12 ms·

Mars sucks

• jcun4128 5y ago
  Don't disagree but... "billions" not as much of money in general and I like the idea of potentially being multiplanetary despite how long it might take. Plan B Sucks to think if everything we've achieved gets erased because it's all here. Why not both
  • chmod775 5y ago
    > Why not both Because plan B takes way more effort than just avoiding the need for one.
    • teraku 5y ago
      I think OP means, why can't we try to thrive and achieve Mars colony, eventually evolving into its own culture. It might take building a Dyson sphere and whatnot and thousands of years. But it might be worth trying. But Mars is not a Planet B, where we go once we destroyed earth.
    • soperj 5y ago
      How many massive extinction events has the earth already gone through?
    • cortesoft 5y ago
      We can avoid all possible extinction events?
      • chmod775 5y ago
        You can make any likely event and their aftermath survivable more easily than create a self-sustaining colony on mars. Yes. If a colony on mars could ever be self-sustainable without earth. If it can't, your point is moot.
        • antisol 5y ago
          Nobody who had done even a small amount of research on the subject would make such an absurd statement.
      • flukus 5y ago
        We could build colonies underground, under the Antarctic ice sheet and under water, that would be far easier and cheaper and allow us to survive just about any extinction event the universe is likely to throw our way in the next billion years. Those environments would be paradise compared to mars.
        • athms 5y ago
          There won't be an ice sheet, it will melt within the next ten thousand years due to global warming. Sea levels are expected to rise four meters during this period. Humans need to leave Earth long before the Sun turns into a red giant. We have about 300 million years to leave the planet or it is game over. Many distinct areas of Earth such as the Grand Canyon will have eroded away in about 2-3 million years. Mountain ranges like the Rockies will be gone in 50 million years. The Hawaiian Islands will disappear into the ocean in 80 millions years as the Pacific Plate recycles its land mass. In 300 millions years, the Sun will change its luminosity, increasing the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth. This will increase the mean solar temperature by 5C degrees. A little over 300 million years, give or take a few million years, all the continents are going to merge into one super continent. On the plus side, it is expected this will bring a new glacial period: increasing oxygen levels, lowering global temperatures, create new sea ice, and lowering sea levels due to global cooling. In 500 million years the Sun's luminosity will be so great that it will disrupt the carbonate–silicate cycle. The higher luminosity increases weathering of surface rocks, which traps carbon dioxide in the ground as carbonate. As water evaporates from the Earth's surface, rocks harden, causing plate tectonics to slow and eventually stop once the oceans evaporate completely. Without volcanoes to recycle carbon into the Earth's atmosphere, carbon dioxide levels fall to the point where photosynthesis is no longer possible. Good luck in the bunker.
          • flukus 5y ago
            > Humans need to leave Earth long before the Sun turns into a red giant. We have billions of years for that. Everything else we can deal with much easier here than we can on mars. > Without volcanoes to recycle carbon into the Earth's atmosphere, carbon dioxide levels fall to the point where photosynthesis is no longer possible. And after that the earth will still be more hospitable on mars. > Good luck in the bunker. We'd be living underground on mars, any sort of terraforming possibilities are in the far distant future, possibly never.
    • lend000 5y ago
      This is lacking in vision and short sighted. There are countless scenarios where humanity inevitably, eventually dies on Earth even if we abandoned technology and nuclear stockpiles (unrealistic), and went back to living in agricultural communes and getting in touch with nature. In fact, Earth will be completely inhospitable to complex life as we know it in just a few hundred million years as the sun matures [0]. Other things that could wipe out the species at any time: - Gamma ray burst - Supernova - Meteors - Supervolcanic events [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth#:~:text=Once%20the%20solar%20luminosity%20is,runaway%20evaporation%20of%20the%20oceans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth#:~:text=Once%2....
      • chmod775 5y ago
        Most of these are still more survivable than Mars, or would kill anything that lives anywhere in the solar system.
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
        • antisol 5y ago
          No. When the sun expands and earth gets too hot, Mars will become just the right temperature for a period on the order of the millions of years. Assuming we haven't already terraformed it by then. And even when the sun is in full Red Giant mode there will still be a habitable zone, it'll just be further out.
          • chmod775 5y ago
            What do you mean "No"? Did you read and comprehend what you're replying to? Edit: Removed the other half of my response. I don't event want to go down this route. Others in this tree of comments have done it better.
