10 ms·

Why do we need to fly 3 months to some inhospitable planet that is in worse condition than Earth would be (even after nuclear wars and global warming) to make p

by rtpg 5y ago

Why do we need to fly 3 months to some inhospitable planet that is in worse condition than Earth would be (even after nuclear wars and global warming) to make progress? I suppose there's an idea we could apply everything done on Mars to Earth, but like... seriously, what we just took all the prep for mars and just put it in the middle of the Empty Quarter, the Saraha, Antarctica? People barely want to live in the arctic circle, yet believe that our salvation comes in Mars? I would love to see all the energy put into space exploration to simply be put in rehabilitating existing land.

sillysaurusx 5y ago
It’s helpful to remember it’s not a zero sum game. We can do all of that too. The tech for Mars would make it that much easier. No one wants to live in those places because currently they have a choice. But if our planet becomes irradiated, or hit by a meteor, or suffers a sun burst — all very realistic concerns — then those choices become more limited. And it’s good to have options.
- rtpg 5y ago
  The ISS is literally the most expensive physical structure we have ever built, and it's like 5 floating schoolbuses. Now I'm for walking and chewing bubblegum. But if you believe in opportunity costs and care about navigating that, it feels like the same problem. Our planet becoming irradiated is actually not a huge problem! It would still be easier to live on Earth than on Mars! An irradiated radioactive hellscape of Earth would still be more survivable than Mars. (my more nuanced take is that we have so many basic hospitability problems that need solving, and Mars have all of those times 100, so it would be very good if most of those PhDs could focus on those hospitability problems more than the logistics of shooting a bunch of stuff into space for long term transit)
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    "it would be very good if all those PhDs could focus on those hospitability problems" We have like a million PHds telling us what to do about climate change for 50 years, and nobody is listening "The ISS is literally the most expensive physical structure we have ever built" And it's 100x cheaper than the Iraq war or 2008 crisis, both entirely preventable manmade disasters. Or to put it into different perspwctive: ISS costs as much as cleanup of 3 oil spills, and we've had quite a few.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    The ISS was also the first of its kind, not built with cost effectiveness in mind even a little bit, and complicated by being built by so many different parties. A station or other space hab built by a highly vertically integrated company trying to keep costs down is almost certainly going to be much, much less expensive and more capable.
  - hparadiz 5y ago
    The ISS was built largely with hundreds of space shuttle and Soyuz launches over two decades hence why it's so expensive. Starship will be able to put an entire ISS worth of stuff into orbit in a single launch for 1/50th of the cost. It's not a zero sum game. The space industry employs a lot of people. Some of the stuff they put into orbit are satellites that literally save lives.
    - JaimeThompson 5y ago
      Starship can't lift 462 tons to orbit in one launch and that isn't taking into account the volume needed. It would take more than 1 to get an ISS equivalent on orbit.
      - kortex 5y ago
        Ok, so like 5-10. ISS took 40 assembly flights, with 36 being expensive space shuttle flights ($54k/kg).
      - mlindner 5y ago
        The pressurized volume of Starship is larger than the pressurized volume of the ISS. I think that was what was intended to be conveyed.
        hparadiz 5y ago
        Exactly what I was thinking in my head when I wrote that. Although I really should have written it out properly. To be fair mass is probably way more important.
    - terafo 5y ago
      Definitely not in a single launch, since ISS weighs around 500 tons. And I think designs for space stations in starship era would be different(more heavy, but orders of magnitude cheaper to produce), so something like ISS in a starship era might weigh 1.5-2x more(VERY rough estimate), but nonetheless be much cheaper.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Humans are not automatons who you can just point at a different problem than the one they are interested in and expect them to make progress in a similar way. A Mars colony is an exciting problem for smart people to work on that can inspire them. You can't put a dollar value on that.
  - mlindner 5y ago
