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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 bec

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.
    - vagrantJin 6y ago
      > existential environmental crises in the near-to-mid term, Nah. This just comes off as alarmist. We might accelerate a naturally occuring process ever so slightly but it is by no means an exinction event. You underestimate the homo sapiens ability to adapt to their surroundings. Berbers live in deserts, eskimo in ice tundra - arguably the very extremes of human habitats. You can throw everything at them short of a super volcano really. When the polluters have to pay the piper - they'll get their just desserts. Unfortunately a world war for resources isnt out of the question. We're not even close to that yet. Not when Apple Inc is still the most valuable company in the world. What I hate is the destruction of millenia year old forests and the biology that inhabits it. That's just driven by mindless greed when fucking Doritos is more important than the home of the last wild jungle elephants or 2 millenia old trees just cut with impunity. Not to mention the people to whom those forests are holy land and home.
      - iab 6y ago
        Adaption will happen, for sure. But you agree with my fears in this paragraph, in concluding that resource wars aren't out of the question. In this context, how could anyone envision that we will have the means, and will, to successfully colonize another planet on a timescale where the most continuous extra-terrestrial presence we have had is in low-earth-orbit? The timelines just don't marry up.
        vagrantJin 6y ago
        A lot of will is required for sure.
      - Tiktaalik 6y ago
        Good thing you're a human and not a resident orca
- c22 6y ago
  I suspect the life-support technologies developed in the pursuit of Mars colonization will be extremely useful tools in the earthbound struggle for survival whether or not such colonies are actually successful.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    Two examples already starting to become relevant, there will be more. - ISRU fuel production on Mars is closely related to carbon neutral green fuel production on Earth. In other words, turning carbon dioxide into fuel. - Agricultural production on Mars and vertical farming on Earth.
  - iab 6y ago
    Great point.
incrudible 6y ago
Earth is not paradise, on a timeframe of tens of thousands of years it is a volatile place that could blow us up in an instant. Terraforming and space mining are absolute necessities for human survival. You really only can argue that maybe it is one or two centuries too early to think about colonizing Mars, but you gotta start somewhere.
- qayxc 6y ago
  > Terraforming and space mining are absolute necessities for human survival. Is that so? Which timeframe are we talking about then, because for the entirety of humankind's existence, including its ancestors (so going back at least 4 million years), Earth was a mighty fine place to be. The occasional ice age didn't stop our non-technological ancestors from spreading all over the globe either. > You really only can argue that maybe it is one or two centuries too early to think about colonizing Mars, but you gotta start somewhere. How about closer targets then? The Moon is just a few days o travel away, can be evacuated at short notice if need be and communication delay allows for near-realtime information exchange. This obsession with Mars and "colonising" it is really quite baffling to me. It's not even clear whether the physical conditions (especially gravity, which no amount of "terraforming" can change) would allow for long-term human settlement. Instead of planning (permanent) research outposts to find answers to these questions, Musk is already fantasising about "1 million people on Mars by 2050", which is just bonkers. Considering that our species developed in an environment with 1g gravity, 1 atm of air pressure, plenty of water and moderate temperatures, I find it quite astonishing how anyone in their right mind would find Mars of all places to be necessary for human survival. A civilisation capable of modifying an entire planet's atmosphere, temperature, and magnetic field would much more easily (in terms of energy required) be capable of creating free floating habitats with orders of magnitude more living space, carefully tuned parameters (air, temperature, artificial gravity, etc.) and versatility than a small cold, barren rock like Mars. It would be much quicker to create such artificial worlds, worlds, too than to slowly heat up and build up an entire breathable atmosphere. By the way - where are all the required elements for a proper atmosphere and ecosystem (e.g. nitrogen and phosphorus) supposed to come from? Even extraction from minerals (assuming sufficient presence) would be incredibly costly: 1 m³ of air is appr.1 kg of nitrogen and given a similar composition of Mars and Earth, about 0.03% of the crust would be nitrogen. That'd be about 3300 kg of soil to process per m³ of air to get the nitrogen for an Earth-equivalent atmosphere at sea-level. If you want a column of just 100m of air with a density in that ballpark, that'd already be 300 tons of soil to process per m², or (given an average density of 4 tons/m³) 70 metres of the entire surface of Mars... Just to give you an idea of what the scope of such an undertaking (e.g. "terraforming" Mars) would be. It's something that a post-scarcity society can do as a vanity project, but most certainly not as a "necessity for survival".
elsonrodriguez 6y ago
It is a very human thing to overcomplicate one of the most basic instincts of life into some abstract human social concept.
erispoe 6y ago
We only have one earth but there are trillions of planets. Both are true at the same time.