            • antisol 5y ago
              It's a negative response. As in "your statement is incorrect".
    • midasuni 5y ago
      Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu, Einstein, Morobuto, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes .. and all of this .. all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars."
      • kaba0 5y ago
        We do know when will it happen, and definitely not anywhere close to reasonable care about it. We have much much much more urgent things to worry about. Hell, space invasion by aliens is a bigger threat than the goddamn Sun.
        • antisol 5y ago
          "not anywhere close to reasonable care about it" I know right. And this whole climate change thing that everybody is freaking out about. It's probably like 50-100 years away! I won't live that long. It's definitely not anywhere close to reasonable to care about it.
          • kaba0 5y ago
            This is a really bad take. Do you honestly compare something that WILL happen 1 BILLION years later to a slope on which we are already sliding down that will cause massive real catastrophes all around the Earth? Being so close that you will likely experience it, and your children will definitively.
            • antisol 5y ago
              "a slope on which we are already sliding down that will cause massive real catastrophes all around the Earth" You're referring to the sun expanding into a red giant here, right? I thought climate change was closer than a billion years away. But I guess I must have been wrong. Thanks for letting me know, I'm much less concerned about it now. "you will likely experience it, and your children will definitively" I'm old, and not a breeder. By your own logic it's not reasonable for me to care about it. (the actual point here, in case it's unclear, is that if you're rallying for action on climate change while simultaneously saying that other existential threats are not worth worrying about because they're "too far away", you're guilty of doing exactly the same thing as people who said 30 years ago that climate change was some distant far-off thing, and only speculative, and blah blah blah. You know the people I'm talking about. They're the exact same people who you hold up as an example, saying "how will our kids forgive us?". The same applies to our grandkids. And their great-great-great-great-(4 billion years worth)-grandkids.)
  • raffraffraff 5y ago
    All life, that we know of, evolved on earth. Over billions of years. Life forms have complex interdependencies. You can't take one life form out of its environment and have it thrive. We can't even save threatened ecosystems here on earth most of the time. So why the does anyone think we can create functioning ecosystems on a barren planet that we can't transport more than a few tons of raw material to? It's a delusion.
    • throwawayfeaxcz 5y ago
      You are focusing on now, it's not about now and it's not about us, it's about the species, if our ancestors gave up in the face on every obstacle we would still number about 1000 in a small valley in Africa or most likely we would be extinct. Life expands and to quote Jurassic park life finds a way.
      • kaba0 5y ago
        As I have already mentioned, even a nuclear warfare-ridden Earth is much much much more habitable than anything else in the Solar system. And frankly, with current tendencies we will simply not live to see the day where living on another planet becomes a possibility, that’s just fantasy. Also, I don’t really see how “saving” the top 100 billionaires is a good thing. Unless the spacecraft explodes with them onboard or something...
        • exporectomy 5y ago
          The risk is Earth being hit by a meteorite that kills all humans. It'll still be habitable but with nobody left to inhabit it if we don't have another colony.
        • throwawayfeaxcz 5y ago
          I think we can all agree that the resources on earth are finite, I think we can also all agree that our population is increasing in an exponential rate (not that it should, but that it is). As long as we dismiss the possibility of using our technology to use resources outside of earth we will be stuck fighting for a greater share of the diminishing resources on earth. No matter how much you recycle there is only a finite amount of everything on earth. Living on mars is less of a fantasy now than going to the moon was just 90 years ago. We have people living for extended periods of time in orbit, we already have the technology, we just don't have the economic base. We expand or we go extinct that's how it is, you might not like it but that's how it is. As far as the billionaires, dude, the billionaires have it awesome here on earth i don't think they will be moving.
  • harryf 5y ago
    Think the point of the website is implicit in the "Let's get to Mars" vision is that "Earth is an unsolvable mess and will be inevitably become uninhabitable". In other words we're failing to envision some kind of future for ourselves on Earth. There's a great interview with Alan Moore (Watchmen, Walking Dead and much more) on YouTube that is highly underrated - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBc71ROdGxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBc71ROdGxU - the whole thing is great but at 4m32s he puts it beautifully... "We tend to think, at this juncture of the 21st century, that there are only two possibilities regarding the future. One is the future will be exactly the same as today, only with smaller radios and smaller cars. So if the future is going to be the same as today, why bother preparing for it? The other alternative is there isn't a future. That is all ends in some kind of massive environmental collapse or a series of mushroom clouds. In which case why bother preparing for the future, if there isn't going to be one? Neither of these mindsets are actually doing anything to prepare us for the world in which we will almost certainly be living. Or which our descendants will almost certainly be living in. If you don't imagine a future, there's a fair chance you're not going to have one." Elon's whole argument for Mars is based on the belief we don't have a future on Earth and that some kind of Dark Age is coming - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/11/elon-musk-colonise-mars-third-world-war https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/11/elon-musk... "If there’s a third world war we want to make sure there’s enough of a seed of human civilisation somewhere else to bring it back and shorten the length of the dark ages" Personally think we should regard it with the same level skepticism we have for door-to-door salesmen. It's a great pitch to sell SpaceX...
