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First, I should note that I have a personal bias in that I study Mars for my PhD. I dislike Elon Musk, and I am not in favor of terraforming. That out of the w

First, I should note that I have a personal bias in that I study Mars for my PhD. I dislike Elon Musk, and I am not in favor of terraforming. That out of the way, McKay comes off as overly aggressive at times, and wishy-washy in others. It seems contradictory to call Jakosky's model ridiculous and absurd while also claiming we don't have enough data to know for sure. Jakosky is a well-known and respected Mars researcher, and I would much rather trust his 2018 paper over a paper or two written in the early '90s before we had detailed observations of the Martian atmosphere or surface. At the very least, I appreciate Jakosky planting an empirical stake in the ground for his position.

Miraste 5y ago
You're not in favor of terraforming, full stop? Elon's nukes and ground CO2 idea seems dubious, and like his dome habitats idea (turns out they're very limited in lower gravity and pressure: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/28/domes-are-very-over-rated/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/28/domes-are-very...) I think it will be dropped quickly once SpaceX gets to Mars and starts working on habitation seriously. He talks big but he acknowledges reality eventually. However, I struggle to see a reason to oppose the concept of terraforming Mars. I don't study the planet for a living so I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
- OmicronCeti 5y ago
  I see no point to it. As another commentor mentioned below, humanity is unlikely to travel to another star system. To me, terraforming Mars is like going camping in your backyard. It's different, it's harder, fun, but ultimately has no real purpose. Mars is more likely to be colonized for exploitation of its resources than as some utopian egalitarian human endeavor. To me that would be a shame. I would like to see it preserved more or less as-is as a record of its own history.
  - dheera 5y ago
    I mean a few hundred years ago people believed humans could not ever fly, but it happened, and we take it for granted now.
    - OmicronCeti 5y ago
      There is model for flight on Earth: birds. Humans achieved a similar feat through mimicry and the use of fossil fuels. There is no model for instellar transit. I am not optimistic that we can develop a technology that can speed transport between stars to such a degree before we destroy ourselves like every other hominid that has ever existed.
      - dheera 5y ago
        Planes work quite differently from birds. We were inspired by them, but we didn't copy them at all. Attempts in the past to copy birds mostly failed. We got to the moon, Mars, and several other solar system bodies in the past half century without any mimicry. Maybe you don't, but I have very strong optimism for technological advancement, and also for modifying our life form to rid ourselves of our tendency to destroy things before heading to other stars. When I say "we" will go to other stars, it won't be Homo sapiens, but another species that we will create as our successor.
        OmicronCeti 5y ago
        The distance to the moon and Mars is absolutely trivial compared to even the closest star: to Mars is 0.0007% of the way to Alpha Centauri. >We got to the moon, Mars, and several other solar system bodies You're conflating humans and probes, which are vastly different.
        dheera 5y ago
        > You're conflating humans and probes, which are vastly different. I disagree. Robots can build infrastructure far ahead of human settlement, such that everything already exists when we are ready to travel. We can also potentially re-engineer our own life form, or create an entirely new inorganic lifeform, to withstand various conditions, including radiation and a wider range of temperatures. That will be our successor. We are only beginning to understand genetics in the past decade. We have a long, long way to go, and a lot to understand. Science is still at its infancy. Also, this is something I could never say in an academic context, but deep down I don't believe in conservation of energy, partly because the big bang itself violates it. Yes, I would be ridiculed for saying this in a scientific context, but so would someone in the 1500s for saying that the Earth goes around the sun. I think at some point in the distant future we will not be reliant on stars as our energy source.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    I think we absolutely can travel to another star system. But more critically, this argument strikes me as goal post moving by space settlement skeptics: mass transport to Mars is increasingly appearing to be feasible, so we’ll put the goal posts on Proxima b. The exploitation argument doesn’t make any sense because Mars doesn’t have any resources that would really make sense to ever bring back to Earth, except as a side product. It’s a new home like an island in the Pacific for the Polynesians. I don’t consider Polynesians settling uninhabited new islands to be objectionable at all, but instead an expression of what makes humanity wonderful. Preservation of a dead rock for preservation’s sake makes no sense. It’s treating stasis as better than life, and I just can’t get behind that.
    - OmicronCeti 5y ago
      I said this elsewhere in this thread, but I study surface processes on Mars, so to me the planet is still alive and active. Things change, mysteries unfold, new environmental conditions come and go. I'm sure you wouldn't object to national parks or wilderness areas, it's just that in the case of Mars there is no (known) life. How much each of us values the presence of life will differ, but in my view it's worth preserving Mars.
      - kortilla 5y ago
