6 ms·

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

by 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.
  - reader_mode 5y ago
    Going straight at the problem is valuable, but the beutifull thing about our society is that all of us don't have to do the same thing - finding solutions isn't always invest X into Y to solve it. I'm sure framing the problem in terms of colonising Mars is going to change so many fundamental assumptions. When you give people the task to solve X they go with what's already there and try to improve, and then they get stuck in a local minimum - software engineers should be able to appriciate this considering most of our industry is built on legacy design decisions from 70s and 80s. Project like Mars let's you go back to square one on a lot of implicit assumptions and see what comes out of it. Not to mention that it's going to be inspiring for a lot of smart people, both because of the difficulty and the scifi aspect. If they invested serious money into it I would be shocked if it didn't result in widespread real world innovations.
  - koheripbal 5y ago
    Why would I want to live where there are problems? Do we have a duty to solve Earth's problems if we cannot convince other Earthers to help solve them? If might literally be easier to live sustainably on Mars under a single government made of non-idiots.
- kaba0 5y ago
  We can already not unfuck our planet, let alone play on hard mode...
  - austhrow743 5y ago
    Who is "we" in that scenario?
- pron 5y ago
  > if you figure out a way to make Mars habitable - you can figure out disaster handling scenarios for any cataclysm caused by global warming. If a cataclysm on Earth ever makes inhabiting it even remotely as hard as making Mars habitable, then we've already lost. Besides, the challenges are so different that I don't see what one has to do with the other.
  - reader_mode 5y ago
    >then we've already lost Lost what ? Extinction events happen without human intervention, reliance on a fragile ecosystem is not a long term survival strategy.
  - antisol 5y ago
    "If a cataclysm on Earth ever makes inhabiting it even remotely as hard as making Mars habitable, then we've already lost." Damn. That's disappointing. Here I was thinking that 4 billion years before the sun enters its red giant phase was plenty of time to get our shit together. Guess I was wrong. Or are you saying you have a plan to prevent stellar evolution?
- imtringued 5y ago
  If we are willing to lose 7 billion people we might as well forget about climate change entirely.
- koheripbal 5y ago
  The big difference on Earth is that you have to convince a whole bunch of bad actors to act good, whereas on Mars, the small community can act in unison under one government.
  - teachrdan 5y ago
    The "small community" would be run by the billionaires who could afford to move to Mars by choice.
    - koheripbal 5y ago
      Billionaires are the ones who can remain on Earth and able to buy paradise here, even if the rest of the world is burning. They'll be the last to go to Mars.
op03 5y ago
Doesn't change the fact that Mars is boring as hell. I'd rather they chase the giant squid or something and find a giant undiscovered continent of plastic or thrash under the sea.
nexuist 5y ago
> hey why don't you help Earth instead of trying to get to Mars Maybe he could work on an electric car company or something like that which would actually be useful to us.
kaba0 5y ago
Elon Musk is an egoistic scammer. How does PayPal benefit humankind? How does Tesla benefit it? The latter is simply irresponsible thing to do, humans are shitty with Level 2 self-driving, it is simply psychologically not safe for us to do that. And we are so far from higher levels that it is just a highly regarded scam. And frankly, his all-around behavior is just shitty. Union-busting, this whole selling himself as a self-made genius, while he bought both Tesla and SpaceX (even the founder title was bought), and the laughable claim that he came to the US with like almost no money, when in fact his family has a goddamn emerald mine (and I know that “he barely talks to daddy”, but come on..). It just plays into the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” mindset.
- arc-in-space 5y ago
  Hold on, are you saying that the world would be better off without paypal? Are you sure you don't feel this way just because of its association with Elon, which apparently was pretty minimal?
- tigershark 5y ago
  He single handedly did more for Earth health that any other person in the world. If it wasn’t for Tesla the electric cars wouldn’t have been so popular with plenty of countries that pledged to ban ICE vehicles in 9 years or less. But I’m sure that you are convinced to have done more than him to reduce global CO2 emissions, right?
  - kaba0 5y ago
    Just lol. I’m sure every single step of his is pure goodness, and not money. And electric cars have been here since 1900. Their comeback was inevitable as can be seen from basically every car manufacturer having E models. And you know what? Not everyone should have a car, building a proper public transportation system in cities would be much more beneficial, something elon opposes greatly. With “fantastic ideas” like cars.. in a tube.
    - Paradigma11 5y ago
animal531 5y ago
I agree, but on the other hand feel that we need a mission to some other body again, instead of yet another lander for Mars. There's Venus and Mercury that's close by and for a tougher challenge there's four Jovian moons that may harbour life.