    > The ISS is literally the most expensive physical structure we have ever built, and it's like 5 floating schoolbuses. Most of that cost was in the cost of launching it (and the inflation in the price of the modules knowing that they are "priceless" and "can't fail" and "we can only build one copy of it"). Further it's all engineered to very fine margins. The more you get your margins down the more cost these things take. One-offs of anything tend to be expensive. One-offs of very tight margin things are even more expensive. There's nothing in the ISS that is especially exotic. It's copper wiring and aluminum pressure vessels.
labster 5y ago
Nobody wants to go to Earth these days. It’s too crowded.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
There is loads of people who want to travel to mars for an expedition to look for life, study it's geology and see what it looks like at all - however you are right that living consitions would be crap. I have always maintained that a settlement on the moon makes a lot more sence - fortly you have much better access to space for industry, secondly, help can reach you withing days at any time or you could be in earth hospital withing days if you need surgery.
- fastball 5y ago
  Starship is literally also slated for missions to the moon. If those go well someone probably will pay to build a moon base. That being said, there are a number of reasons why Mars is preferable to the Moon if your goal is a totally self-sustaining colony.
panick21_ 5y ago
We have enough land on earth already. Land is not actually the solution to any problem on earth. But Mars is the solution to a potentially big problem on earth. And the technology to manufacture fuel from solar and nuclear energy, building advanced life support system, advancing the state of rocket technology, allowing much more use of sat technology, massively advancing science planetary/biology/(and more), controlled high efficiency farming, human health science, mobile hospitals and so on, will all be developed and have many applications. Even things like battery technology for this use case will have interesting question to ask and can have impact on batteries on earth. So if it was literally just the backup to life, it wouldn't be worth it, but its not done in a vacuum. And its inspiring. A whole generation of engineers all around the world were inspired. And the moon landing did bring humanity together to an extent, many people even in the Soviet Union talked about 'we' landed on the moon. Seems to me to be worthwhile to push at the very least to a small settlement, and from there you can see if its makes sense to continue.
- sfblah 5y ago
  Let's say someone argued instead that we should figure out a way to establish a human settlement inside of a volcano, or at the bottom of the deep ocean. Couldn't you make all the arguments you just made in favor of doing that as well? What makes Mars any different? Why is this specific Quixotic activity more valid than the ones I just mentioned?
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    Because Mars could be self sustainable. It has water and the temperatures in the right areas are not that hostile. Mars soil can be used for agriculture. There is sun light. From Mars its effective to launch to Orbit. Its easy to transport and move around on Mars, Supersonic electric flight is very doable for example. Low density makes super fast trains very doable as well, massive movement of resources on Mars is orders of magnitude easier on Mars then even in deep water.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Who do you know that is fired up about building a base in a volcano? But gonna have to disagree with GC here and say that I think a self-sustaining Mars base is worth it entirely for having a backup of intelligent life, which the deep ocean base doesn't deliver.
mlyle 5y ago
So, I think it's worth it for people to go to Mars for exploration, and to build a base somewhere up in space or the moon. I think we should figure out how to exploit resources in space: asteroid mining, space-based solar power, etc. Even if it's all woefully unprofitable and inefficient at first. And I think we should figure out how to eventually get another self-sufficient lump of humanity off this rock, but that seems like it could be 150+ years out. But there's no reason, other than the exploration of Mars itself, to go down the gravity well to Mars. > I would love to see all the energy put into space exploration to simply be put in rehabilitating existing land. It's not like these are really the same resources.
irrational 5y ago