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.
  - vagrantJin 6y ago
    > existential environmental crises in the near-to-mid term, Nah. This just comes off as alarmist. We might accelerate a naturally occuring process ever so slightly but it is by no means an exinction event. You underestimate the homo sapiens ability to adapt to their surroundings. Berbers live in deserts, eskimo in ice tundra - arguably the very extremes of human habitats. You can throw everything at them short of a super volcano really. When the polluters have to pay the piper - they'll get their just desserts. Unfortunately a world war for resources isnt out of the question. We're not even close to that yet. Not when Apple Inc is still the most valuable company in the world. What I hate is the destruction of millenia year old forests and the biology that inhabits it. That's just driven by mindless greed when fucking Doritos is more important than the home of the last wild jungle elephants or 2 millenia old trees just cut with impunity. Not to mention the people to whom those forests are holy land and home.
    - iab 6y ago
      Adaption will happen, for sure. But you agree with my fears in this paragraph, in concluding that resource wars aren't out of the question. In this context, how could anyone envision that we will have the means, and will, to successfully colonize another planet on a timescale where the most continuous extra-terrestrial presence we have had is in low-earth-orbit? The timelines just don't marry up.
      - vagrantJin 6y ago
        A lot of will is required for sure.
    - Tiktaalik 6y ago
      Good thing you're a human and not a resident orca
c22 6y ago
I suspect the life-support technologies developed in the pursuit of Mars colonization will be extremely useful tools in the earthbound struggle for survival whether or not such colonies are actually successful.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  Two examples already starting to become relevant, there will be more. - ISRU fuel production on Mars is closely related to carbon neutral green fuel production on Earth. In other words, turning carbon dioxide into fuel. - Agricultural production on Mars and vertical farming on Earth.
- iab 6y ago
  Great point.

incrudible 6y ago

Earth is not paradise, on a timeframe of tens of thousands of years it is a volatile place that could blow us up in an instant. Terraforming and space mining are absolute necessities for human survival. You really only can argue that maybe it is one or two centuries too early to think about colonizing Mars, but you gotta start somewhere.

qayxc 6y ago
> Terraforming and space mining are absolute necessities for human survival. Is that so? Which timeframe are we talking about then, because for the entirety of humankind's existence, including its ancestors (so going back at least 4 million years), Earth was a mighty fine place to be. The occasional ice age didn't stop our non-technological ancestors from spreading all over the globe either. > You really only can argue that maybe it is one or two centuries too early to think about colonizing Mars, but you gotta start somewhere. How about closer targets then? The Moon is just a few days o travel away, can be evacuated at short notice if need be and communication delay allows for near-realtime information exchange. This obsession with Mars and "colonising" it is really quite baffling to me. It's not even clear whether the physical conditions (especially gravity, which no amount of "terraforming" can change) would allow for long-term human settlement. Instead of planning (permanent) research outposts to find answers to these questions, Musk is already fantasising about "1 million people on Mars by 2050", which is just bonkers. Considering that our species developed in an environment with 1g gravity, 1 atm of air pressure, plenty of water and moderate temperatures, I find it quite astonishing how anyone in their right mind would find Mars of all places to be necessary for human survival. A civilisation capable of modifying an entire planet's atmosphere, temperature, and magnetic field would much more easily (in terms of energy required) be capable of creating free floating habitats with orders of magnitude more living space, carefully tuned parameters (air, temperature, artificial gravity, etc.) and versatility than a small cold, barren rock like Mars. It would be much quicker to create such artificial worlds, worlds, too than to slowly heat up and build up an entire breathable atmosphere. By the way - where are all the required elements for a proper atmosphere and ecosystem (e.g. nitrogen and phosphorus) supposed to come from? Even extraction from minerals (assuming sufficient presence) would be incredibly costly: 1 m³ of air is appr.1 kg of nitrogen and given a similar composition of Mars and Earth, about 0.03% of the crust would be nitrogen. That'd be about 3300 kg of soil to process per m³ of air to get the nitrogen for an Earth-equivalent atmosphere at sea-level. If you want a column of just 100m of air with a density in that ballpark, that'd already be 300 tons of soil to process per m², or (given an average density of 4 tons/m³) 70 metres of the entire surface of Mars... Just to give you an idea of what the scope of such an undertaking (e.g. "terraforming" Mars) would be. It's something that a post-scarcity society can do as a vanity project, but most certainly not as a "necessity for survival".

elsonrodriguez 6y ago

It is a very human thing to overcomplicate one of the most basic instincts of life into some abstract human social concept.

erispoe 6y ago

We only have one earth but there are trillions of planets. Both are true at the same time.