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And technology used to settle Mars will be able to be used to fix problems on earth. Rich people seem to be happy to pump money into the idea of breaking free

And technology used to settle Mars will be able to be used to fix problems on earth. Rich people seem to be happy to pump money into the idea of breaking free from Earth, and that's great. I'd rather have Musk and Bezos than Buffet and Ellison

KineticLensman 6y ago
> And technology used to settle Mars will be able to be used to fix problems on earth. Which technologies, and which problems, specifically? If Earth reaches a point where we require Martian survival habs to stay alive - on Earth - then it is essentially game over for the massively interconnected ecosystems that make Earth our unique and precious home.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  Well for one, EVERY source of energy we could use is carbon emission free. If you want rocket fuel (with carbon emissions), you basically have to FIND carbon dioxide to make the oxygen to burn with and the fuel. MOXIE is doing this on Perseverance. That’s why SpaceX/Elon are doing carbon capture funding: it’s necessary in order to get your rockets and people back from Mars. Essential to make it viable to figure out how to not rely on our biosphere as there isn’t one there. All probes designed to last longer than a few hours HAVE to use solar or nuclear. No point bringing fossil fuels with if there is no oxygen to burn it with. It also forces a sort economy of resources. Every attempt is made to recycle air and water, packaging, even from human waste.
  - KineticLensman 6y ago
    > figure out how to not rely on our biosphere as there isn’t one there. These types of technologies may be very valuable in supporting us in the future on Earth. My concern is that if people think we (or the billionaires that care) can solve environmental problems just be throwing future tech at them, then they aren’t motivated to cut their resource consumption in the first place. This is why ‘reduce’ is a higher priority than ‘recycle’. > All probes designed to last longer than a few hours HAVE to use solar or nuclear. No point bringing fossil fuels with if there is no oxygen to burn it with. Developments in renewables (solar and otherwise) are not being driven by a desire for planetary exploration / colonization. Perseverance is powered by Plutonium-238, which is not a good model for terrestrial nuclear power at scale. > It also forces a sort economy of resources. Every attempt is made to recycle air and water, packaging, even from human waste. This I do agree with – if we treat Earth and its resources as things to value rather than as things to consume and exploit, we stand a much better chance of achieving a future where our children and their descendants can enjoy them as well. Which is sort of the point of the original Spaceship Earth concept :-)
    - Robotbeat 6y ago
      But why should we have to reduce our “consumption” (by which I take it you mean material possessions and activities) if we literally CAN use tech to address the emissions problem? Reducing “consumption” ought not to be a goal in and of itself! The thing I keep going back to is the Ozone Hole. Opponents of banning CFCs argued we’d have to reduce our quality of life, stop using refrigeration and air conditioning, in order to reduce the release of ozone-depleting chemicals. But we DIDN’T. We simply developed alternative refrigerants that didn’t have the Ozone-depleting effect and now the ozone hole is healing (see here: https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/09/1046452 https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/09/1046452) and we still definitely have refrigeration and air conditioning (and both are massively helpful to human quality of life). Ultimately, we likely CAN just apply technology to fix the problem of CO2 (and methane) emissions, and we really ought to do it! The fact that consumption doesn’t need to be reduced is a BENEFIT of this approach because it means its political economy is much more viable (I imagine that if we had forced the world to choose between refrigeration/airconditioning and the ozone layer, they would have resisted strongly any effort to address ozone depletion). Folks arguing against technological fixes to climate change are doing the work of those arguing against climate action! Don’t stop heating and cooling your house, get it insulated and get a good heat pump. Don’t stop traveling, use electric vehicles. Don’t stop using electricity, use solar power.