The basic idea is to not have all your eggs in one basket. We are one asteroid strike away from losing all human life on earth. Having 2 habited planets spreads the risk. Obviously having those planets in different solar systems would be even better, but we don’t have the technology for that, yet.
- Supermancho 5y ago
  > The basic idea is to not have all your eggs in one basket. A moon base is the precursor to a base on Mars and having humans get anywhere near Mars in the next 50 years (if they return or not) is a PR stunt.
  - more_corn 5y ago
    Planning for mars is making the moon shot significantly better. Starship can basically replace the whole complicated and expensive orbiter lander situation with a fast, cheap, reusable craft with a fantastic payload capacity. That craft is being designed and built with Mars in mind. It’s also going to be fantastically useful for other things.
- garbagetime 5y ago
  You're presenting a false dichotomy. Our options aren't only (a) live only on Earth, and (b) live on Earth and Mars and potentially other planets. There is, for example, (c) live in man-made structures orbiting the sun at a distance of 1AU, which is debatedly much more sensible than trying to live on Mars.
  - datameta 5y ago
    Hmm. With Starship's lifting capacity, that might become a side project. Maybe they could even sling something to become part of the orbital station and continue to Mars
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 5y ago
datameta 5y ago
Now that I think about it, we would get real good at settling desert and polar regions with the experience and data coming back from an established Mars colony. We could also learn more about more efficient habitation? Think of all the tech we have developed just for LEO (you know, like those listicles show) and imagine how much knowledge we would convert to use in helping everyday peoples' lives?
sfblah 5y ago
I completely agree with this line of reasoning, which is why I called the fixation with Mars Quixotic elsewhere in the thread. I was discussing this with some friends. Why not just pick some other totally inhospitable environment and try to live there instead? I mentioned inside a volcano lower in the thread. It seems to me you'd get all the same side-benefits of technological development.
- fastball 5y ago
  Because if an asteroid destroys earth, your volcano base ain't gonna save life as we know it. Because any such project is going to require herculean effort on the part of many humans, and many humans are interested in colonizing Mars but not so many are interested in colonizing volcanoes. Your question is basically: why do people care about this thing I don't care about and instead care about this thing that neither I nor they care about.
  - sfblah 5y ago
    I guess you’ve never read about Xenu. Some people believe volcanoes are pretty important.
    - elkos 5y ago
      And DC-9s if I remember correctly
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    > Because if an asteroid destroys earth, your volcano base ain't gonna save life as we know it If an asteroid destroys earth, your Mars base won't save life as we know it either. There's a lot of handwaving in this thread on the technologies required to bridge the gap between Starship existing and self-sustaining life on Mars. Paradoxically, self-sustaining space manufacture/Mars colony will obviate the need for frequent heavy-lift rocket launches.
    - fastball 5y ago
mlindner 5y ago
> Why do we need to fly 3 months to some inhospitable planet that is in worse condition than Earth would be (even after nuclear wars and global warming) to make progress? Why do we need to pick? Also the Earth has limited resources and even of the resources we have, people are already attacking the idea of mining on Earth more and more, even when it's for things like stopping global warming by creating EVs. At some point it's going to be considered downright evil to dig into the ground to pull resources out of it with how things are going. The only alternative will be to pull it out of space.
belter 5y ago
The answer is that one solution will fail quickly and will not do as much to pump stock value. The other one will pump your stock shares to the moon, as the market will inflate your companies valuations, by pricing in for the next 50 years, your plans to become the new Mars emperor.
dotnet00 5y ago