    • jcun4128 5y ago
      Well even if life on Earth is all jolly I would still like to extend beyond/general science advancement... arguable "it's pointless" with regard to how massive space is. But that's my opinion
      • weare138 5y ago
        I don't think anyone is arguing against space exploration or developing technologies to aid us in that endeavor. It's the idea that it's a viable solution to our immediate problems here on Earth, problems we're currently experiencing. I'm all for space exploration and the advancement of science in general but I'm also pretty keen on this whole having food, water and breathable air thing too. I have to say I've grown somewhat accustom to it. Besides if we can't solve the sustainability problem here on Earth with all the natural resources we have what chance would we have someplace markedly worse? If we can't even figure out how to make our current situation work here we're not going to stand a chance anyplace else in our solar system.
• JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  I often wonder what would happen if Elon put all the energy he is into going to Mars into something that would radically change earth, like fusion energy. The timescale where we need to leave earth is probably many zeroes from now. But earth needs help now.
  • drew-y 5y ago
    I think a new space era could radically change the earth too. Nuclear Fusion is very hard, Elon isn't a magician.
  • akie 5y ago
    He's already put in significant energy into making gasoline cars go away. Isn't that enough for one man?
    • colordrops 5y ago
      No good deed goes unpunished.
    • JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
      I just bought a Tesla so I’ll give you this one haha. I think electric cars are great, I just feel like they are more an iterative change than the radical one that fusion energy would have on moving us somewhere on the Kardashev scale and eliminating poverty and hunger on Earth. I know I’m being greedy, I don’t even know if fusion as an energy source outside the sun is possible or if the whole SpaceX budget and effort and minds would budge the needle. I do know that Mars is a pretty miserable place to try and live. What would make it easier and nicer is fusion energy. :)
  • notimetorelax 5y ago
    Tesla pretty much spearheaded the switch to electric. A few years back all manufacturers treated electric as a gimmick.
  • adrianN 5y ago
    The help Earth needs is political, there is not much a single rich person can do. We already have the technology to radically improve our environmental impact.
• 88840-8855 5y ago
  thank God we humans can do more than one thing at a time: keep earth loveable AND explore space.
  • FeepingCreature 5y ago
    yeah imagine we colonize another planet for nothing
• drew-y 5y ago
  Going to mars and making the earth a better place are not mutually exclusive.
  • bertrandpp 5y ago
    They're not, but sadly, one is terribly more urgent than the other
    • mclightning 5y ago
      you don't understand what it means to be "not mutually exclusive".
    • fighterpilot 5y ago
      Do you say the same thing when someone wants to make a movie, produce a video game, buy a sports team, start a social network, and so on? Why does this criticism always get levied against the Mars vision, which at least will have positive side effects like new tech, a lower risk of being exterminated by an asteroid, and something aspirational that we can look up to. I feel as though the anti-Mars thing is a meme that has gone around social media and people are just uncritically buying into that frame. Where's the anti-movies movement or the anti-sports teams movement?
      • bertrandpp 5y ago
        I definitely want to do all the things you mention, but these things can only be done on a viable planet, which is less and less the case for the earth.
    • antisol 5y ago
      "one is terribly more urgent than the other" I completely agree. We need to get off this rock ASAP.
• tibbydudeza 5y ago
  When the sun becomes a red giant it will suck just as much.
• garmaine 5y ago
  That the human reaction to achieving success is to stir up so much hatred, makes me want to leave this planet even sooner.
• senkora 5y ago
  Counterpoint: 37 extra minutes of sleep every night.
  • ellimilial 5y ago
    You misspelt 'work in an office with a bad atmosphere', you're welcome.