      - KineticLensman 6y ago
        > But why should we have to reduce our “consumption” (by which I take it you mean material possessions and activities) if we literally CAN use tech to address the emissions problem? Because: 1) We don't yet in fact have the tech in general. We did with Ozone, I agree with your argument there, but it is going to be ages before we know how to make carbon neutral concrete, for example. 2) Speaking for myself, I'd rather live in a green biosphere rather than Trantor.
        Robotbeat 6y ago
        We didn’t when we started with ozone. There were not the full suite of non-ozone-depleting alternatives to CFCs when people were starting to draft legislation. Additionally, we absolutely DO have the technology to make carbon neutral cement. In fact, we can make carbon negative cement if we store the CO2 emitted during the calcining step (as the cement itself will reabsorb CO2 from the atmosphere over its lifetime). Secondly, on Mars there isn’t much carbonates anyway so you’d use alternatives like polymers or elemental sulfur (this is easier than it sounds) as the binder. The fact that you don’t think we have the tech (which is different from deploying the tech broadly, which no one did for CFC alternatives, either, until there was policy pressure to do so) is exactly the problem I’m referring to: the engineers and technologists proposing to settle Mars actually KNOW of the technology needed to operate completely carbon free. It’s ironically the environmental activists who lack the knowledge of the necessary technology and therefore propose we have to not have any children around and abandon any pretense to luxury or comfort in order to solve climate change.
- herewulf 6y ago
  It doesn't have to be specific. Warfare has driven human technology for millennia. It would be great for our species if technology were driven by a lofty, unifying goal as space travel/colonization instead.
bordercases 6y ago
> And technology used to settle Mars will be able to be used to fix problems on earth. This is wrong to assume confidently for several reasons. It is wrong to endorse as being a good idea because when you apply that attitude to Earth first, you extend the possibility of further Mars missions. But the converse doesn't necessarily hold; we could fail to make breakthroughs on Mars, in which case we've wasted resources that could otherwise have been used to improve the efficiency of civilization on Earth. It is also wrong to hold that there is anything particularly special about Mars when it comes to developing this technology. The only thing special about Mars is that it's hard. I'm assuming there's an intuition that because something is hard, if innovation occurs, the technology that will come out of it must be fantastic. But if such technology is required for Mars, then it will at least be developed in prototype form on Earth. So Mars is neither necessary as an incentive or a testbed to develop environment rejuvenating technologies. And if the point I made above holds, then we should just turn this on its head, and focus on technologies for Earth first, then use those lessons for Mars. It also makes the assumption that there are going to be incentives that will cause technologies developed on Mars to be applied to Earth. We have technologies and practices on Earth that can solve our own "terraforming" problems now. But they are long-term projects that only get their returns after several decades. Very few financiers care about this kind of investment, particularly when the economy is experiencing nominal growth elsewhere in sectors that are not physically sustainable. Elon sort of gets bail on this because of his stake in SolarCity. He's still wrong in the sense that solar power will not produce energy at the density required for current civilization. Nuclear is the only form of energy that will satisfy our energy constraints in the long run. But you can't easily scale nuclear, it requires a lot of capital to upstart, and the payoff is longer. It's not Silicon Valley friendly because SV is about horizontal scaling and rent capture. So it's understandable why Elon picked solar, but it shows the limitations of self-interested billionaires in solving humanity's problems. I have little positive to say about Bezos.