Most people don't want to live in Antarctica etc because what's the point? There's the research, for which people do live there. For everyone else, it's at worst a few days away from comfort, with very little to be gained or lost. A good comparison would be for settling the Americas. Although they obviously weren't as inhospitable as Mars, it was still a months long trip that was often one way to a destination with none of the comforts of their previous homes. Yet people came and worked to build. There was plenty of land and plenty of resources in the old world, yet we chose to go through the challenges of settling the new world. Should they also have waited to solve all their problems at home and utilize all their resources and land before looking outwards? It's the same with Mars, plenty of people get bright-eyed at the idea of going to Mars and helping build a colony because it's a challenging task that would give meaning to many of us. No matter how often you say that Earth is more hospitable, the fact stands that if we do succeed at setting up a self-sustaining colony on Mars, we'll be more secure than just on Earth. Those are way higher stakes than living in Antarctica/the Sahara etc. Hell, SpaceX essentially gets its pick of top engineering talent because of inspiring people towards the goal of Mars. Is that not already evidence that people are interested in going? It isn't like they're making significantly more money taking on the large workloads expected at the company. There are plenty more cushy jobs available at ULA, Blue Origin etc and plenty of technical challenges at all the space startups. Yet SpaceX gets its pick to the point that their technological lead over everyone else is only increasing.
oxplot 5y ago
> I would love to see all the energy put into space exploration to simply be put in rehabilitating existing land. Quote from my past posts [1] on this point: > It's impossible to predict what tech can come out of such efforts that will be of use here on Earth in the future. The amount of money going to space exploration is peanuts so I think it's well justified if it has even a trace of potential to improve future of humanity and that has been true historically - e.g. satellites (GPS, weather, etc), medicine (MRI), and whole bunch of NASA spinoffs and more. > I think SpaceX to date has received less than 10 billion (say 20 to be safe) in total for everything! That's 20 years of research, development, coming up with never done before re-usable rockets, etc. > People spent nearly half a trillion dollars (not billion) on cosmetic products in a single year! You want to point fingers, point at something you can actually locate. Money spent on space is negligible to the point that it doesn't even warrant justifying spending it. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29189753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29189753
DrBazza 5y ago
> Why do we need to fly 3 months to some inhospitable planet that is in worse condition than Earth would be (even after nuclear wars and global warming) to make progress? In the late 1500s, why set sail across an ocean for weeks that no-one has ever successfully crossed (that we know of). Someone would want to do it, and then want to do it regularly, and regularly means commercializing it, which means reduced cost and innovation. Better ships crossed the Atlantic, trade started and so on. Europe (and the world) is richer after the "discovery" of America and Australia, for example. There are so many 'unknown unknowns' that until we settle on Mars we just... don't know: some mineral on Mars that might be useful for... capturing CO2 somehow? Lower gravity to grow novel crystalline structures that do... something. Basic life? Who knows? Mars exploration excites me and many others.
- timeon 5y ago
  > is richer after the "discovery" of America and Australia, for example. And then there was ethnic cleansing of native population.
  - ralfd 5y ago
    True, and even if everyone were a moral saint the pox would been devastating. But this was not a garden eden, but a very brutal tribal world with frequent ethnic cleansing and enslavements. Hundred thousands of native auxiliaries marched with Cortez to get rid of their Aztec overlords. Anyway, this won't be an issue for Mars.
beambot 5y ago
Pioneering spirit, without the colonialism.
Isinlor 5y ago
It really is the question - why do you live? What is the purpose of anyone life? There does not seem to be any purpose to anything in the universe. But we can choose what we want to do. So the answer: Because we want to, because it is exciting, because it inspires, because we can. Because this is what life is about. The movie Avatar made in box office $2.9B. This is exactly the same amount of money as SpaceX asked for an actual moon landing of $2.9B. Have you asked people who watched Avatar what is the purpose of watching Avatar? Instead of making a fiction about going to a moon, we can actually go to the moon.
credit_guy 5y ago
Let me introduce you to the idea of freedom. You are free to not go. Me too; I have no intention to ever go to Mars. But if some people want to go to Mars, why should I question their pursuit of happiness?