  • mathisonturing 5y ago
    Or 37 extra minutes of work
  • inglor_cz 5y ago
    And your location is so remote that your employers cannot deny you home office. Imagine the commute.
• dapids 5y ago
  The focus should be to support both initiatives, not bring the other down, or to make it seem like an otherwise undesirable endeavour. At least that's the way the site made me feel. Mars might suck, but we are going somewhere, regardless.
  • kaba0 5y ago
    > Mars might suck, but we are going somewhere, regardless. On the extinct animals list, most likely
• hetman 5y ago
  It's ironic (though by this stage I don't think anyone can say surprising) that the drive to reach Mars has been producing technology that will help Earth. For example, advancements in renewables energy in the short term. But also in the long term, once we can dig up our resources from space rocks, we won't have to dig the earth up to do it. I've never understood this assumption that focusing on one thing must necessarily always be to the detriment of another.
  • johnchristopher 5y ago
    > the drive to reach Mars has been producing technology that will help Earth. For example, advancements in renewables energy in the short term. What are you referring to ?
    • cecja 5y ago
      He is sucking Elons tits.
  • telesilla 5y ago
    People say the same thing about moon technology, and forget about all the advances gained. https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/feature/Going_to_the_Moon_Was_Hard_But_the_Benefits_Were_Huge https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/feature/Going_to...
    • 002445 5y ago
      There are 5 items on that list: - Digital Flight Controls - Food Safety - Space Blankets - Quake-Proofing - Rechargeable Hearing Aids This list does not impress me at all and I find it hard to believe we wouldn't have come up with those 5 items + a lot more without spending billions to go to the moon. It's cool to go the moon but just like all things government is involved with, it could've been done a lot cheaper without involving bureaucrats.
      • neatze 5y ago
        It is easy to look back in time and say what could have been done better, practically easy when you're not involved in process at all, what so ever.
• jbay808 5y ago
  Hey Earth, guess how your scientists learned about the risk that CFCs posed to your ozone layer, just in time to solve it before it was totally destroyed? - Your friends, Mars and Venus.
  • Ge0l 5y ago
    Hey passo-aggro pseudo-friends Mars and Venus, mind your own fucking business please, k? - Earth
  • weare138 5y ago
    We didn't need to live on either of those planets to figure that out, not that you would live for very long on Venus or Mars.
    • antisol 5y ago
      That's true, but the argument "why bother going there" is exactly the same argument as "why bother making a (telescope|space probe|satellite|rover|deep space network|apollo program|radio telescope|neutrino telescope|particle accelerator|submarine|etc etc etc etc etc ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC)". When Galileo built his telescope, he didn't do it because he was looking for greenhouse gases on Venus. That's what a lot of people don't seem to get: that science and discovery is not linear or predictable. Advances in one area have unexpected uses in other areas, and it's all cumulative and feeds back on itself. You build a telescope to look up at the sky because it's pretty, and hey presto! Next thing you know you've got a heliocentric model and a theory of universal gravitation. You build a radio telescope because you're interested in long-range communications, and wham! Cosmic Microwave Background and deep insight into the origin of the universe. You decide to study the distances to a bunch of galaxies, and pow! Looks like we'll have to throw out that steady state theory. There are so many examples.
      • nikonyrh 5y ago
        According to Neil deGrasse Tyson Galileo got funding for his project due to its high utility in the context of war. This puts telescopes to the same category as airplanes, rockets, satellites, nuclear powerplants, submarines and lots of other tech which has found its civilian usage as well. Isn't metallurgy in this category as well, you can either make stronger swords or plows. But I strongly agree with you that what new tech you'll discover from fundamental research.
• holoduke 5y ago
  Sounds like this message is made by a really frustrated person. I find it super awesome that we set foot on another desolate planet.
• joshsyn 5y ago
  It's a free world. Mars rocks if we can capitalise it.
• lastgeniusua 5y ago
  you can't save the planet with 'billions'. capitalism is by definition based on endlessly self-valorizing value
• Heliosmaster 5y ago
  I think the US government should start by reallocating their military budget. And end world hunger, while we're at it.
• metrodorus 5y ago
  Why not do both. We need to work on becoming a multiplanetary species too.
• zhte415 5y ago
  Send Arnold to Mars and have him pull the lever.