        Pick a different planet to preserve.
        rbanffy 5y ago
        Venus is very easy to preserve.
        domnomnom 5y ago
        Then he would have to do another PhD!
        OmicronCeti 5y ago
        Thoughtful response, thanks for your participation.
  - albertzeyer 5y ago
    > I would like to see it preserved more or less as-is as a record of its own history. But on the other side, what is really the point to this? In a couple of million years, none of this really matters.
    - OmicronCeti 5y ago
      I see it as littering, we'll all be dead in 100 years so what does it matter if I toss my trash into the bushes?
      - beckingz 5y ago
        What about leaving behind awesome artwork? We could turn mars into a sweet art project.
        OmicronCeti 5y ago
        You mean add graffiti to my beloved red rocks? Blasphemy.
        domnomnom 5y ago
        Can you at least tell us why you like Mars so much?
      - rozab 5y ago
        I can't help but see Mars as a dead rocky that has no special value compared to the billions of others in the galaxy. But Earth, as far as we know, is a unique jewel containing countless unique ecosystems. It must be very different to you, having studied it. Like how a biologist may have a fondness for a particular nemotode worm which means nothing to most of us. It makes me feel shortsighted thinking of it in this way. Reminds me of pro-colonial/imperialist rhetoric like this[0]. Will our descendents see us the same way? Is there a good reason we want to extend our empire into the stars other than... seeing it a lot in sci-fi media? [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden
  - Miraste 5y ago
    Interesting. To me, Mars is a large rock in a universe of large rocks, but it could be our second home (even if it is done for profit). In conversations like this I often consider this comic: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/modules https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/modules I don't care about Mars' surface processes. If I had a button to blast its outer layer off and replace it with a habitable one I would press it without hesitating - yet I imagine if I spent years studying the planet academically I would act differently, based on an amalgam of my concepts of "studying" and "Mars" I came up with on the spot and am ignoring anyway. Empathy is a poor substitute for understanding. There's a philosophical difference here too. I don't see a problem with pulling resources from as much of the galaxy as we can reach if it prolongs Earth life, assuming we don't find other lifeforms. The galaxy only has mystique when we assign it, which we can't do if we're dead.
  - natch 5y ago
    I would like to see it preserved too, but it seems there are some tradeoffs with respect to survivability of intelligent life in the face of potential extinction events. This is assuming that worst case scenarios are possible on Earth as on any planet… I think that’s a reasonable assumption.
- fastball 5y ago
  The long short of it is misanthropy. For some reason there are a lot of people around today that believe life is suffering and that the universe would be a better place with fewer humans in it. It's a hard position to argue with because it's just so full of holes and lunacy you don't know where to start.
  - domnomnom 5y ago
    Spot on. I think you can’t argue with it because it’s like an unexpected emotional vacuum. You can’t really convince someone who doesn’t like food that the carnival is an enjoyable place. They’re operating on a fundamentally separate plane.
tw04 5y ago
>and I am not in favor of terraforming. Why not? It would seem that's something we're going to have to master in order to populate the galaxy. Seems like it would make sense to figure it out somewhere close to home so we can have all the appropriate gear onboard a flight out into the cosmos.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  We aren't going to populate the galaxy. We aren't even going to populate Mars. We are going to live on Earth until something cataclysmic happens, and then we will be gone.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    That's really likely to be true if you walk into the future believing it.
    - OmicronCeti 5y ago
      Seems a little grandiose considering its just a comment on HN.
  - dheera 5y ago
    I strongly disagree with this. We have several hundred million years left, and we've only been around as an intelligent civilization for what, 100K years? 200 years ago nobody would even think of flying on Earth, and yet here we are, taking it for granted that you can get almost anywhere on this planet within 24 hours for a couple thousand dollars, and within a century of inventing the car we landed a robot on freaking Mars. Now I do think that we will take charge of evolution and invent a form of life that will be our successor to withstand a much harsher range of conditions and absent from the "bugs" of current life such as cancer and heart disease, rather than our current unreliable meat bags, but we'll make it happen nonetheless. All that said -- I do want to see more attention toward terraforming Earth as well. Even with zero global warming, the sun's brightness will increase such that our oceans will boil away within 1 billion years, even though it won't actually engulf the Earth for another 4 billion. I would think it's realistic to extend the habitable period of life on Earth from ~300 million years to maybe 2 billion years with some terraforming tricks. That will buy us more time to terraform Mars or Saturn's moons in preparation for the red giant phase of the sun. Also, learning to terraform the Earth can reverse global warming, because, you know, politicians don't give a fuck about stopping it, so we should attempt to learn to reverse it as a backup plan while the political environmental efforts continue in parallel.