by rtpg 5y ago

sillysaurusx 5y ago

It’s helpful to remember it’s not a zero sum game. We can do all of that too. The tech for Mars would make it that much easier. No one wants to live in those places because currently they have a choice. But if our planet becomes irradiated, or hit by a meteor, or suffers a sun burst — all very realistic concerns — then those choices become more limited. And it’s good to have options.

rtpg 5y ago
The ISS is literally the most expensive physical structure we have ever built, and it's like 5 floating schoolbuses. Now I'm for walking and chewing bubblegum. But if you believe in opportunity costs and care about navigating that, it feels like the same problem. Our planet becoming irradiated is actually not a huge problem! It would still be easier to live on Earth than on Mars! An irradiated radioactive hellscape of Earth would still be more survivable than Mars. (my more nuanced take is that we have so many basic hospitability problems that need solving, and Mars have all of those times 100, so it would be very good if most of those PhDs could focus on those hospitability problems more than the logistics of shooting a bunch of stuff into space for long term transit)
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "it would be very good if all those PhDs could focus on those hospitability problems" We have like a million PHds telling us what to do about climate change for 50 years, and nobody is listening "The ISS is literally the most expensive physical structure we have ever built" And it's 100x cheaper than the Iraq war or 2008 crisis, both entirely preventable manmade disasters. Or to put it into different perspwctive: ISS costs as much as cleanup of 3 oil spills, and we've had quite a few.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  The ISS was also the first of its kind, not built with cost effectiveness in mind even a little bit, and complicated by being built by so many different parties. A station or other space hab built by a highly vertically integrated company trying to keep costs down is almost certainly going to be much, much less expensive and more capable.
- hparadiz 5y ago
  The ISS was built largely with hundreds of space shuttle and Soyuz launches over two decades hence why it's so expensive. Starship will be able to put an entire ISS worth of stuff into orbit in a single launch for 1/50th of the cost. It's not a zero sum game. The space industry employs a lot of people. Some of the stuff they put into orbit are satellites that literally save lives.
  - JaimeThompson 5y ago
    Starship can't lift 462 tons to orbit in one launch and that isn't taking into account the volume needed. It would take more than 1 to get an ISS equivalent on orbit.
    - kortex 5y ago
      Ok, so like 5-10. ISS took 40 assembly flights, with 36 being expensive space shuttle flights ($54k/kg).
    - mlindner 5y ago
      The pressurized volume of Starship is larger than the pressurized volume of the ISS. I think that was what was intended to be conveyed.
      - hparadiz 5y ago
        Exactly what I was thinking in my head when I wrote that. Although I really should have written it out properly. To be fair mass is probably way more important.
  - terafo 5y ago
    Definitely not in a single launch, since ISS weighs around 500 tons. And I think designs for space stations in starship era would be different(more heavy, but orders of magnitude cheaper to produce), so something like ISS in a starship era might weigh 1.5-2x more(VERY rough estimate), but nonetheless be much cheaper.
- fastball 5y ago
  Humans are not automatons who you can just point at a different problem than the one they are interested in and expect them to make progress in a similar way. A Mars colony is an exciting problem for smart people to work on that can inspire them. You can't put a dollar value on that.
- mlindner 5y ago
  > The ISS is literally the most expensive physical structure we have ever built, and it's like 5 floating schoolbuses. Most of that cost was in the cost of launching it (and the inflation in the price of the modules knowing that they are "priceless" and "can't fail" and "we can only build one copy of it"). Further it's all engineered to very fine margins. The more you get your margins down the more cost these things take. One-offs of anything tend to be expensive. One-offs of very tight margin things are even more expensive. There's nothing in the ISS that is especially exotic. It's copper wiring and aluminum pressure vessels.

labster 5y ago

Nobody wants to go to Earth these days. It’s too crowded.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

There is loads of people who want to travel to mars for an expedition to look for life, study it's geology and see what it looks like at all - however you are right that living consitions would be crap. I have always maintained that a settlement on the moon makes a lot more sence - fortly you have much better access to space for industry, secondly, help can reach you withing days at any time or you could be in earth hospital withing days if you need surgery.

fastball 5y ago
Starship is literally also slated for missions to the moon. If those go well someone probably will pay to build a moon base. That being said, there are a number of reasons why Mars is preferable to the Moon if your goal is a totally self-sustaining colony.

panick21_ 5y ago

We have enough land on earth already. Land is not actually the solution to any problem on earth. But Mars is the solution to a potentially big problem on earth. And the technology to manufacture fuel from solar and nuclear energy, building advanced life support system, advancing the state of rocket technology, allowing much more use of sat technology, massively advancing science planetary/biology/(and more), controlled high efficiency farming, human health science, mobile hospitals and so on, will all be developed and have many applications. Even things like battery technology for this use case will have interesting question to ask and can have impact on batteries on earth. So if it was literally just the backup to life, it wouldn't be worth it, but its not done in a vacuum. And its inspiring. A whole generation of engineers all around the world were inspired. And the moon landing did bring humanity together to an extent, many people even in the Soviet Union talked about 'we' landed on the moon. Seems to me to be worthwhile to push at the very least to a small settlement, and from there you can see if its makes sense to continue.

sfblah 5y ago
Let's say someone argued instead that we should figure out a way to establish a human settlement inside of a volcano, or at the bottom of the deep ocean. Couldn't you make all the arguments you just made in favor of doing that as well? What makes Mars any different? Why is this specific Quixotic activity more valid than the ones I just mentioned?
- panick21_ 5y ago
  Because Mars could be self sustainable. It has water and the temperatures in the right areas are not that hostile. Mars soil can be used for agriculture. There is sun light. From Mars its effective to launch to Orbit. Its easy to transport and move around on Mars, Supersonic electric flight is very doable for example. Low density makes super fast trains very doable as well, massive movement of resources on Mars is orders of magnitude easier on Mars then even in deep water.
- fastball 5y ago
  Who do you know that is fired up about building a base in a volcano? But gonna have to disagree with GC here and say that I think a self-sustaining Mars base is worth it entirely for having a backup of intelligent life, which the deep ocean base doesn't deliver.