by lacker 5y ago

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.
- reader_mode 5y ago
  Going straight at the problem is valuable, but the beutifull thing about our society is that all of us don't have to do the same thing - finding solutions isn't always invest X into Y to solve it. I'm sure framing the problem in terms of colonising Mars is going to change so many fundamental assumptions. When you give people the task to solve X they go with what's already there and try to improve, and then they get stuck in a local minimum - software engineers should be able to appriciate this considering most of our industry is built on legacy design decisions from 70s and 80s. Project like Mars let's you go back to square one on a lot of implicit assumptions and see what comes out of it. Not to mention that it's going to be inspiring for a lot of smart people, both because of the difficulty and the scifi aspect. If they invested serious money into it I would be shocked if it didn't result in widespread real world innovations.
- koheripbal 5y ago
  Why would I want to live where there are problems? Do we have a duty to solve Earth's problems if we cannot convince other Earthers to help solve them? If might literally be easier to live sustainably on Mars under a single government made of non-idiots.
kaba0 5y ago
We can already not unfuck our planet, let alone play on hard mode...
- austhrow743 5y ago
  Who is "we" in that scenario?
pron 5y ago
> if you figure out a way to make Mars habitable - you can figure out disaster handling scenarios for any cataclysm caused by global warming. If a cataclysm on Earth ever makes inhabiting it even remotely as hard as making Mars habitable, then we've already lost. Besides, the challenges are so different that I don't see what one has to do with the other.
- reader_mode 5y ago
  >then we've already lost Lost what ? Extinction events happen without human intervention, reliance on a fragile ecosystem is not a long term survival strategy.
- antisol 5y ago
  "If a cataclysm on Earth ever makes inhabiting it even remotely as hard as making Mars habitable, then we've already lost." Damn. That's disappointing. Here I was thinking that 4 billion years before the sun enters its red giant phase was plenty of time to get our shit together. Guess I was wrong. Or are you saying you have a plan to prevent stellar evolution?
imtringued 5y ago
If we are willing to lose 7 billion people we might as well forget about climate change entirely.
koheripbal 5y ago
The big difference on Earth is that you have to convince a whole bunch of bad actors to act good, whereas on Mars, the small community can act in unison under one government.
- teachrdan 5y ago
  The "small community" would be run by the billionaires who could afford to move to Mars by choice.
  - koheripbal 5y ago
    Billionaires are the ones who can remain on Earth and able to buy paradise here, even if the rest of the world is burning. They'll be the last to go to Mars.

op03 5y ago

Doesn't change the fact that Mars is boring as hell. I'd rather they chase the giant squid or something and find a giant undiscovered continent of plastic or thrash under the sea.

nexuist 5y ago

> hey why don't you help Earth instead of trying to get to Mars Maybe he could work on an electric car company or something like that which would actually be useful to us.

kaba0 5y ago

Elon Musk is an egoistic scammer. How does PayPal benefit humankind? How does Tesla benefit it? The latter is simply irresponsible thing to do, humans are shitty with Level 2 self-driving, it is simply psychologically not safe for us to do that. And we are so far from higher levels that it is just a highly regarded scam. And frankly, his all-around behavior is just shitty. Union-busting, this whole selling himself as a self-made genius, while he bought both Tesla and SpaceX (even the founder title was bought), and the laughable claim that he came to the US with like almost no money, when in fact his family has a goddamn emerald mine (and I know that “he barely talks to daddy”, but come on..). It just plays into the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” mindset.

arc-in-space 5y ago
Hold on, are you saying that the world would be better off without paypal? Are you sure you don't feel this way just because of its association with Elon, which apparently was pretty minimal?
tigershark 5y ago
He single handedly did more for Earth health that any other person in the world. If it wasn’t for Tesla the electric cars wouldn’t have been so popular with plenty of countries that pledged to ban ICE vehicles in 9 years or less. But I’m sure that you are convinced to have done more than him to reduce global CO2 emissions, right?
- kaba0 5y ago
  Just lol. I’m sure every single step of his is pure goodness, and not money. And electric cars have been here since 1900. Their comeback was inevitable as can be seen from basically every car manufacturer having E models. And you know what? Not everyone should have a car, building a proper public transportation system in cities would be much more beneficial, something elon opposes greatly. With “fantastic ideas” like cars.. in a tube.
  - Paradigma11 5y ago

animal531 5y ago

I agree, but on the other hand feel that we need a mission to some other body again, instead of yet another lander for Mars. There's Venus and Mercury that's close by and for a tougher challenge there's four Jovian moons that may harbour life.