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> until we have solved our problems here, Mars is just a distraction for a few escapists, and so worse than useless. The problem with this attitude is that the
by nyokodo 4y ago
> until we have solved our problems here, Mars is just a distraction for a few escapists, and so worse than useless.
The problem with this attitude is that there is no evidence that we will ever completely solve our problems on earth. There is always going to be something threatening us even if it's mainly ourselves. Also, it's the same philosophy critics of the space race espoused yet many of the tools we use to identify and track our global problems are an unintended outgrowth of that great power contest, e.g. climate sensing satellites. It's a deeply inspiring effort to colonize another planet and far from an "escapist" activity it's something which gives many people hope for the future. It's much easier to be an "escapist" by dabbling in distractions on earth than it is by building rockets or working on the science to make life possible on Mars! Sure, the endeavor shouldn't be a major global economic line item in the meantime but I'm not aware of the necessity to go that far.
- sneak 4y agoNevermind that even if we turned Earth into a glorious green utopia, eventually a big enough rock is going to come along and boop us and kill everyone and everything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yilan_crater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yilan_crater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakul_(Tajikistan) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakul_(Tajikistan) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impact_craters_on_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impact_craters_on_Eart... Maybe we can deflect it. Maybe we can’t. Right now we have no offsite backups. That should terrify everyone who cares in the slightest about human culture.
- shadowofneptune 4y agoIt is unlikely any of the planets in the solar system could sustain humanity or life if the Earth is lost in the next few centuries. Thousands, at most, would live on the planet. We've always had an ecosystem to rely on, and even a severely damaged one would be more survivable than the cold wastes of Mars.
- sneak 4y agoWell then we’d better hurry and get started building colonies now, as the destruction of humanity on Earth might be in a year or a kiloyear or a megayear—we simply don’t know. Don’t wait for the drive to start clicking to make backups.
- ncmncm 4y agoYou are welcome to build a refuge at the South Pole. It will be an overwhelmingly more livable environment than can be constructed on other bodies. Or out in the middle of the Kalahari Desert, or in the center of Australia, likewise. Southern hemisphere is recommended, anyway, as probably few nukes will target there; maybe none!
- sneak 4y agoThe South Pole is also at risk from sufficiently large impact events elsewhere on Earth. You'll also note that humans do in fact have a permanent settlement there.
- anothernewdude 4y agoFuck offsite backups when our disks are failing.
- sneak 4y agoPresently it does not appear that the current cataclysms predicted for Earth in the short term (500 years) will result in destruction of the biosphere or even human extinction. Early humans and their ancestors have experienced two major population bottlenecks in the past. We may well see a third relatively shortly, but that is very different from extinction.
- anothernewdude 4y agoYou're using a linear model for exponential processes.
- sneak 4y agoWhich processes? When, why, and how will they become exponential?
- deepdriver 4y agoIf disks are failing and floodwaters are rising, I absolutely hope I have offsite backups!
- Ekaros 4y agoThe need to actually have that offsite backup being online makes them rather unlikely. Like setting up your offsite in middle of desert and trying to make parts there yourself. Fun times...
- bryanrasmussen 4y agowe have important potentially civilization destroying or, in some models, extinction level problems coming at us in the relative short terms. That is to say that I don't think he means we need to fix every problem on earth before going to Mars, but that trying to set up Mars colonies or similar escapades while not dealing with climate change would be useless because whatever we built in that short term on Mars is going to need extensive support from something here. on edit: fixed typo.
- galleywest200 4y agoCould we not do both? Using the US as an example our space budget is peanuts compared to the defense budget. I know the defense contractors will get mad they cannot fleece taxpayers as much if we adjusted, but oh well.
- labster 4y agoHey, don’t take civilian space contractors lightly. They can fleece taxpayers just as well or better than defense contractors. 2022 is the year of Linux on the SLS.
- deepdriver 4y agoCould you elaborate on the extinction-level problems? I hear this a lot, but it's almost always nonspecific and hand-wavy. Do you mean the potential mass release of hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere, or a runaway effect increasing CO2 levels to deadly amounts, or something else?
- cammikebrown 4y agoThe acidification of the oceans could easily kill plankton and crustaceans, destroying the food chain and leading to a mass extinction event.
- origin_path 4y agoScientific paper on ocean acidification, which takes the reader through the chemistry: https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2015-Cohen-Happer-Fundamentals-of-Ocean-pH.pdf https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2015-Coh... It states in summary that: "doubling atmospheric CO2 from the current level of 400 ppm to 800 ppm only decreases the pH of ocean water from about 8.2 to 7.9. This is well within the day-night fluctuations that already occur because of photosynthesis by plankton" "doubling atmospheric CO2 from the current level of 400 ppm to 800 ppm only decreases the carbonate-ion concentration, [CO2−3], by about 30%. Ocean surface waters are already supersaturated by several hundred per cent for formation of CaCO3 crystals from Ca2+ and CO2−3. So scare stories about dissolving carbonate shells are nonsense." "Over most of the Phanerozoic, the past 550 million years, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have been measured in thousands of parts per million, and life flourished in both the oceans and on land. This is hardly surprising, given the relative insensitivity of ocean pH to large changes in CO2 concentrations that we have discussed above, and given the fact that the pH changes that do occur are small compared to the natural variations of ocean pH in space and time" "This minimalist discussion already shows how hard it is to scare informed people with ocean acidification, but, alas, many people are not informed." If you or anyone else thinks this paper's calculations are wrong, then that would be interesting to learn why.
- zasdffaa 4y ago> always going to be something threatening us even if it's mainly ourselves It's always "ourselves". We as a race are our primary enemy and your desire not to see the problems we create for ourselves here and now makes you exactly the reason we will suffer. I used to fear human extinction, now I'm resigned to it. > It's much easier to be an "escapist" by dabbling in distractions on earth than it is by building rockets or working on the science to make life possible on Mars! Yep, I'm resigned to it.
- ncmncm 4y agoSorry, we won't get extinction. At least 0.1% will come through whatever happens, and, like the Amazonians after the pandemics, forget all we had and did.
- deepdriver 4y agoIf we face an anoxic ocean event, this simply isn't true. Such an event could leads to the upwelling and release of huge quantities of hydrogen sulfide. Diffused throughout the Earth's atmosphere this would kill nearly all life, and remain present in lethal concentrations for hundreds of thousands to millions of years judging by the fossil record from the Permian-Triassic extinction. That's a long time to rely on artificial life support systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event#Atmospheric_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event#Atmospheric_effec...
- ncmncm 4y agoProbably some thousands could still survive, then. It would be hard to know why, but people have ways of finding reasons.
- a-dub 4y agothe idea of going to mars is basic science, and basic science has yielded all sorts of useful discoveries for the human race. but it is also hard to ignore the fact that it seems circular to turn the earth into something that looks like mars in the pursuit of turning mars into something that looks like earth. so yes, doing basic science is good. but let's be clear that it's not a real plan and that the real problems at home are not only easier, but also far more pressing.
- ncmncm 4y agoExcept, going to Mars is not, in fact, science. Sending probe after probe is science, although it is getting pretty reflexive now, as very little remains to be learned from them.
- a-dub 4y agoyeah, maybe you're right. it does, however, seem to share something with basic science: it's an endeavor with no immediate or obvious value, yet expands the frontiers of knowledge and know-how for the species as a whole.
- dwaltrip 4y agoHumans can do much better science than a probe.
- ncmncm 4y agoFor the cost of sending and sustaining people there, probes could do overwhelmingly more than they have done. But there is little science of value left to do on Mars. They could have sent a microscope on any of the probes lofted, but chose against it.