mlyle 5y ago

So, I think it's worth it for people to go to Mars for exploration, and to build a base somewhere up in space or the moon. I think we should figure out how to exploit resources in space: asteroid mining, space-based solar power, etc. Even if it's all woefully unprofitable and inefficient at first. And I think we should figure out how to eventually get another self-sufficient lump of humanity off this rock, but that seems like it could be 150+ years out. But there's no reason, other than the exploration of Mars itself, to go down the gravity well to Mars. > I would love to see all the energy put into space exploration to simply be put in rehabilitating existing land. It's not like these are really the same resources.

irrational 5y ago

The basic idea is to not have all your eggs in one basket. We are one asteroid strike away from losing all human life on earth. Having 2 habited planets spreads the risk. Obviously having those planets in different solar systems would be even better, but we don’t have the technology for that, yet.

Supermancho 5y ago
> The basic idea is to not have all your eggs in one basket. A moon base is the precursor to a base on Mars and having humans get anywhere near Mars in the next 50 years (if they return or not) is a PR stunt.
- more_corn 5y ago
  Planning for mars is making the moon shot significantly better. Starship can basically replace the whole complicated and expensive orbiter lander situation with a fast, cheap, reusable craft with a fantastic payload capacity. That craft is being designed and built with Mars in mind. It’s also going to be fantastically useful for other things.
garbagetime 5y ago
You're presenting a false dichotomy. Our options aren't only (a) live only on Earth, and (b) live on Earth and Mars and potentially other planets. There is, for example, (c) live in man-made structures orbiting the sun at a distance of 1AU, which is debatedly much more sensible than trying to live on Mars.
- datameta 5y ago
  Hmm. With Starship's lifting capacity, that might become a side project. Maybe they could even sling something to become part of the orbital station and continue to Mars
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 5y ago

datameta 5y ago

Now that I think about it, we would get real good at settling desert and polar regions with the experience and data coming back from an established Mars colony. We could also learn more about more efficient habitation? Think of all the tech we have developed just for LEO (you know, like those listicles show) and imagine how much knowledge we would convert to use in helping everyday peoples' lives?

sfblah 5y ago

I completely agree with this line of reasoning, which is why I called the fixation with Mars Quixotic elsewhere in the thread. I was discussing this with some friends. Why not just pick some other totally inhospitable environment and try to live there instead? I mentioned inside a volcano lower in the thread. It seems to me you'd get all the same side-benefits of technological development.

fastball 5y ago
Because if an asteroid destroys earth, your volcano base ain't gonna save life as we know it. Because any such project is going to require herculean effort on the part of many humans, and many humans are interested in colonizing Mars but not so many are interested in colonizing volcanoes. Your question is basically: why do people care about this thing I don't care about and instead care about this thing that neither I nor they care about.
- sfblah 5y ago
  I guess you’ve never read about Xenu. Some people believe volcanoes are pretty important.
  - elkos 5y ago
    And DC-9s if I remember correctly
- sangnoir 5y ago
  > Because if an asteroid destroys earth, your volcano base ain't gonna save life as we know it If an asteroid destroys earth, your Mars base won't save life as we know it either. There's a lot of handwaving in this thread on the technologies required to bridge the gap between Starship existing and self-sustaining life on Mars. Paradoxically, self-sustaining space manufacture/Mars colony will obviate the need for frequent heavy-lift rocket launches.
  - fastball 5y ago

mlindner 5y ago

> Why do we need to fly 3 months to some inhospitable planet that is in worse condition than Earth would be (even after nuclear wars and global warming) to make progress? Why do we need to pick? Also the Earth has limited resources and even of the resources we have, people are already attacking the idea of mining on Earth more and more, even when it's for things like stopping global warming by creating EVs. At some point it's going to be considered downright evil to dig into the ground to pull resources out of it with how things are going. The only alternative will be to pull it out of space.

belter 5y ago

The answer is that one solution will fail quickly and will not do as much to pump stock value. The other one will pump your stock shares to the moon, as the market will inflate your companies valuations, by pricing in for the next 50 years, your plans to become the new Mars emperor.