• saithound 5y ago
  Designed purely to pit people against one another, this is one of the most intentionally cynically, manipulative campaign against climate change that I've ever seen. You can help discourage further such campaigns by making sure that they don't achieve their stated goals. E.g. to offset people who might be convinced by this drivel, I just went to the EnergyAustralia website, and opted my home and my business premises out of PureEnergy.
  • Fordec 5y ago
    It's got a link to Greenpeace at the bottom. I wouldn't expect any less.
    • somesortofsystm 5y ago
      "Never tell Australians that their coal industry is killing the world, even if it is." I mean, really?
      • GianFabien 5y ago
        Actually they are shutting down coal fired power stations in Australia. Most of the coal is being burnt in obsolete plants in rapidly industrialising countries.
    • harryf 5y ago
      I don't think the link has anything to do with people that created the website which is these guys - https://www.activistalosangeles.com/copy-of-who https://www.activistalosangeles.com/copy-of-who - there's more about them here - https://www.forbes.com/sites/afdhelaziz/2019/04/11/the-power-of-purpose-how-surfrider-activista-created-the-united-states-and-oceans-of-america/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/afdhelaziz/2019/04/11/the-power... - doesn't seem to be any direct affiliation with Greenpeace
  • 7952 5y ago
    They are political activists doing politics. What did you expect them to do? It seems to me that environmentalists are held to a higher standard and that seems unreasonable. Also, isn't it meant with a sense of humor? I thought it was funny and effective at getting towards a different audience. Why get offended?
• ArkanExplorer 5y ago
  Earth also has oppressive Governments and regulations, difficult established social and demographic limitations, areas of protected natural landscape, and a deep gravity well. Its also all pretty much 'owned' by someone already. Mars, and the moon, make reasonable bases of operation for asteroid mining and off-Earth manufacturing. Whoever gets there first can lay claim to and do whatever they want. For a tiny fraction of the amount of wealth we dedicate to the pensions and healthcare of baby boomers (typically 50% of Government budgets in most Western countries), we can easily support private companies like SpaceX to colonise the solar system. Establishing ourselves on harsh planets will help us to appreciate Earth more, and provide a motivation for us to continue developing new technologies and techniques - to conquer 'the frontier'.
  • kaba0 5y ago
    So let me get this straight. A private company getting there first from tax-payed money can get ultimately rich and own the discovered places? How is it a good thing at all?! Fortunately, I highly doubt it to happen in the next century (the asteroid mining)
  • paxys 5y ago
    People caused all these problems on Earth, and we will inevitably take them with us to Mars and everywhere else.
    • ArkanExplorer 5y ago
      Its reasonable to imagine that a planet founded by scientists and engineers, and populated only by scientists and engineers, will not have the problems found on Earth. You would probably have a society composed solely of people with 120+ IQs, for example, which would present an amazing gene pool for further population expansion.
  • throwawayboise 5y ago
    We have been able to go to the moon for 50 years, but nobody has created a base of operations for any activity there.
• lacker 5y ago
  To me the great irony is, this is superficially an attack on people like Elon Musk, saying "hey why don't you help Earth instead of trying to get to Mars". But if you look at what SpaceX is actually doing... the vast majority of their effort is spent on helping life on Earth. Satellite launches, providing internet, almost all of their business is from making life better on Earth! SpaceX already is a scheme to take people who are really excited about Mars, and funnel 99% of their energy into making life better on Earth. So it's just ironic to me that SpaceX is already achieving what this website wishes it could do.
  • reader_mode 5y ago
    Put it this way - if you figure out a way to make Mars habitable - you can figure out disaster handling scenarios for any cataclism caused by global warming. The scales are different since Mars wouldn't start with 7-8B people but conceptual breakthroughs are the first step before scaling. Solving Mars habitation is basically taking all the existential threats we're facing and bumping them up by several orders of magnitude (well maybe not all but the major issues at least, Mars doesn't have tsunamis for eg.). If you make that work anything that happens on Earth is a happy path.
    • edoceo 5y ago
      but why go to mars when the problems are here?
      • neatze 5y ago
        imagination.
      • Baeocystin 5y ago
        Planetary RAID 1.
        • voqv 5y ago
          Good luck to humanity trying to resilver from that barren, desolate, wasteland.
• ivandenysov 5y ago
  Colonising Mars is not about the destination. It's about the journey. Martians will be forced to lead a more sustainable lifestyle. Technologies that they will develop and hone will become available on Earth.
