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why is going to mars even remotely high on the list of humanities priorities? it seems like people think its cool and then try to have their cake and eat it to

why is going to mars even remotely high on the list of humanities priorities? it seems like people think its cool and then try to have their cake and eat it to by claiming its somehow important. im pretty sure for at least a very long time its just cool.

scoofy 6y ago
Meteor impacts, caldera collapses, nuclear war. Every single one of these things could happen tomorrow, and we'd never see it coming. If we want any chance if humanity to survive, we need to get people onto other planets.
- rtpg 6y ago
  Earth after a meteor impact and a nuclear war happening at the same time would still be 100x more livable than anything we can do on Mars. Saving humanity by going to Mars is like saving yourself from the titanic by jumping into the ice-cold water. We can barely make places like Antartica survivable! Huge chunks of "totally fine" places like Hawaii only exist thanks to massive shipping industries. If you have a way to build out a livable space on Mars, please give us Earthlings some of that technology cuz it would be pretty useful to a lot of people!
  - m4rtink 6y ago
    Anything - including flight to and colonization off Mars - that moves humans closer to building mega scale space habitats is an important step forward. Thats where the road to immortality ultimately leads for humans as a species. And possibly for individuals as well, given the potentially almost limitless resources available in Space.
    - kitsunesoba 6y ago
      One thing I've seen becoming a spacefaring civilization explained as is a "coming out of the cave" of sorts, which doesn't line up perfectly but it's not far off. The species' possibility space will be severely restricted so long as offplanet infrastructure is limited.
    - kaba0 6y ago
      We can’t even not fck up our very own and livable planet, it’s just naive to think of colonization. We will kill ourselves much much earlier than that.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    Nah, your imagination of the horrors that nature can (and did) unleash upon the Earth is pretty limited. A Theia impact would make Earth far less livable than Mars. Would sterilize the planet. And you hit on a good point in your last sentence: Developing a self-sustaining civilization on Mars would PROVE we can easily be sustainable on Earth.
- intergalplan 6y ago
  I'm happy to see people go to Mars for other reasons, but this one's (commonly-cited) BS. The odds of something happening that rendered Earth worse to live on than Mars but didn't also toast mars is incredibly small. Mars is really bad. Most plausible post-apocalypse Earths are way, way better. Yet I don't see anyone clambering to build apocalypse-survival shelters and pay people to live in them part-time, which is something we could do right now that's more effective than a Martian colony, and much cheaper. I think the trouble is that people don't get just how bad Mars is. Take the peak of Everest, cross it with Antarctica, and dose it with radiation. Sounds bad? You're still nowhere near as bad as Mars. It's really, really bad.
  - MPSimmons 6y ago
    > The odds of something happening that rendered Earth worse to live on than Mars but didn't also toast mars is incredibly small Over a long enough time frame, the chance is nearly 100%. A planetary extinction-level event has already happened where every land animal larger than 25kg died. Maybe it won't happen for another 65 million years. Maybe it will happen tomorrow. Maybe there will be a massive gamma ray burst that will sterilize the entire solar system. Who knows? But just because we will eventually die out doesn't mean that we can't try to do what we can to survive. And anyway, say what you will about Elon's whole "thing", but a life where we're exploring the solar system is more exciting than one where we aren't.
    - intergalplan 6y ago
      > A planetary extinction-level event has already happened where every land animal larger than 25kg died. Maybe it won't happen for another 65 million years. Maybe it will happen tomorrow. Maybe there will be a massive gamma ray burst that will sterilize the entire solar system. Who knows? Right, but... Mars is already worse for human life than Earth after every major extinction event. That's like "in case my house catches fire, I'm gonna build a backup house inside a working industrial furnace". If what we're worried about is surviving an event like the several that have affected Earth in the history of life on the planet, Mars is both more expensive and worse than a bunch of other options, including other space-based options (though I think that whole class of solutions is really wasteful compared to boring, Earthbound alternatives). That's a bad reason for going to Mars, is all I'm saying. I'll still be cheering along when the first boot-print is made, mind you. OK, here: strip Earth of all oxygen and its ozone layer and turn all the land into parched deserts that can barely support even the hardiest of plants. You want to wake up in a sealed shelter on Earth, or on Mars, after that happens? The smart answer is "on Earth" because the list of horrible things about your situation on Mars is still 5x that long, plus all those things are already problems there. Mars is very, very, very bad.
danielheath 6y ago
Honestly, I think it’s not important, but the capabilities doing it will build are better than the ones we would get by spending the money elsewhere. I think this because you can trick most programs into handing over money without giving results, but there isn’t a way to trick physics.
- bumby 6y ago
  There is plenty of precedent for awarding contracts that get nixed due to changes in political winds before producing results though.
elihu 6y ago
There could be substantial benefits in the long term, if we can get a self-sufficient colony going. In the short term, it's mostly working out the technology and being able to learn more about planetary science by studying something up close that isn't the Earth. In the long term, Mars is a great refueling station because it has carbon dioxide and water that can be used to make methane, and it has much weaker gravity than Earth. That would make it much easier to access the asteroid belt, which may have a lot of valuable minerals. There may also be some not-so-obvious benefits to living on Mars. For instance, people with mobility issues may be stuck in a wheelchair on Earth but be able to walk on Mars. (The optics of shipping all our old people to Mars isn't great, but it might actually be a pretty awesome spot for an old folks home.) Another reason people have for going to Mars is the same as people who migrated from Europe to the Americas: to get away from a political situation they don't like and start a new life. If the optics of sending old people to Mars is bad, the optics of sending, say, Syrian refugees to Mars is even worse, but if someone wants a fresh start that's one way to do it. At least until Mars becomes as dysfunctionally political and tribal as Earth. In the very short term, sending people to Mars may have a big impact on children being interested in science. I don't know if it's still the case that if you ask an elementary-aged child what they want to be when they grow up, it'll probably either be "an astronaut" or "president of the United States", but I think it was when I was that age.
- sterlind 6y ago
  as someone who occasionally needs a wheelchair, I'd miss my friends if I got shipped off to Mars! I'm also pretty sure that the gees wouldn't be good for my condition. there's also the small matter of radiation exposure, since Mars doesn't have much of an ionosphere. I'm waiting on powered exoskeletons as my sci-fi mobility aid of choice.
  - elihu 6y ago
    Yeah, shipping off to Mars would be a hard sell for most people in that situation. I find it easier to imagine older couples or groups of friends who are all facing similar mobility issues going together rather than a solitary person going by themselves and leaving everyone they know behind. It would also be a long, rough trip. Which implies that maybe having a senior center on the moon or even in a rotating space station orbiting the Earth is a more attractive option.
jogjayr 6y ago
It would create a ton of jobs. We would learn a lot. The world is awash in cash. This doesn't seem like a terrible use of it.
tracerbulletx 6y ago
If I could pick, I'd pick planetary health, and improving human health and lifespan as my two top priorities. It's probably still good to not be too myopic and have researchers and companies working on ancillary topics they're interested in. Not only because you can't make people focus on things they aren't interested in, but because you probably can't make more progress faster just by having every single resource allocated in the same place, and you could get benefits that weren't anticipated.
laurent92 6y ago
Like football. It is used for state propaganda, to make populations dream and look forward to the same direction. Sports are a branch of the entertainment industry. You don’t get paid to run fast, you get paid to gather crowds. Same for Mars, and it only impacts ideas and hope, not actual well-being. But it’s still required, otherwise people err in Brownian directions. I hope very much that the new Mars funding will be taken off the football spendings.
Isinlor 6y ago
It's not anywhere near remotely high on humanity priorities. It's somewhere around lipstick market worth of ~10B dollar per year.

