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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

by 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.
    - 002445 5y ago
      It is actually very easy to predict these things, if the people in charge are not the ones paying the bills it's not going to be worth the money.
      - neatze 5y ago
        Prove me wrong make a predication now here, nostradamus.
        fho 5y ago
        I guess it is easy to make trivial predictions about the near future ... something like "computers will get faster", "batteries will become energy denser". Something like "food will become safer" is trivial only in the most generic sense. It's entirely possible that something that we eat today will be found carcinogenic tomorrow and people will still take ages to accept and act on that new knowledge. At least in my part of the ivory tower I see a strong shift away from meat, even my and my SOs parents (in their 60-70s) have (on their own behalf) cut out most of their meat consumption. So if I had to make a Nostradamus prediction, I would bet on real meat becoming a pure luxurious item, something that only gets brought on the table for special occasions, over the next ... 50 years.
  - HenryBemis 5y ago
    I will just pick this one to set (some) record straight > Rechargeable Hearing Aids Apparently you don't have a family member that has hearing problems, making it difficult for them to have a 'normal life'. I have one. I remember buying a €4k (a few many years ago) pair of hearing aids and see the tears coming down when one was able to hear again. I see this as a prosthetic leg. You lose a basic function, this technology helps go back to having a slightly better life. Some stats on the matter. DDG returned US statistics on the top results; I believe these can be proportional for all other countries. https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick-statistics-hearing https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick-statistics... -About 28.8 million U.S. adults could benefit from using hearing aids. (HB Note: isn't that 9% of the population? - that's a big number - almost 29 million people??) -Among adults aged 70 and older with hearing loss who could benefit from hearing aids, fewer than one in three (30 percent) has ever used them. Even fewer adults aged 20 to 69 (approximately 16 percent) who could benefit from wearing hearing aids have ever used them. -As of December 2019, approximately 736,900 cochlear implants have been implanted worldwide. In the United States, roughly 118,100 devices have been implanted in adults and 65,000 in children.
piokoch 5y ago
In that case it makes much more sense to build a space station somewhere in asteroids belt between Mars and Jupiter, there is carbon, metals and, what's very important, water, so it is possible to make station self-sustained and easily retrieve whatever is needed. Although I am not sure if it will be practical to move iron from that place to the Earth, without some significant break through in space travel, probably not.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Mars is located conveniently between the Earth and the asteroid belt and people probably tolerate low gravity (0,3 G) better than zero gravity, at least for longer periods of time. As a springboard towards the Outer Solar System, Mars makes a lot of sense. It is a lot more Earth-y than anything beyond, with the possible exception of Europa and Titan. So our contemporary technologies need less adjustment to work there.
  - HenryBemis 5y ago
    I see Mars as our "first convenient UAT". If we can make this work (get people to create a settlement and live there for 1-2-5-10 years), then we can identify and study the requirements and impact, and probably repeat the process to the next planet further out. First you get to feel comfortable with lifting 20kg before you move to 30kg, 50kg, etc. improve your wrist angles, how you spread your toes on the groun, etc. Mars is our 20kg. We take it for a spin, iron out the wrinkles, repeat it perfectly, then move to the next target. Meanwhile we 'studied' Mars for 'so long' that we know there are very few things that can surprise/wipe the effort with e.g. a single volcanic erruption/earthquake/mega-storm.
7952 5y ago
Building habitats that do not rely on a biosphere is exactly what we need on earth and exactly what will be built for mars. Perhaps if we learn to live on Mars we can one day learn to live on earth.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Even a post-ww3 Earth is orders of magnitude more habitable than Mars. And simply, it’s just so far into the future that we should not yet be doing that.
  - antisol 5y ago
    "it’s just so far into the future that we should not yet be doing that" You're probably right. And 640K aught to be enough for anybody, too ;)
thombles 5y ago
> I've never understood this assumption that focusing on one thing must necessarily always be to the detriment of another. The Earth is a zero-sum game, possibly the most real example that exists. Every gallon of oil, every mineral that doesn't find its way back through recycling effectively disappears. Everybody reading this website has spent their life in an era of such excess, such profligacy, that this fact is easy to ignore: "we can just reallocate a little and do both!" The trouble is we're moving towards the end of that era. We're moving onto oil fields with increasingly poor EROEI. Arable land is decreasing. We're going to have to make some choices very soon which will be to the detriment of something else. As a species we have a high tolerance for wasteful nonsense—what is life without recreation and creativity after all? But it's perfectly reasonable to consider a very resource-intensive project like "life on mars" and decide that should be low on the priority list.
- gnopgnip 5y ago
  > The Earth is a zero-sum game No, it's not zero-sum. As you noted, "arable land decreasing" shows that. And similarly you can create arable land, you can enrich soil, use more drought tolerant crops, use tools and automation to harvest resources with less labor, at a lower cost. The allocation of resources is also not zero sum
  - antisol 5y ago
    Don't forget the stupendous amount of energy from that big ball of hydrogen that hits it every second.
  - arcanon 5y ago
    Arable land is outdated thinking. Its time to go vertical farming.
- Baeocystin 5y ago
  >Every gallon of oil, every mineral that doesn't find its way back through recycling effectively disappears. I realize this is a hell of a caveat, but if we ever get fusion running in a real way, our problems of resource scarcity are essentially solved. Like you said, the elements we have on Earth right now aren't actually consumed, they just get shuffled around. Make electricity cheap enough, and un-shuffling what is needed becomes economically viable in a way that energy-as-provided-by-oil could never achieve.
pjio 5y ago
> I've never understood this assumption that focusing on one thing must necessarily always be to the detriment of another. I totally agree with you, having a bright, exciting vision of the future is a huge motivator and technological driver to help with our problems on earth. This website really gave me a good laugh in a positive way. I would say, space exploration made it again possible to look at our homeworld in a more appreciating way!
Jedd 5y ago
> I've never understood this assumption that focusing on one thing must necessarily always be to the detriment of another. Probably mostly because popular news / media has endeavoured to simplify things way beyond the point they should have been simplified -- nuance, rationality, critical thinking, are under-promoted. https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
throwawayboise 5y ago
Really, the production of technology that helps Earth has been the only benefit of our adventures in space since the 1960s. Nobody lives on the moon, and nobody will live on Mars either. But the exercise of getting there produced many benefits and advances in technology that are useful here on Earth.
Grustaf 5y ago
It's a joke page, it's a way to get attention for environmental programs. Don't take it too literally.
chakhs 5y ago
I'm indifferent about Mars but I kind of find this argument weird. It assumes that these secondary advancements would not have been achieved if research into going to Mars was not done. How about just doing research about renewable energy for earth instead of Mars? You could argue more could be achieved if this was done because we will not be distracted by Mars specific problems that won't apply to earth
7e 5y ago
Yes, any large effort will shed some crumbs of technology that can be reused elsewhere, but resources are finite. I would prefer that the drive to help Earth produces technology that will help Earth. That's a more focused, direct goal.

