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Going 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
by ethbr0 5y ago
Going 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.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoI'm probably an optimist on Mars travel. I think, with a fuck ton of starships, you could get people living on Mars. But there's some big asterisks on that. You'd more or less have to live in the starships, dependent on shipments from earth, with self sufficiency failing on pretty much every category. Over a very long period, most people would probably die a bit earlier from radiation and dust. Not much would be produced of value. It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, at least. And interest in it would rapidly decline.
- ethbr0 5y agoThe suspicion I have about self sufficiency pessimism is that it's an apples to oranges comparison. Are there any modern analogies? As near as I can tell, it hasn't been required after the 16th century, due to access to relatively timely transportation. And if it hasn't been required, then how are we to look at existing practice and say we're bad at or incapable of it?
- spywaregorilla 5y agoComparison to what? We don't need an analogy. This is a novel environment and it can be evaluated on its own.
- ethbr0 5y agoSelf sufficiency failing on Mars vs what kind of self sufficiency we can manage now (while living on Earth and no needing to prioritize it)
- hedora 5y agoSounds like the early days of Australia. Maybe build a new Botany Bay? (Only half joking.)
- datavirtue 5y agoThere is no survival advantage to us on Mars. What are we all arguing about? This site is staring to feel a bit unhinged when it comes colonizing the solar system. Like SGC Ori unhinged.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoThis is absolutely, objectively, incorrect. You might as well argue that you can build a self-sustaining base on Antarctica. Of course you can't, because Antarctica can't support life. No amount of shouting into a bullhorn about adventure will change that. It might be possible with an absolutely epic effort to airlift soil, nuclear reactors, nuclear and other fuels, machinery for every eventually (including chip fabs), raw materials that aren't locally available (which means almost all of them), and habitable structures. At the end of that epic effort you'll have something that will barely have a toe-hold on long-term survivability. Possibly. If you're lucky. Not only is Mars far colder, it also doesn't have air. Or surface water. So all the challenges are at least an order of magnitude harder. And it's much much further away. Rhetoric and wishful thinking are not going to give you a better life if you can't deal with the reality of the challenges.
- Tepix 5y agoIf we really wanted to, i don't see why we couldn't establish a self-sustaining base in Antarctica. Of course, it's forbidden.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoThen create one in the Sahara or the Atacana desert at 5000m elevation. Still way easier than Mars.
- mannerheim 5y agoThey are certainly easier, but how useful are they? A base on Mars will bring down the fuel requirements to exploring and exploiting the belt and outer planets tremendously. Missions that are impossible or uneconomical to do from Earth could be made possible and cheap if launched from Mars.
- Tepix 5y agoAlso exploring Mars itself and establishing a base there (anywhere off Earth really).
- wcarron 5y ago> Only one technology matters: that which enables transportation. Is this tongue-in-cheek? I genuinely hope so.
- otabdeveloper4 5y agoNobody ever believed that America is a super-hostile environment.
- ethbr0 5y agoRoanoke, Ajacan, Fort Caroline, Sable Island, Charlesfort, Pensacola, San Miguel de Gualdape, Charlesbourg-Royal, France-Roy, Pensacola?
- otabdeveloper4 5y agoFalse equivalence, of course. The fact that random groups people from the Old World decided to start colonies without any prior experience or preparation precisely shows that they didn't consider America to be "super-hostile".