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Going to Mars seems pretty useless to me at this time. It’s a super hostile environment and we don’t have the technology yet to have a self sustaining base the
by spaetzleesser 5y ago
Going to Mars seems pretty useless to me at this time. It’s a super hostile environment and we don’t have the technology yet to have a self sustaining base there. Give it a few decades and progress in robotics will make a Mars base much easier. There is plenty of work to be done on Earth. We have to solve clean energy production and in general reduce pollution. These are massive technological challenges that deserve massive funding.
- Drainik 5y agoDid you know NASA only get 0.36% of the US Federal budget? Everything else gets "massive funding".
- throwaway1777 5y agoMakes sense though because earth is a dump and extremely corrupt. Even if you were able to substantially decrease military funding (the usual scapegoat) without massively changing the world order we still probably wouldn’t spend more on nasa, we would spend it on healthcare, infrastructure, economic bailouts, education, green tech, etc.
- moffkalast 5y agoTbf, it'll also take us a few decades to get human Mars transit figured out so sounds like we're on schedule.
- oceanplexian 5y agoIt sounds like a very chicken or egg problem to me, who's to say that progress in robotics doesn't come from trying to establish a base on Mars? Progress is often times non-linear, I mean here we using computers and communication technology based on Integrated Circuits technology furthered by the Apollo program; say we never went to the moon, computing technology and Moore's law might have been set back a decade or two.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoI am not against Mars but I just think it’s premature. Build up robotics for a while and Mars will be much easier. There is no rush to become a multi planetary species. There is no credible threat of a big asteroid or volcano in the next decades. All threats we may be facing are self made. My favorite moonshot project would be to create robotics that can clean up the environment and handle recycling. Having the technology to pick up dog poop and plastic bags in an efficient and affordable manner or separating recycling items would be a huge technological challenge that would create a ton of spin-off opportunities including a base on Mars. Or clean up the pacific garbage patch with robots.
- R0b0t1 5y agoI think all of this is premature. Focusing on life extension technology and life science would see a lot of other technological benefit, and in the worst case just mean we can wait it out.
- cduzz 5y agoTotally agree! However, it's likely that one task (going to Mars, even sending a couple rich bozos there) is small enough that you can probably do that and work on fixing things "at home". In fact, one could argue that one set of big companies that exist this decade that didn't exist last decade is just a shopping list of "Crap I'll need for my martian condo"
- gibolt 5y agoDo you expect traveling multiple light years to an alien world to be easier or less hostile? You have to start somewhere, and the selection is pretty thin.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoTraveling multiple light years is out of the question. You can think about some concepts but it’s simple not doable at this point no matter the budget.
- ethbr0 5y agoGoing to {the Middle East, Europe / Asia, Australia, the New World, interior South America, the North American West) seems pretty useless to me at this time. It’s a super hostile environment and we don’t have the technology yet to have a self sustaining base there. Give it a few decades and progress in {insert technology} will make a base much easier. There is plenty of work to be done on {current place}. We have to solve {current problems}. These are massive technological challenges that deserve massive funding. ... has been said for the entirety of human history. And in all that time, they've only ever been right about Australia. (J/k Aussies!) Only one technology matters: that which enables transportation. Animal husbandry. Sailing. Railroads. In the end, humans are plentiful. As long as it's done in full disclosure and as an uncoerced individual choice, who the hell are we to stand in the way of adventurers taking a chance on a better life?
- spywaregorilla 5y agoMars is multiple orders of magnitude more difficult to survive on than the Middle East. Its not really comparable at all.
- ethbr0 5y agoI like to think we've improved our technology a few orders of magnitude in the last 1.8 million years.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoAnd so you think you can just mush those two claims together and come to the conclusion that sustaining life on mars must be achievable?
- ethbr0 5y agoNot must be. Is probably achievable, and is worth attempting, even at the cost of lives. You can argue from either the perspective of futility of attempt (no chance of success) or futility of outcome (success wouldn't be worth it), but I'm pretty convinced both would be weak arguments, both logically and historically.
- BurningFrog 5y agoIf you think going to Mars is useless, don't go. Just don't stand in the way of those who chose to go.
- ncmncm 5y agoBy all means, go. But pay for it yourself. If you can't personally afford Mars, the middle of the Sahara Desert is unoccupied and overwhelmingly easier and cheaper to get established in. Or, under the ice in Greenland. Or, revitalize an abandoned whaling station on an island off Antarctica. If those seem uninviting, I promise Mars will be a thousand times moreso. Your "golly I'm on Mars!" euphoria would thin out very, very fast. "This place f'n sucks!" malaise would grow steadily and without bound.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoSo we have this thing called a government that we give money too. Different people want it to do different things. You can recognize that while you may pay for things you dont want, other people are paying for the things that you want but they dont.
- BurningFrog 5y agoI'm definitely not going. But I'm very glad others will go! Maybe that's a confusing distinction for some.
- ncmncm 5y agoI would not mind if they went somewhere. If they went to Mars they would immediately stop talking about what a great idea it was, even if they still had air. They would shortly thereafter try to get somebody to bring them back home.
- mannerheim 5y agoMars can already be useful as a springboard for space exploration. It's a literal stepping stone, both closer to the belt and outer planets in terms of distance, but also in terms of delta-v, since both the gravity well on Mars is smaller, and it's higher up in the Sun's gravity well, too. Any future space exploration and exploitation will be made tremendously easier if you can launch from Mars instead of Earth.
- ncmncm 5y agoMars is, even at absolute best, a dump: dry, cold, airless, at the bottom of a gravity well, and subject to dust storms besides. We can build much better outside of gravity wells. Whatever you would land on Mars is more useful in solar orbit, parked next to any convenient asteroid.
- mannerheim 5y agoAdmittedly my knowledge on this matter derives from KSP, but I've found that rendezvous is much trickier outside of gravity wells. And there's still the problem of ISRU.
- ncmncm 5y agoWe have ISRU right here, right now.
- mannerheim 5y agoYou can't do ISRU in orbit. I don't know of any resources available on the Moon that would allow you to do ISRU there either. Ceres might work, but the inclined orbit may make that impractical as a stop.
- ncmncm 5y agoWe do ISRU all day, every day right here, in the millions of tons. "A stop" is not just useless, but is actively harmful in space transportation. You go, for free, until you get there, and then use up fuel stopping. Starting and stopping are exactly what costs. Stopping halfway makes the whole trip cost literally twice as much.
- mauvehaus 5y agoBecause it's there https://blog.theclymb.com/out-there/because-its-there-the-quotable-george-mallory/ https://blog.theclymb.com/out-there/because-its-there-the-qu...
- subsubzero 5y agoagree, extreme temp variations and a toxic atmosphere would make living there very difficult(not to mention the journey!). Much better to try a moon station first as its a few days travel and then compare what went right/wrong and then think about replicating that for mars. Having water on mars does help its case though..
- datavirtue 5y agoNot to mention that you would need to figure out how to keep the humans from having a mental breakdown. Myself, I would probably be clawing at the windows for a look at a non-existent tree in about two days.