  • fighterpilot 5y ago
    It's also about the destination. People seem to forget that an asteroid could kill us at any moment. Of course, climate change is more pressing, but that doesn't mean we should invest 0 percent of our energy into the asteroid risk.
    • throwawayboise 5y ago
      It's just as likely that an asteroid could kill Mars. And the worst climate change we could imagine is still a picnic compared to the climate on Mars.
      • fighterpilot 5y ago
        That's missing the point. Our probability of going extinct by asteroid just got approximately squared (in practice, that's the upper bound) if we have a self sustaining colony outside of Earth. That's a dramatic reduction in that specific existential risk. If we remain only on Earth then we have the unsquared probability to face which isn't all that small.
        • throwawayboise 5y ago
          I think the probabilty that humans can live on Mars long-term without support or resupply missions from Earth is effectively zero, certainly won't happen within the lifetime of anyone alive today. Don't misunderstand, I'm not against space exploration, I think it benefits us here on Earth. It's like F1 racing with a much bigger scope: little direct benefit to anyone, but many indirect benefits resulting from the effort.
          • 5y ago
• colordrops 5y ago
  This is such a narrow minded attitude. The amount of resources used working on getting to mars is tiny and negligible compared to so many other less valuable and more resource intensive endeavours. What about warfare? video games? Bitcoin mining? Actual gold and gem mining? Amusement parks, junk food, lawns, jet skis etc. This is obviously a dig at Elon Musk, who ironically just today offered a 100 million X Prize for carbon sequestration: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-musk-prize-idUSKBN2C92VW https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-musk-prize...
• dave_sullivan 5y ago
  If humanity fails on earth, I'm going down with the ship. Being trapped in a bunker with the same 10 people on a planet that resembles popular conceptions of Hell for the rest of my days is a fate worse than death. Also, something something, human nature. If we actually do fail on earth, we will definitely fail on mars.
  • young_unixer 5y ago
    > If we actually do fail on earth, we will definitely fail on mars. Not if you change the "we". If you select people from only the the top 5% of the smartest, most productive, and respectful/empathetic people, then it probably won't fail. Earth failed because some of us (say, the lower half) are dragging the rest down.
    • kaba0 5y ago
      You mean the inbred billionaires that can pay for that?
      • young_unixer 5y ago
        No, I mean that the first people that colonize mars won't be selected randomly from our earth population. They will be selected because they have some useful ability and psychologically stable character, which will create a whole different culture on the planet.
        • kaba0 5y ago
          And you base it on what?
          • young_unixer 5y ago
            On the fact that astronauts go through a lot of filters before being selected to go to space.
    • dave_sullivan 5y ago
• varjag 5y ago
  Not that I was going to Mars but fine. I'll dedicate my time to demotivational websites instead.
• Gehinnn 5y ago
  I guess the entire entertainment industry burns much more money every year than all space missions combined. I would definitely prefer to see mankind visiting another planet over some stupid reality show.
  • qw 5y ago
    Mars One estimates the cost of bringing the first four people to Mars at US$ 6 billion. In comparison, the Tokyo Olympics will cost $15.4 billion...
• nowherebeen 5y ago
  Mars does suck but people aren’t trying to reach it because it’s awesome. Being a interplanetary species allows us to survive a world-ending event say like another huge asteroid. It’s insurance. I can’t help but think these people are entirely missing the point. It reminds me of people that argue cities don’t need parks and should just build more buildings.
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• somesortofsystm 5y ago
  We can save the Earth by leaving it. We put all our industry up there, and turn Earth into a garden. Totally possible. Feasible, even. We have the technology. Just not the free will.
• steve_taylor 5y ago
  This is a false dichotomy. Caring for the Earth and going to Mars are not mutually exclusive. Whoever made this is really stupid or pretending to be really stupid.
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• caseyavila 5y ago
  As true as it is to say that missions to Mars and helping Earth can be done at the same time, this website does resonate with me. Even if we stopped all emissions right this second, climate change would not end instantly due a positive feedback loop. The fact that emissions are still widespread today really shows how desperate of a situation we are in, without many realizing it. To undo what we have done requires more than simply switching to electric cars and solar panels, but actively UNdoing our previous environmental effects through new technology and developments. Although these efforts can be carried out simultaneously, I do think it would help if everyone looked at Earth (trees, wood, biodegradable products) the same way they do Mars.
  • koheripbal 5y ago
    Global warming on Earth is happening - there is no stopping it. Unless you cut the global population in half, their economic development requires CO2 emissions.
