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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

• 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
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  • asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    How many tons would you need to get out of the gravity well before you had enough orbital manufacturing capacity to begin building that sort of thing? I mean, I love the dream, but I don't know how you can make it a reality.
    • elihu 5y ago
      In the video Elon makes an estimate of a million tons to Mars (if I remember correctly) in order to establish an entirely self-sufficient colony there. Building orbital manufacturing would be a different kind of problem, but in some respects it's kind of similar. I suspect it'll make sense to establish a foothold on Mars first (which has a lot of necessary resources and less gravity means you can transition from the planet to orbit much more cheaply) and then maybe use Phobos and/or Deimos as manufacturing hubs for space-based hardware like habitats. Or maybe it makes sense in the short term (before Mars has the necessary infrastructure for big projects) to do manufacturing on the moon.
  • kortex 5y ago
    That's true, but there is no fuel source out in space. Outside of Earth orbit, eg Lagrange points, you need fuel deliveries. On Mars they can make methane with the Sabatier process. So you have: - LEO/MEO - vulnerable to asteroid impact ejecta - GEO/moon/L-points - avoid ejecta, but need regular refueling. If Earth is toast, there goes resupply - Mars - close enough to the sun for solar, able to conceivably bootstrap in a few centuries
    • Isinlor 5y ago
      Actually there is fuel in space - water and sunlight. You can split water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity from sunlight. In long term, most likely both Hydrolox and Methalox will be in use.
      • maccam94 5y ago
        I think the parent comment meant to say there is no propellant in space.
        • Isinlor 5y ago
          There are comets in space, so there is water and water can be made into propellant. Ceres also seems to have a lot of water: https://astronomy.com/news/2020/08/ceres-an-ocean-world-in-the-asteroid-belt https://astronomy.com/news/2020/08/ceres-an-ocean-world-in-t...
        • Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
          Solar sails can get you to anywhere in the Solar system. Not very fast, but essentially free. So a swarm of drone ships with solar sails can transport an almost infinite amount of propellant to your refueling bases from mining sites.
  • terafo 5y ago
    It is much easier to get protected from radiation on mars, than in the outer space. Nobody knows for certain how would childbirth look like in zero g and it's just the one of many problems. Mars is much more hospitable than pure vacuum.
    • elkos 5y ago
      By building underground structures?
      • DocTomoe 5y ago
        Technically, every structure encapsulating space makes that space "underground" - the distinction between natural rocks or poured concrete as a ceiling is negligible when it comes to radiation protection. Whenever we set up a sunshade, we are protecting ourselves from harmful radiation. Putting more material between you and radiation by burying into the ground is a good idea, especially when your concrete-pouring capabilities are limited.
  • more_corn 5y ago
    Better rockets and better spacecraft serve all space exploration and colonization efforts.
  • mmmm2 5y ago
    Mars is difficult of course, but it does have resources. You can get water, oxygen, rocket fuel, various ores, etc. It's also not a vacuum, and there are places where the temperature profile is vaguely similar to Earth. None of that is true in space, unless you're thinking of something I'm not, but like another poster has said, none of this is zero sum. The technology developed to try to settle on mars can be devoted to building large, habitable objects in space if people think that's a better plan. We should also have a moon base, etc. etc.
  • mlindner 5y ago
    > 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. The resources still need to come from somewhere. Either we mine them on Mars, asteroids, or the moon. Mining is a lot easier when you have gravity you can push against to apply force. Rather than move the resources off-body though, its easier and cheaper to use them directly in-situ.
  • oxplot 5y ago
    > much more sensible than trying to live on Mars It's more sensible if you plan to keep a bunch of people there with constant supply from Earth. Elon wants to build a *self-sustaining* city on Mars. There isn't any other choice of location, be it man-made, or in the solar system: - that has enough resources, atmosphere, gravity, water to allow a non-trivial population to survive without help from Earth - that is hospitable to life I suggest you watch his previous presentation where he talks exactly on why Mars is the destination, and not somewhere else.
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    • garbagetime 5y ago
      Yes, we are talking about permanent, Earth-independent settlement in space. I didn't mean to imply that the settlements in the man-made structures would be Earth-dependent. Atmosphere is possible in man-made structures. Gravity can be simulated in man-made structures. I don't believe water is particularly scarce, and it is reusable except for when it's used to create fuel. With the Sun + plants a lot can be done. Mars, on the other hand, has low gravity and is far away from the Sun.
