 6y ago

> Someone in his position could do so many things on our little blue dot itself to help those in need. Does accelerating the transition to renewable energy count? Of course, reasonable people can differ on how big a difference Tesla Motors has made, but it's undeniable that Musk took an enormous risk with a large chunk of his then available assets.

zokier 6y ago

> Someone in his position could do so many things on our little blue dot itself to help those in need So all the hand-wringing about the inhospitality of Mars is just fluff, this is really the gist of the article. The "fault" of Musk is not that he is pushing humans to Mars but that he is not "helping those in need", whatever that means. Are people like Bezos, Ellison, Cook, Zuckerberg, Page, Brin etc (arguably group who are more in position to help) really "helping those in need" so much more that Musk deserves to be singled out, just because he doesn't use his wealth buying frivolous tropical islands but is executing his vision (misguided or not)?

zepto 6y ago
Cook really isn’t that rich compared to the others.

kr99x 6y ago

People saying that we should not bother colonizing Mars at all are clearly wrong. I can buy the argument that we should not yet do it, but come on. The Earth will one day be dust, whether by astronomical disaster or by the sun's natural lifecycle moving to later stages. We live on the Earth. If we do not go elsewhere, we will be dust at that time. So for self-preservation, we'll need to go elsewhere eventually. Mars is elsewhere, and is much easier to reach/terraform/colonize than say... Proxima Centauri B. Mars is a good "practice" shot at being elsewhere. So obviously, we should go to Mars. It's just a question of when.

gmuslera 6y ago

Going to mars is something we must do if we want really long time survival as species/culture. But it is not a solution for our relatively short time problems (100-200 years). It won't solve global warming, nor will be an alternative for mankind against what global warming will do this century here.

ldbooth 6y ago

I think she missed the better point: are we at a critical time in Earth's history focusing too many smart people on getting to space than first saving our home planet from some unknown 'new look'. We're on the clock on one problem. Not a popular opinion among rocket surgeons but you know what they say about hindsight.