• fredsted 5y ago
  Whenever this argument arises, I can't help but just think, why can't we have both?
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• yongjik 5y ago
  It could have said "People who consider Mars as our backup planet in case we trash the Earth's environment even further, are deluding themselves," I'd be 100% behind that. Instead... we get this childish nonsense. I mean... sunsets are blue? So? This is what a goofy fifth grader would make for an Earth's day poster, if they had the budget for a web designer. I'll give that "Mars Sucks" is a good sound bite.
• babesh 5y ago
  It is not enough for the haters to dislike what you do. They have to prevent you from doing it. It doesn’t matter if you take none of their money nor government money to do so.
• quonn 5y ago
  There‘s a lot of negativity in the comments, but the message here is not that there cannot be Mars missions as we already have. The message is that there should not be (completely impractical) ideas of being able to live there and that it can wait. Some people suggest this is possible and it distracts from the urgency of saving Earth right now - in the next 50-100 years. So it‘s a matter of psychological energy. The whole question of whether measures to address climate change will succeed is mostly a question of psychological energy, of setting the right priorities at the right time, of not hoping for a magical solution, of not hedging bets and of getting enough mindshare.
  • kaba0 5y ago
    Thanks, I could not really articulate what was my problem with Mars, but you did a great job! Of course NASA and the like should definitely not shut down, but this marketing scam around Mars being habitable is hurtful to Earth and climate change.
  • antisol 5y ago
    It tickles me when people say things like "completely impractical". Reminds me of a man named Columbus something who once went on a trip that was totally, completely, utterly impractical. And as we all know, he died en-route and was never heard from again.
• deleted 5y ago
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• paxys 5y ago
  Do people really think we are investing any significant amount of resources into Mars today? A few national space agencies have launched flyby or rover missions, with a total cost of maybe $10-$20 billion combined over many decades. You could even argue that we have recovered some chunk of that in scientific knowledge. There are ~5 private companies with any plans involving Mars, and I'd say all but one are scams. SpaceX has Mars as a long term mission, but everything they are doing at present (mainly satellite launches) firmly involves Earth. All their Mars talk right now is marketing and PR, nothing more. Their total spending to date is also in the single digit billions. All this money put together is a rounding error compared to the sums involved on every side of the global warming debate. The total number of people who have any portion of their productive work involve Mars is probably in the hundreds or low thousands. Say we did get rid of all these NASA missions and even SpaceX entirely, how would that help Earth? People scroll through Twitter and are convinced that we are just about to set up a Mars base, when the reality is that none of us will likely see a human step on Mars in our lifetime.
  • pron 5y ago
    While you are correct, I don't think that's at all the point the website is making. I don't know if the point the site is trying to make is an effective one, but it's about focusing attention and inspiration, not direct financial resources.
    • paxys 5y ago
      Even then, in my experience the set of people who are enthusiastic about Mars/space exploration fully overlaps with those who strongly care about climate change and the environment in general. It has never been about picking one over the other. They should instead invest the time and money in reaching out to people and corporations who don't give a shit about either one.
  • Seb-C 5y ago
    If we had invested in space exploration the same amount of resources we are investing in ads, tracking, finance and bitcoin, we would already have tourists in the asteroid belt, the climate/energy issue would be solved, and we would probably enjoy many other incredible health and food-related technologies. Complaining about the ridiculously small amounts of resources currently invested in space exploration is really short minded.
• midasuni 5y ago
  You know what really sucks? People.
• mclightning 5y ago
  It is not a zero-sum game, they're not mutually-exclusive. Space exploration has not moved an inch over decades, and in that period, many other sectors including wasteful ones have been negatively effecting climate. You complain just now, about this stagnated sector? All that aside, this mentality of "stop fixing that! we have something else to fix" is mother of all toxic thoughts recently. Just do it yourself! Do something about it yourself. Besides, if you care at all about sentient life. Becoming multi-planetary is an absolute must. As far as we can observe, there isn't any other sentient life in vicinity. It is an existential risk for humanity, just as the global warming. To some, it might sound like a distant scifi risk, but we are one thermonuclear war away from such an existential risk.