by hetman 5y ago

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.
  - 002445 5y ago
    It is actually very easy to predict these things, if the people in charge are not the ones paying the bills it's not going to be worth the money.
    - neatze 5y ago
      Prove me wrong make a predication now here, nostradamus.
      - fho 5y ago
        I guess it is easy to make trivial predictions about the near future ... something like "computers will get faster", "batteries will become energy denser". Something like "food will become safer" is trivial only in the most generic sense. It's entirely possible that something that we eat today will be found carcinogenic tomorrow and people will still take ages to accept and act on that new knowledge. At least in my part of the ivory tower I see a strong shift away from meat, even my and my SOs parents (in their 60-70s) have (on their own behalf) cut out most of their meat consumption. So if I had to make a Nostradamus prediction, I would bet on real meat becoming a pure luxurious item, something that only gets brought on the table for special occasions, over the next ... 50 years.
- HenryBemis 5y ago
  I will just pick this one to set (some) record straight > Rechargeable Hearing Aids Apparently you don't have a family member that has hearing problems, making it difficult for them to have a 'normal life'. I have one. I remember buying a €4k (a few many years ago) pair of hearing aids and see the tears coming down when one was able to hear again. I see this as a prosthetic leg. You lose a basic function, this technology helps go back to having a slightly better life. Some stats on the matter. DDG returned US statistics on the top results; I believe these can be proportional for all other countries. https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick-statistics-hearing https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick-statistics... -About 28.8 million U.S. adults could benefit from using hearing aids. (HB Note: isn't that 9% of the population? - that's a big number - almost 29 million people??) -Among adults aged 70 and older with hearing loss who could benefit from hearing aids, fewer than one in three (30 percent) has ever used them. Even fewer adults aged 20 to 69 (approximately 16 percent) who could benefit from wearing hearing aids have ever used them. -As of December 2019, approximately 736,900 cochlear implants have been implanted worldwide. In the United States, roughly 118,100 devices have been implanted in adults and 65,000 in children.

piokoch 5y ago

In that case it makes much more sense to build a space station somewhere in asteroids belt between Mars and Jupiter, there is carbon, metals and, what's very important, water, so it is possible to make station self-sustained and easily retrieve whatever is needed. Although I am not sure if it will be practical to move iron from that place to the Earth, without some significant break through in space travel, probably not.