scoofy 6y ago

Meteor impacts, caldera collapses, nuclear war. Every single one of these things could happen tomorrow, and we'd never see it coming. If we want any chance if humanity to survive, we need to get people onto other planets.

rtpg 6y ago
Earth after a meteor impact and a nuclear war happening at the same time would still be 100x more livable than anything we can do on Mars. Saving humanity by going to Mars is like saving yourself from the titanic by jumping into the ice-cold water. We can barely make places like Antartica survivable! Huge chunks of "totally fine" places like Hawaii only exist thanks to massive shipping industries. If you have a way to build out a livable space on Mars, please give us Earthlings some of that technology cuz it would be pretty useful to a lot of people!
- m4rtink 6y ago
  Anything - including flight to and colonization off Mars - that moves humans closer to building mega scale space habitats is an important step forward. Thats where the road to immortality ultimately leads for humans as a species. And possibly for individuals as well, given the potentially almost limitless resources available in Space.
  - kitsunesoba 6y ago
    One thing I've seen becoming a spacefaring civilization explained as is a "coming out of the cave" of sorts, which doesn't line up perfectly but it's not far off. The species' possibility space will be severely restricted so long as offplanet infrastructure is limited.
  - kaba0 6y ago
    We can’t even not fck up our very own and livable planet, it’s just naive to think of colonization. We will kill ourselves much much earlier than that.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  Nah, your imagination of the horrors that nature can (and did) unleash upon the Earth is pretty limited. A Theia impact would make Earth far less livable than Mars. Would sterilize the planet. And you hit on a good point in your last sentence: Developing a self-sustaining civilization on Mars would PROVE we can easily be sustainable on Earth.
intergalplan 6y ago
I'm happy to see people go to Mars for other reasons, but this one's (commonly-cited) BS. The odds of something happening that rendered Earth worse to live on than Mars but didn't also toast mars is incredibly small. Mars is really bad. Most plausible post-apocalypse Earths are way, way better. Yet I don't see anyone clambering to build apocalypse-survival shelters and pay people to live in them part-time, which is something we could do right now that's more effective than a Martian colony, and much cheaper. I think the trouble is that people don't get just how bad Mars is. Take the peak of Everest, cross it with Antarctica, and dose it with radiation. Sounds bad? You're still nowhere near as bad as Mars. It's really, really bad.
- MPSimmons 6y ago
  > The odds of something happening that rendered Earth worse to live on than Mars but didn't also toast mars is incredibly small Over a long enough time frame, the chance is nearly 100%. A planetary extinction-level event has already happened where every land animal larger than 25kg died. Maybe it won't happen for another 65 million years. Maybe it will happen tomorrow. Maybe there will be a massive gamma ray burst that will sterilize the entire solar system. Who knows? But just because we will eventually die out doesn't mean that we can't try to do what we can to survive. And anyway, say what you will about Elon's whole "thing", but a life where we're exploring the solar system is more exciting than one where we aren't.
  - intergalplan 6y ago
    > A planetary extinction-level event has already happened where every land animal larger than 25kg died. Maybe it won't happen for another 65 million years. Maybe it will happen tomorrow. Maybe there will be a massive gamma ray burst that will sterilize the entire solar system. Who knows? Right, but... Mars is already worse for human life than Earth after every major extinction event. That's like "in case my house catches fire, I'm gonna build a backup house inside a working industrial furnace". If what we're worried about is surviving an event like the several that have affected Earth in the history of life on the planet, Mars is both more expensive and worse than a bunch of other options, including other space-based options (though I think that whole class of solutions is really wasteful compared to boring, Earthbound alternatives). That's a bad reason for going to Mars, is all I'm saying. I'll still be cheering along when the first boot-print is made, mind you. OK, here: strip Earth of all oxygen and its ozone layer and turn all the land into parched deserts that can barely support even the hardiest of plants. You want to wake up in a sealed shelter on Earth, or on Mars, after that happens? The smart answer is "on Earth" because the list of horrible things about your situation on Mars is still 5x that long, plus all those things are already problems there. Mars is very, very, very bad.