dotnet00 5y ago

Most people don't want to live in Antarctica etc because what's the point? There's the research, for which people do live there. For everyone else, it's at worst a few days away from comfort, with very little to be gained or lost. A good comparison would be for settling the Americas. Although they obviously weren't as inhospitable as Mars, it was still a months long trip that was often one way to a destination with none of the comforts of their previous homes. Yet people came and worked to build. There was plenty of land and plenty of resources in the old world, yet we chose to go through the challenges of settling the new world. Should they also have waited to solve all their problems at home and utilize all their resources and land before looking outwards? It's the same with Mars, plenty of people get bright-eyed at the idea of going to Mars and helping build a colony because it's a challenging task that would give meaning to many of us. No matter how often you say that Earth is more hospitable, the fact stands that if we do succeed at setting up a self-sustaining colony on Mars, we'll be more secure than just on Earth. Those are way higher stakes than living in Antarctica/the Sahara etc. Hell, SpaceX essentially gets its pick of top engineering talent because of inspiring people towards the goal of Mars. Is that not already evidence that people are interested in going? It isn't like they're making significantly more money taking on the large workloads expected at the company. There are plenty more cushy jobs available at ULA, Blue Origin etc and plenty of technical challenges at all the space startups. Yet SpaceX gets its pick to the point that their technological lead over everyone else is only increasing.

oxplot 5y ago

> I would love to see all the energy put into space exploration to simply be put in rehabilitating existing land. Quote from my past posts [1] on this point: > It's impossible to predict what tech can come out of such efforts that will be of use here on Earth in the future. The amount of money going to space exploration is peanuts so I think it's well justified if it has even a trace of potential to improve future of humanity and that has been true historically - e.g. satellites (GPS, weather, etc), medicine (MRI), and whole bunch of NASA spinoffs and more. > I think SpaceX to date has received less than 10 billion (say 20 to be safe) in total for everything! That's 20 years of research, development, coming up with never done before re-usable rockets, etc. > People spent nearly half a trillion dollars (not billion) on cosmetic products in a single year! You want to point fingers, point at something you can actually locate. Money spent on space is negligible to the point that it doesn't even warrant justifying spending it. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29189753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29189753

DrBazza 5y ago

> Why do we need to fly 3 months to some inhospitable planet that is in worse condition than Earth would be (even after nuclear wars and global warming) to make progress? In the late 1500s, why set sail across an ocean for weeks that no-one has ever successfully crossed (that we know of). Someone would want to do it, and then want to do it regularly, and regularly means commercializing it, which means reduced cost and innovation. Better ships crossed the Atlantic, trade started and so on. Europe (and the world) is richer after the "discovery" of America and Australia, for example. There are so many 'unknown unknowns' that until we settle on Mars we just... don't know: some mineral on Mars that might be useful for... capturing CO2 somehow? Lower gravity to grow novel crystalline structures that do... something. Basic life? Who knows? Mars exploration excites me and many others.

timeon 5y ago
> is richer after the "discovery" of America and Australia, for example. And then there was ethnic cleansing of native population.
- ralfd 5y ago
  True, and even if everyone were a moral saint the pox would been devastating. But this was not a garden eden, but a very brutal tribal world with frequent ethnic cleansing and enslavements. Hundred thousands of native auxiliaries marched with Cortez to get rid of their Aztec overlords. Anyway, this won't be an issue for Mars.

beambot 5y ago

Pioneering spirit, without the colonialism.

Isinlor 5y ago

It really is the question - why do you live? What is the purpose of anyone life? There does not seem to be any purpose to anything in the universe. But we can choose what we want to do. So the answer: Because we want to, because it is exciting, because it inspires, because we can. Because this is what life is about. The movie Avatar made in box office $2.9B. This is exactly the same amount of money as SpaceX asked for an actual moon landing of $2.9B. Have you asked people who watched Avatar what is the purpose of watching Avatar? Instead of making a fiction about going to a moon, we can actually go to the moon.

credit_guy 5y ago

Let me introduce you to the idea of freedom. You are free to not go. Me too; I have no intention to ever go to Mars. But if some people want to go to Mars, why should I question their pursuit of happiness?