Miraste 5y ago

You're not in favor of terraforming, full stop? Elon's nukes and ground CO2 idea seems dubious, and like his dome habitats idea (turns out they're very limited in lower gravity and pressure: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/28/domes-are-very-over-rated/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/28/domes-are-very...) I think it will be dropped quickly once SpaceX gets to Mars and starts working on habitation seriously. He talks big but he acknowledges reality eventually. However, I struggle to see a reason to oppose the concept of terraforming Mars. I don't study the planet for a living so I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

OmicronCeti 5y ago
I see no point to it. As another commentor mentioned below, humanity is unlikely to travel to another star system. To me, terraforming Mars is like going camping in your backyard. It's different, it's harder, fun, but ultimately has no real purpose. Mars is more likely to be colonized for exploitation of its resources than as some utopian egalitarian human endeavor. To me that would be a shame. I would like to see it preserved more or less as-is as a record of its own history.
- dheera 5y ago
  I mean a few hundred years ago people believed humans could not ever fly, but it happened, and we take it for granted now.
  - OmicronCeti 5y ago
    There is model for flight on Earth: birds. Humans achieved a similar feat through mimicry and the use of fossil fuels. There is no model for instellar transit. I am not optimistic that we can develop a technology that can speed transport between stars to such a degree before we destroy ourselves like every other hominid that has ever existed.
    - dheera 5y ago
      Planes work quite differently from birds. We were inspired by them, but we didn't copy them at all. Attempts in the past to copy birds mostly failed. We got to the moon, Mars, and several other solar system bodies in the past half century without any mimicry. Maybe you don't, but I have very strong optimism for technological advancement, and also for modifying our life form to rid ourselves of our tendency to destroy things before heading to other stars. When I say "we" will go to other stars, it won't be Homo sapiens, but another species that we will create as our successor.
      - OmicronCeti 5y ago
        The distance to the moon and Mars is absolutely trivial compared to even the closest star: to Mars is 0.0007% of the way to Alpha Centauri. >We got to the moon, Mars, and several other solar system bodies You're conflating humans and probes, which are vastly different.
        dheera 5y ago
        > You're conflating humans and probes, which are vastly different. I disagree. Robots can build infrastructure far ahead of human settlement, such that everything already exists when we are ready to travel. We can also potentially re-engineer our own life form, or create an entirely new inorganic lifeform, to withstand various conditions, including radiation and a wider range of temperatures. That will be our successor. We are only beginning to understand genetics in the past decade. We have a long, long way to go, and a lot to understand. Science is still at its infancy. Also, this is something I could never say in an academic context, but deep down I don't believe in conservation of energy, partly because the big bang itself violates it. Yes, I would be ridiculed for saying this in a scientific context, but so would someone in the 1500s for saying that the Earth goes around the sun. I think at some point in the distant future we will not be reliant on stars as our energy source.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  I think we absolutely can travel to another star system. But more critically, this argument strikes me as goal post moving by space settlement skeptics: mass transport to Mars is increasingly appearing to be feasible, so we’ll put the goal posts on Proxima b. The exploitation argument doesn’t make any sense because Mars doesn’t have any resources that would really make sense to ever bring back to Earth, except as a side product. It’s a new home like an island in the Pacific for the Polynesians. I don’t consider Polynesians settling uninhabited new islands to be objectionable at all, but instead an expression of what makes humanity wonderful. Preservation of a dead rock for preservation’s sake makes no sense. It’s treating stasis as better than life, and I just can’t get behind that.
  - OmicronCeti 5y ago
    I said this elsewhere in this thread, but I study surface processes on Mars, so to me the planet is still alive and active. Things change, mysteries unfold, new environmental conditions come and go. I'm sure you wouldn't object to national parks or wilderness areas, it's just that in the case of Mars there is no (known) life. How much each of us values the presence of life will differ, but in my view it's worth preserving Mars.
    - kortilla 5y ago
      Pick a different planet to preserve.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        Venus is very easy to preserve.
        domnomnom 5y ago
        Then he would have to do another PhD!
      - OmicronCeti 5y ago
        Thoughtful response, thanks for your participation.
- albertzeyer 5y ago
  > I would like to see it preserved more or less as-is as a record of its own history. But on the other side, what is really the point to this? In a couple of million years, none of this really matters.
  - OmicronCeti 5y ago
    I see it as littering, we'll all be dead in 100 years so what does it matter if I toss my trash into the bushes?
    - beckingz 5y ago
      What about leaving behind awesome artwork? We could turn mars into a sweet art project.
      - OmicronCeti 5y ago
        You mean add graffiti to my beloved red rocks? Blasphemy.
        domnomnom 5y ago
        Can you at least tell us why you like Mars so much?
    - rozab 5y ago
      I can't help but see Mars as a dead rocky that has no special value compared to the billions of others in the galaxy. But Earth, as far as we know, is a unique jewel containing countless unique ecosystems. It must be very different to you, having studied it. Like how a biologist may have a fondness for a particular nemotode worm which means nothing to most of us. It makes me feel shortsighted thinking of it in this way. Reminds me of pro-colonial/imperialist rhetoric like this[0]. Will our descendents see us the same way? Is there a good reason we want to extend our empire into the stars other than... seeing it a lot in sci-fi media? [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden
- Miraste 5y ago
  Interesting. To me, Mars is a large rock in a universe of large rocks, but it could be our second home (even if it is done for profit). In conversations like this I often consider this comic: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/modules https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/modules I don't care about Mars' surface processes. If I had a button to blast its outer layer off and replace it with a habitable one I would press it without hesitating - yet I imagine if I spent years studying the planet academically I would act differently, based on an amalgam of my concepts of "studying" and "Mars" I came up with on the spot and am ignoring anyway. Empathy is a poor substitute for understanding. There's a philosophical difference here too. I don't see a problem with pulling resources from as much of the galaxy as we can reach if it prolongs Earth life, assuming we don't find other lifeforms. The galaxy only has mystique when we assign it, which we can't do if we're dead.
- natch 5y ago
  I would like to see it preserved too, but it seems there are some tradeoffs with respect to survivability of intelligent life in the face of potential extinction events. This is assuming that worst case scenarios are possible on Earth as on any planet… I think that’s a reasonable assumption.
fastball 5y ago
The long short of it is misanthropy. For some reason there are a lot of people around today that believe life is suffering and that the universe would be a better place with fewer humans in it. It's a hard position to argue with because it's just so full of holes and lunacy you don't know where to start.
- domnomnom 5y ago
  Spot on. I think you can’t argue with it because it’s like an unexpected emotional vacuum. You can’t really convince someone who doesn’t like food that the carnival is an enjoyable place. They’re operating on a fundamentally separate plane.