  • chriswarbo 5y ago
    Your proposed alternative would also benefit from something like Starship. Of course, we can (and should, eventually) do both.
• giantrobot 5y ago
  > We are one asteroid strike away from losing all human life on earth. We're one asteroid strike from losing all human life in the solar system even if you had a bunch of people living on Mars. It would take a very long time to get even a single Mars colony self sufficient. Without resources of Earth supporting the colony it would die out the first time the air conditioner broke. Putting people on Mars isn't putting our eggs in a second basket. It's putting an egg in a wet napkin on a mouse trap positioned under a precariously balanced boulder.
  • mchusma 5y ago
    Musk says basically this in his presentation. Very very hard.
  • dotnet00 5y ago
    You have to start building the basket at some point. If you never start working on the colony you'll always have an excuse ("it'll take a long time!", "it'll be too expensive!", "the technology doesn't exist" and so on). The technology to be self-sustaining won't exist without demand for it, and starting to setup a colony creates a lot of demand.
  • irrational 5y ago
    By that logic we will never leave Earth. Let’s say it takes 200 years to get a fully self sufficient colony on Mars. If we start now, it could be self-sufficient by around 2222. But, according to your logic, we shouldn’t start since the colony won’t be immediately self-sufficient. Instead we should wait until… until when? Assuming it will always take 200 years to make the colony self-sufficient, do we wait until 2222 to start so that it is self-sufficient by 2422?
    • giantrobot 5y ago
      A 200 year timeline is likely far too short. There's nowhere on the planet a human (or any multicellular Earth life) can survive without an active life support system. Every square meter of living and farming space needs to be enclosed with powered life support. There's no lubricants, easily accessed water, or even raw materials for heavy industry. Even if Starship was ready to go tomorrow zero percent of any of the infrastructure needed to keep humans alive on Mars exists. The infrastructure needed to let some Martians be self sufficient only exists in artist renderings. Getting a hundred tons of crap to Mars is the easiest part of the problem. Building a reliable toilet that won't clog and kill everyone or an air filter that never breaks is hard. Having enough food and medical supplies to keep people alive after a crop fails is hard. Building a factory that doesn't need a huge supply of oil-based lubricants is hard. Crowing crops in shitty soil is hard. Shit just building a big sealed structure is hard. I don't find any claims of colonizing Mars believable because there's only lip service paid to boring infrastructure. Infrastructure can't just be patched in later.
• lamontcg 5y ago
  Gonna be interesting to see how many people actually pony up to really take part in that kind of vision. Are there any economic incentives for colonizing Mars? Asteroid mining makes sense and bases on and around the Moon make some kind of economic sense at least. I don't know how Mars fits into that picture in the 50-100 year "medium" term picture.
  • elihu 5y ago
    Economic incentives include government-funded basic science, mining, tourism, real-estate speculation (i.e. claim a bunch of land while it's cheap), entertainment (sports and movies/TV shows), the ability to do things in a presumably lax regulatory environment that might not be allowed on Earth, and long-term care for those who have disabilities that would require a wheelchair in full gravity but not on Mars, and the establishment of Mars as a more convenient source of food/fuel/raw materials for any human presence in the belt or outer solar system.
    • lamontcg 5y ago
      A lot of that assumes an already functioning economy on Mars. We're not going to be sending anyone other than the richest people up to Mars in their old age. And for stuff like food and hydroponics you could have that on the Moon which is the natural waystation to the Asteroids. The Asteroids are going to be where all the mining is. Entertainment also assumes an already existing economy. Space tourism is the only thing that seems viable in the short term. About all I can see is producing methane for rockets in Asteroids and being in a much shallower gravity well than Earth. That assumes having an economy established in the Asteroid belt already though, and the cost of sustaining a colony on Mars is going to be its own kind of high overhead. It may be expensive to ship fuel off of Earth, but the people to support the refinement process already exist. At some point there will be a flip where a Mars economy becomes self-sustaining, but so far I'm not seeing it during my lifetime. My guess is that we're going to be tethered to the Earth for a lot longer. (Basic science is also great but that's the kind of things that governments support and its not self-sustaining any more than Antarctica is -- which I suspect is closer to the model for Mars in the next 50 years).
• renox 5y ago
  From a species POV sure, from an individual POV living on Mars would be miserable..