inglor_cz 5y ago
Mars is located conveniently between the Earth and the asteroid belt and people probably tolerate low gravity (0,3 G) better than zero gravity, at least for longer periods of time. As a springboard towards the Outer Solar System, Mars makes a lot of sense. It is a lot more Earth-y than anything beyond, with the possible exception of Europa and Titan. So our contemporary technologies need less adjustment to work there.
- HenryBemis 5y ago
  I see Mars as our "first convenient UAT". If we can make this work (get people to create a settlement and live there for 1-2-5-10 years), then we can identify and study the requirements and impact, and probably repeat the process to the next planet further out. First you get to feel comfortable with lifting 20kg before you move to 30kg, 50kg, etc. improve your wrist angles, how you spread your toes on the groun, etc. Mars is our 20kg. We take it for a spin, iron out the wrinkles, repeat it perfectly, then move to the next target. Meanwhile we 'studied' Mars for 'so long' that we know there are very few things that can surprise/wipe the effort with e.g. a single volcanic erruption/earthquake/mega-storm.

7952 5y ago

Building habitats that do not rely on a biosphere is exactly what we need on earth and exactly what will be built for mars. Perhaps if we learn to live on Mars we can one day learn to live on earth.

kaba0 5y ago
Even a post-ww3 Earth is orders of magnitude more habitable than Mars. And simply, it’s just so far into the future that we should not yet be doing that.
- antisol 5y ago
  "it’s just so far into the future that we should not yet be doing that" You're probably right. And 640K aught to be enough for anybody, too ;)

thombles 5y ago

> I've never understood this assumption that focusing on one thing must necessarily always be to the detriment of another. The Earth is a zero-sum game, possibly the most real example that exists. Every gallon of oil, every mineral that doesn't find its way back through recycling effectively disappears. Everybody reading this website has spent their life in an era of such excess, such profligacy, that this fact is easy to ignore: "we can just reallocate a little and do both!" The trouble is we're moving towards the end of that era. We're moving onto oil fields with increasingly poor EROEI. Arable land is decreasing. We're going to have to make some choices very soon which will be to the detriment of something else. As a species we have a high tolerance for wasteful nonsense—what is life without recreation and creativity after all? But it's perfectly reasonable to consider a very resource-intensive project like "life on mars" and decide that should be low on the priority list.

gnopgnip 5y ago
> The Earth is a zero-sum game No, it's not zero-sum. As you noted, "arable land decreasing" shows that. And similarly you can create arable land, you can enrich soil, use more drought tolerant crops, use tools and automation to harvest resources with less labor, at a lower cost. The allocation of resources is also not zero sum
- antisol 5y ago
  Don't forget the stupendous amount of energy from that big ball of hydrogen that hits it every second.
- arcanon 5y ago
  Arable land is outdated thinking. Its time to go vertical farming.
Baeocystin 5y ago
>Every gallon of oil, every mineral that doesn't find its way back through recycling effectively disappears. I realize this is a hell of a caveat, but if we ever get fusion running in a real way, our problems of resource scarcity are essentially solved. Like you said, the elements we have on Earth right now aren't actually consumed, they just get shuffled around. Make electricity cheap enough, and un-shuffling what is needed becomes economically viable in a way that energy-as-provided-by-oil could never achieve.

pjio 5y ago

> I've never understood this assumption that focusing on one thing must necessarily always be to the detriment of another. I totally agree with you, having a bright, exciting vision of the future is a huge motivator and technological driver to help with our problems on earth. This website really gave me a good laugh in a positive way. I would say, space exploration made it again possible to look at our homeworld in a more appreciating way!

Jedd 5y ago

> I've never understood this assumption that focusing on one thing must necessarily always be to the detriment of another. Probably mostly because popular news / media has endeavoured to simplify things way beyond the point they should have been simplified -- nuance, rationality, critical thinking, are under-promoted. https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

throwawayboise 5y ago

Really, the production of technology that helps Earth has been the only benefit of our adventures in space since the 1960s. Nobody lives on the moon, and nobody will live on Mars either. But the exercise of getting there produced many benefits and advances in technology that are useful here on Earth.

Grustaf 5y ago

It's a joke page, it's a way to get attention for environmental programs. Don't take it too literally.

chakhs 5y ago

I'm indifferent about Mars but I kind of find this argument weird. It assumes that these secondary advancements would not have been achieved if research into going to Mars was not done. How about just doing research about renewable energy for earth instead of Mars? You could argue more could be achieved if this was done because we will not be distracted by Mars specific problems that won't apply to earth

7e 5y ago

Yes, any large effort will shed some crumbs of technology that can be reused elsewhere, but resources are finite. I would prefer that the drive to help Earth produces technology that will help Earth. That's a more focused, direct goal.