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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 campin

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.
        OmicronCeti 5y ago
        'we' did not go to Mars, 'we' did not go to pluto. We sent cameras with walky-talkies. That is so vastly different than sending people to the moon, that it's not really something we can disagree on in good faith. If you truly do not believe in the conservation of energy, I think we're done here since none of my arguments will be good enough for such wild speculation.
        dheera 5y ago
        If we can send cameras with walky-talkies, we can invent and send (possibly silicon-based) life forms that will carry on our legacy while being a lot more resistant to the elements, require much less support along the journey, and can tolerate whatever gases and radiation may be present at the destination while still reproducing and carrying on society just as life does now. Human bodies suck because they need to eat, need to poop, complain if what they eat isn't tasty, fight with each other, and get cancer, but our legacy as intelligent life doesn't need to continue in our current carbon-based meat bag form.
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      We got to the moon. 12 humans have walked on it. Note that 50 years later, nobody is living there, or working there. Nobody has even returned. We may get humans to Mars. It's technically possible. But I don't think we will ever live there.
      - dheera 5y ago
        50 years isn't a long time. I'm sure some dude said the same thing about Tibet being too harsh to live in, and yet there are cities there now.
        OmicronCeti 5y ago
        What are you talking about? People have lived in Tibet for 20,000+ years?
      - OmicronCeti 5y ago
        The person you're replying to stated elsewhere that they don't believe in the conservation of energy, so (ironically) save yourself the energy of arguing with them.
        chub500 5y ago
        Not to detract from your sarcasm but the conservation of energy only holds true in flat spacetime. So I guess you don't 'believe' in curved spacetime? That makes you a flat spacetimer I guess...
  - kortilla 5y ago
    The breakthroughs in flying came when we stopped trying to make machines look like birds. Submarines work well because we didn’t bother making them anything like fish.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    > There is no model for instellar transit. There is, but extrasolar objects don't have engines and do very low energy transits. We'd need a large habitat, a power source that can last for a couple thousand years and a lot - and I mean a LOT - of reaction mass to accelerate it and to brake it when it arrives at its destination. Ideally, it'd be preceded by numerous robotic probes that'd chart the worlds ahead for possible refueling stops (that could add a couple thousand years to the mission) and have a number of possible targets lined up on a reasonable trajectory so that if the next system is not really that hospitable or doesn't have anything worth doing a very large delta-v for, it can just press ahead to the next destination. Another thing it'd need is a lot of determination to build it, to seal it with a population, test it for generations to make sure the ecosystem works and is stable, and then send it out into the unknown without any possibility of returning to Earth. It's very long term engineering we rarely do.
  - valuearb 5y ago
    There are numerous credible designs for space ships able to reach a few percentage points of the speed of light. Reaching 10% would be enough to visit nearby stars within a lifetime. And once we can extend human life spans to many hundreds of years these journeys become even more achievable.
    - OmicronCeti 5y ago
      >credible designs As I said elsewhere, I think the disconnect here is between potential and probable. Homo sapiens have twice come to the edge of nuclear oblivion already (being saved only by luck essentially), and I would wager we are are speeding much faster towards nuking each other than reaching the stars.
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.

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.
      - OmicronCeti 5y ago
        'we' did not go to Mars, 'we' did not go to pluto. We sent cameras with walky-talkies. That is so vastly different than sending people to the moon, that it's not really something we can disagree on in good faith. If you truly do not believe in the conservation of energy, I think we're done here since none of my arguments will be good enough for such wild speculation.
        dheera 5y ago
        If we can send cameras with walky-talkies, we can invent and send (possibly silicon-based) life forms that will carry on our legacy while being a lot more resistant to the elements, require much less support along the journey, and can tolerate whatever gases and radiation may be present at the destination while still reproducing and carrying on society just as life does now. Human bodies suck because they need to eat, need to poop, complain if what they eat isn't tasty, fight with each other, and get cancer, but our legacy as intelligent life doesn't need to continue in our current carbon-based meat bag form.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    We got to the moon. 12 humans have walked on it. Note that 50 years later, nobody is living there, or working there. Nobody has even returned. We may get humans to Mars. It's technically possible. But I don't think we will ever live there.
    - dheera 5y ago
      50 years isn't a long time. I'm sure some dude said the same thing about Tibet being too harsh to live in, and yet there are cities there now.
      - OmicronCeti 5y ago
        What are you talking about? People have lived in Tibet for 20,000+ years?
    - OmicronCeti 5y ago
      The person you're replying to stated elsewhere that they don't believe in the conservation of energy, so (ironically) save yourself the energy of arguing with them.
      - chub500 5y ago
        Not to detract from your sarcasm but the conservation of energy only holds true in flat spacetime. So I guess you don't 'believe' in curved spacetime? That makes you a flat spacetimer I guess...
- kortilla 5y ago
  The breakthroughs in flying came when we stopped trying to make machines look like birds. Submarines work well because we didn’t bother making them anything like fish.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > There is no model for instellar transit. There is, but extrasolar objects don't have engines and do very low energy transits. We'd need a large habitat, a power source that can last for a couple thousand years and a lot - and I mean a LOT - of reaction mass to accelerate it and to brake it when it arrives at its destination. Ideally, it'd be preceded by numerous robotic probes that'd chart the worlds ahead for possible refueling stops (that could add a couple thousand years to the mission) and have a number of possible targets lined up on a reasonable trajectory so that if the next system is not really that hospitable or doesn't have anything worth doing a very large delta-v for, it can just press ahead to the next destination. Another thing it'd need is a lot of determination to build it, to seal it with a population, test it for generations to make sure the ecosystem works and is stable, and then send it out into the unknown without any possibility of returning to Earth. It's very long term engineering we rarely do.
- valuearb 5y ago
  There are numerous credible designs for space ships able to reach a few percentage points of the speed of light. Reaching 10% would be enough to visit nearby stars within a lifetime. And once we can extend human life spans to many hundreds of years these journeys become even more achievable.
  - OmicronCeti 5y ago
    >credible designs As I said elsewhere, I think the disconnect here is between potential and probable. Homo sapiens have twice come to the edge of nuclear oblivion already (being saved only by luck essentially), and I would wager we are are speeding much faster towards nuking each other than reaching the stars.

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.