danielheath 6y ago

Honestly, I think it’s not important, but the capabilities doing it will build are better than the ones we would get by spending the money elsewhere. I think this because you can trick most programs into handing over money without giving results, but there isn’t a way to trick physics.

bumby 6y ago
There is plenty of precedent for awarding contracts that get nixed due to changes in political winds before producing results though.

elihu 6y ago

There could be substantial benefits in the long term, if we can get a self-sufficient colony going. In the short term, it's mostly working out the technology and being able to learn more about planetary science by studying something up close that isn't the Earth. In the long term, Mars is a great refueling station because it has carbon dioxide and water that can be used to make methane, and it has much weaker gravity than Earth. That would make it much easier to access the asteroid belt, which may have a lot of valuable minerals. There may also be some not-so-obvious benefits to living on Mars. For instance, people with mobility issues may be stuck in a wheelchair on Earth but be able to walk on Mars. (The optics of shipping all our old people to Mars isn't great, but it might actually be a pretty awesome spot for an old folks home.) Another reason people have for going to Mars is the same as people who migrated from Europe to the Americas: to get away from a political situation they don't like and start a new life. If the optics of sending old people to Mars is bad, the optics of sending, say, Syrian refugees to Mars is even worse, but if someone wants a fresh start that's one way to do it. At least until Mars becomes as dysfunctionally political and tribal as Earth. In the very short term, sending people to Mars may have a big impact on children being interested in science. I don't know if it's still the case that if you ask an elementary-aged child what they want to be when they grow up, it'll probably either be "an astronaut" or "president of the United States", but I think it was when I was that age.

sterlind 6y ago
as someone who occasionally needs a wheelchair, I'd miss my friends if I got shipped off to Mars! I'm also pretty sure that the gees wouldn't be good for my condition. there's also the small matter of radiation exposure, since Mars doesn't have much of an ionosphere. I'm waiting on powered exoskeletons as my sci-fi mobility aid of choice.
- elihu 6y ago
  Yeah, shipping off to Mars would be a hard sell for most people in that situation. I find it easier to imagine older couples or groups of friends who are all facing similar mobility issues going together rather than a solitary person going by themselves and leaving everyone they know behind. It would also be a long, rough trip. Which implies that maybe having a senior center on the moon or even in a rotating space station orbiting the Earth is a more attractive option.

jogjayr 6y ago

It would create a ton of jobs. We would learn a lot. The world is awash in cash. This doesn't seem like a terrible use of it.

tracerbulletx 6y ago

If I could pick, I'd pick planetary health, and improving human health and lifespan as my two top priorities. It's probably still good to not be too myopic and have researchers and companies working on ancillary topics they're interested in. Not only because you can't make people focus on things they aren't interested in, but because you probably can't make more progress faster just by having every single resource allocated in the same place, and you could get benefits that weren't anticipated.

laurent92 6y ago

Like football. It is used for state propaganda, to make populations dream and look forward to the same direction. Sports are a branch of the entertainment industry. You don’t get paid to run fast, you get paid to gather crowds. Same for Mars, and it only impacts ideas and hope, not actual well-being. But it’s still required, otherwise people err in Brownian directions. I hope very much that the new Mars funding will be taken off the football spendings.

Isinlor 6y ago

It's not anywhere near remotely high on humanity priorities. It's somewhere around lipstick market worth of ~10B dollar per year.