tw04 5y ago

>and I am not in favor of terraforming. Why not? It would seem that's something we're going to have to master in order to populate the galaxy. Seems like it would make sense to figure it out somewhere close to home so we can have all the appropriate gear onboard a flight out into the cosmos.

throwawayboise 5y ago
We aren't going to populate the galaxy. We aren't even going to populate Mars. We are going to live on Earth until something cataclysmic happens, and then we will be gone.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  That's really likely to be true if you walk into the future believing it.
  - OmicronCeti 5y ago
    Seems a little grandiose considering its just a comment on HN.
- dheera 5y ago
  I strongly disagree with this. We have several hundred million years left, and we've only been around as an intelligent civilization for what, 100K years? 200 years ago nobody would even think of flying on Earth, and yet here we are, taking it for granted that you can get almost anywhere on this planet within 24 hours for a couple thousand dollars, and within a century of inventing the car we landed a robot on freaking Mars. Now I do think that we will take charge of evolution and invent a form of life that will be our successor to withstand a much harsher range of conditions and absent from the "bugs" of current life such as cancer and heart disease, rather than our current unreliable meat bags, but we'll make it happen nonetheless. All that said -- I do want to see more attention toward terraforming Earth as well. Even with zero global warming, the sun's brightness will increase such that our oceans will boil away within 1 billion years, even though it won't actually engulf the Earth for another 4 billion. I would think it's realistic to extend the habitable period of life on Earth from ~300 million years to maybe 2 billion years with some terraforming tricks. That will buy us more time to terraform Mars or Saturn's moons in preparation for the red giant phase of the sun. Also, learning to terraform the Earth can reverse global warming, because, you know, politicians don't give a fuck about stopping it, so we should attempt to learn to reverse it as a backup plan while the political environmental efforts continue in parallel.