KineticLensman 6y ago

> And technology used to settle Mars will be able to be used to fix problems on earth. Which technologies, and which problems, specifically? If Earth reaches a point where we require Martian survival habs to stay alive - on Earth - then it is essentially game over for the massively interconnected ecosystems that make Earth our unique and precious home.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Robotbeat 6y ago
Well for one, EVERY source of energy we could use is carbon emission free. If you want rocket fuel (with carbon emissions), you basically have to FIND carbon dioxide to make the oxygen to burn with and the fuel. MOXIE is doing this on Perseverance. That’s why SpaceX/Elon are doing carbon capture funding: it’s necessary in order to get your rockets and people back from Mars. Essential to make it viable to figure out how to not rely on our biosphere as there isn’t one there. All probes designed to last longer than a few hours HAVE to use solar or nuclear. No point bringing fossil fuels with if there is no oxygen to burn it with. It also forces a sort economy of resources. Every attempt is made to recycle air and water, packaging, even from human waste.
- KineticLensman 6y ago
  > figure out how to not rely on our biosphere as there isn’t one there. These types of technologies may be very valuable in supporting us in the future on Earth. My concern is that if people think we (or the billionaires that care) can solve environmental problems just be throwing future tech at them, then they aren’t motivated to cut their resource consumption in the first place. This is why ‘reduce’ is a higher priority than ‘recycle’. > All probes designed to last longer than a few hours HAVE to use solar or nuclear. No point bringing fossil fuels with if there is no oxygen to burn it with. Developments in renewables (solar and otherwise) are not being driven by a desire for planetary exploration / colonization. Perseverance is powered by Plutonium-238, which is not a good model for terrestrial nuclear power at scale. > It also forces a sort economy of resources. Every attempt is made to recycle air and water, packaging, even from human waste. This I do agree with – if we treat Earth and its resources as things to value rather than as things to consume and exploit, we stand a much better chance of achieving a future where our children and their descendants can enjoy them as well. Which is sort of the point of the original Spaceship Earth concept :-)
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    But why should we have to reduce our “consumption” (by which I take it you mean material possessions and activities) if we literally CAN use tech to address the emissions problem? Reducing “consumption” ought not to be a goal in and of itself! The thing I keep going back to is the Ozone Hole. Opponents of banning CFCs argued we’d have to reduce our quality of life, stop using refrigeration and air conditioning, in order to reduce the release of ozone-depleting chemicals. But we DIDN’T. We simply developed alternative refrigerants that didn’t have the Ozone-depleting effect and now the ozone hole is healing (see here: https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/09/1046452 https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/09/1046452) and we still definitely have refrigeration and air conditioning (and both are massively helpful to human quality of life). Ultimately, we likely CAN just apply technology to fix the problem of CO2 (and methane) emissions, and we really ought to do it! The fact that consumption doesn’t need to be reduced is a BENEFIT of this approach because it means its political economy is much more viable (I imagine that if we had forced the world to choose between refrigeration/airconditioning and the ozone layer, they would have resisted strongly any effort to address ozone depletion). Folks arguing against technological fixes to climate change are doing the work of those arguing against climate action! Don’t stop heating and cooling your house, get it insulated and get a good heat pump. Don’t stop traveling, use electric vehicles. Don’t stop using electricity, use solar power.
    - KineticLensman 6y ago
      > But why should we have to reduce our “consumption” (by which I take it you mean material possessions and activities) if we literally CAN use tech to address the emissions problem? Because: 1) We don't yet in fact have the tech in general. We did with Ozone, I agree with your argument there, but it is going to be ages before we know how to make carbon neutral concrete, for example. 2) Speaking for myself, I'd rather live in a green biosphere rather than Trantor.
      - Robotbeat 6y ago
        We didn’t when we started with ozone. There were not the full suite of non-ozone-depleting alternatives to CFCs when people were starting to draft legislation. Additionally, we absolutely DO have the technology to make carbon neutral cement. In fact, we can make carbon negative cement if we store the CO2 emitted during the calcining step (as the cement itself will reabsorb CO2 from the atmosphere over its lifetime). Secondly, on Mars there isn’t much carbonates anyway so you’d use alternatives like polymers or elemental sulfur (this is easier than it sounds) as the binder. The fact that you don’t think we have the tech (which is different from deploying the tech broadly, which no one did for CFC alternatives, either, until there was policy pressure to do so) is exactly the problem I’m referring to: the engineers and technologists proposing to settle Mars actually KNOW of the technology needed to operate completely carbon free. It’s ironically the environmental activists who lack the knowledge of the necessary technology and therefore propose we have to not have any children around and abandon any pretense to luxury or comfort in order to solve climate change.
herewulf 6y ago
It doesn't have to be specific. Warfare has driven human technology for millennia. It would be great for our species if technology were driven by a lofty, unifying goal as space travel/colonization instead.

bordercases 6y ago

> And technology used to settle Mars will be able to be used to fix problems on earth. This is wrong to assume confidently for several reasons. It is wrong to endorse as being a good idea because when you apply that attitude to Earth first, you extend the possibility of further Mars missions. But the converse doesn't necessarily hold; we could fail to make breakthroughs on Mars, in which case we've wasted resources that could otherwise have been used to improve the efficiency of civilization on Earth. It is also wrong to hold that there is anything particularly special about Mars when it comes to developing this technology. The only thing special about Mars is that it's hard. I'm assuming there's an intuition that because something is hard, if innovation occurs, the technology that will come out of it must be fantastic. But if such technology is required for Mars, then it will at least be developed in prototype form on Earth. So Mars is neither necessary as an incentive or a testbed to develop environment rejuvenating technologies. And if the point I made above holds, then we should just turn this on its head, and focus on technologies for Earth first, then use those lessons for Mars. It also makes the assumption that there are going to be incentives that will cause technologies developed on Mars to be applied to Earth. We have technologies and practices on Earth that can solve our own "terraforming" problems now. But they are long-term projects that only get their returns after several decades. Very few financiers care about this kind of investment, particularly when the economy is experiencing nominal growth elsewhere in sectors that are not physically sustainable. Elon sort of gets bail on this because of his stake in SolarCity. He's still wrong in the sense that solar power will not produce energy at the density required for current civilization. Nuclear is the only form of energy that will satisfy our energy constraints in the long run. But you can't easily scale nuclear, it requires a lot of capital to upstart, and the payoff is longer. It's not Silicon Valley friendly because SV is about horizontal scaling and rent capture. So it's understandable why Elon picked solar, but it shows the limitations of self-interested billionaires in solving humanity's problems. I have little positive to say about Bezos.