• ldb 5y ago
  An open letter from Mars. “Dear Earth, it came to my attention that you are running a website called “marssucks.com” where you state some not so nice things about me. While I think that I understand why you are doing this it still hurts me to read that e.g. I am so terrible that “Matt Damon ate his own feces just to leave me”. So I kindly ask you to take down the “marssucks.com” site. For a planet as rich and lush as you there should be other ways then making derogatory remarks about me to convince your inhabitants to treat you in a good way. Love from your brother Mars”
• tonfreed 5y ago
  I mean, funny, but idiot activists that spew stuff like this unironically are just missing the forest for the trees. Earth will never be perfect, but we shouldn't let that distract us from something way bigger than ourselves
• antisol 5y ago
  Dear "Earth", > Mars can wait. I can’t. When you say things this ignorant, it almost makes me want another theia-sized object to slam into you at a relative velocity of kilometers per second to teach you a lesson. How many extinction events do you need to witness before you accept the reality that any life that stays on you is doomed in the long term? I'm interested in long term survival more than quick-fixes. I can somewhat appreciate your little short-term viewpoint, but you're completely missing my long-term one. We love you. You're great. I think that the puppies were an especially nice touch. Echidnas are pretty cool, too. And you can absolutely count on me taking bacon with me when I leave. But I'm afraid we are going to have to leave sooner or later. Or did you have some plan for how to stop the sun expanding into its red giant phase and swallowing you whole? Didn't think so. You talk about going to Mars as if we're spending a significant amount of resources on it. I'd like to point you to the relative sizes of every Mars program in existence and the US Navy's toilet paper budget to point out just how ludicrous that idea is. I feel like maybe you should do some more research, and also realise that it's possible for humanity to do more than one thing at a time. Especially if we can reduce that toilet paper budget - those sailors can't be eating that much curry, surely? Mars is awesome. 0.3g will be heaps more fun than this horrible 9.8m/s/s garbage that you force on us. Also that horrible bright thing that's in the sky half the time won't be nearly as bothersome - when I'm walking home from parties at 7am it'll be much more tolerable. Mars is going to give me an extra half hour's sleep-in every single day. How many sleep-ins have you ever given me? Zero. And Mars isn't going to bitch and moan if we pump greenhouse gases into it's atmosphere. In fact, it'll reward us for that by giving itself a nice thick atmosphere that we can then pump oxygen into, and nicer temperatures. Also, Mars never beset us with any rats and floods and poison monkeys, did it? Sounds a whole lot like you've started the fight for survival, but now you want to quit because you're losing! Well I say hard cheese!
• sktrdie 5y ago
  When I hear these kind of "why go to space if we have people dying of hunger here on earth?" kind of arguments I always refer them to the amazing speech Robert Zubrin gave on the answer for "why go to Mars?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2Mu8qfVb5I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2Mu8qfVb5I The idea is that: "We’d get millions of scientists, engineers, and inventors, technological entrepreneurs, doctors, medical researchers out of that (going to mars), and the intellectual capital from that would enormously benefit us" I do believe of course that all things should be done - we should do the best we can to first save our planet. But that doesn't mean we should stop doing the rest of the "pushing the envelope" kind of things.
  • koheripbal 5y ago
    There will always be haters to any ambitious project. It's best just to ignore them. They are looking for someone to pay attention to them.
  • koheripbal 5y ago
    tldr; The purpose of humanity is to gain knowledge. Finding elements of past life on Mars, has major consequences on understanding the ourselves and the universe.
    • marc_io 5y ago
      > “The purpose of humanity is to gain knowledge.” I think that “to expand awareness“ is a more fitting term for that. Is what we DO with our knowledge that really matters.
• yc-kraln 5y ago
  96% CO2. That's the atmospheric composition of Mars.
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• diimdeep 5y ago
  Looks like people behind this site work in marketing and advertisement, and that what sucks here, not Mars.
• arcanon 5y ago
  Its not about mars. Its about the spaceships that get us there. The best thing for humanity is to live in spaceships. More important than mars will be a space shipyard in space that has a renewable environment with vertical farms inside it capable of supporting a community.
• Borrible 5y ago
  Extremely cheap money desperate for profit. Escapism for the masses as the Desert grows. New Pharaos building new Pyramids to be remembered in eternity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdQKUvv3bew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdQKUvv3bew
• deleted 5y ago
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• spullara 5y ago
  Earth is doomed with or without humans. Everywhere is doomed to some cataclysmic events. Mars avoids some of these events that would affect Earth and doesn't avoid others. Ultimately we have to get out of the solar system. Think of an investment in Mars as an investment in humans.