4 ms·

Timeframe, this planet is dead. Mars is the only next best option if you have 100bn and a rocket company kicking around.

bumby 4y ago
It’s would be orders of magnitude easier to make this “dead” planet more hospitable than to do the equivalent to Mars.
- dijit 4y ago
  this is the conclusion I keep coming to also; anything we develop that makes mars habitable would do so infinitely more effectively and easily here on earth. I guess that's not sexy but there is a part of me that looks on this planet with fresh eyes when I learn more about the universe. What we have is astonishingly beautiful and we will miss it terribly if leaving became the only option. So logically, emotionally, we shouldn't be looking at mars as longingly as we do.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > anything we develop that makes mars habitable would do so infinitely more effectively and easily here on earth This experiment turns CO2 into oxygen and expels CO. How is that “infinitely more effective and eas[y] here on Earth”?
    - dijit 4y ago
      Because we don’t have to ship the equipment to another celestial body where it cannot be maintained or debugged? If you’re suggesting that it has no use on earth then… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmo...
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > you’re suggesting that it has no use on earth Mars’ atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide with most of the remainder being inert gases [1]. That not only means this reaction yields a meaningful amount of oxygen per operating cycle [2], it also means you aren’t superheating corrosive gases. This is technology that has no use on Earth. It’s tremendously useful on Mars. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars [2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abp8636 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abp8636
        dijit 4y ago
        From my perspective anything we do to make mars habitable can make earth habitable. If you’re telling me that a corrosive byproduct cannot be captured or reused: then that is likely also true of mars.
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > anything we do to make mars habitable can make earth habitable This is fundamentally false for the device this article highlights. Different chemistries. > you’re telling me that a corrosive byproduct cannot be captured or reused: then that is likely also true of mars It’s not. There isn’t oxygen. Superheating 95% CO2 with inert gases and running it over a catalyst in a device that can do about sixty operating cycles makes sense. Superheating a 20% oxygen gas mix [1] is immediately problematic for most metals; doing it to convert the 0.04% CO2 to oxygen makes no sense. (While pumping a bunch of CO into the atmosphere [2].) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth [2] https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/air-quality/carbon-monoxide https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/air-quality/carbon-mono...
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - ballenf 4y ago
    We should look at it about as longingly as as an offsite backup for critical data. If you only have one habitable planet, you have none. There's no need to romanticize our interest in Mars. It just becomes prudent at some point after becoming possible to evaluate other planets. Maybe we're close to that point, maybe not, but the only way answer that question is to begin the process of figuring out the cost to solve the challenges. The current equivalent GDP going toward Mars is rounding error on a rounding error on world total economic activity. There's probably more economic activity on discussions about Mars than there is in actual work toward Mars.
- swarnie 4y ago
  I'll text that to my Pakistani mate, presumably he can get SMS underwater
  - bumby 4y ago
    Are you implying he’d prefer to migrate to Mars than for humans to address climate change on Earth?
im_down_w_otp 4y ago
I don't know if you've taken a look at Mars yet, but it's already dead. It'll be quite a trick to be able to animate a dead planet to life if one can't keep a live planet from dying.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > It'll be quite a trick to be able to animate a dead planet to life if one can't keep a live planet from dying Common refrain is about the folly of trying to fix human problems with technology. Earth is a human problem. We can fix it. But the politics are difficult. Mars is a technology problem. Our species is better at the latter than the former. In any case, the aims are far from competitive.
  - im_down_w_otp 4y ago
    Perhaps. The problem of course is that as soon as there's a human on Mars... it becomes a human problem too. There's the dynamics between the humans there. The dynamics between the humans there & here. The dynamics between the people left here supporting the humans there. Unless the expectation is that humans are going to evolve into some blend of hyper-pragmatic altruists the moment they step foot on Mars... it seems like you're going to have a situation where everything is super tense all the time due to every little thing being both life & death and utterly existential, and then you get to mix normal human behavior into the mix. Such a common refrain strikes me as perhaps the most extreme form of myopia to consider Mars is anything but a pile of human problems the literal instant after the first major success of the technological solutions occurs. :shrug:
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > Unless the expectation is that humans are going to evolve into some blend of hyper-pragmatic altruists the moment they step foot on Mars Settler sociology is different. People who self select for that risk mode are different. The proximity of mortality is clearer; that influences culture. Much of modern socioeconomics involves compassionately recreating those conditions. On Mars, you get that for free.
clhodapp 4y ago
The thing I don't get is: I have to imagine that no matter how badly we screw up Earth, any technologies that we build to allow us to survive on Mars could just as well be used to make Earth "livable" again for less cost. Worst-case, it's pretty much the same thing without a rocket launch. I mean I do get the idea of defense against a cataclysmic event like an asteroid strike or wide-scale nuclear war but... That seems to be the only realistic reason to want to colonize Mars.
- outworlder 4y ago
  > no matter how badly we screw up Earth, Really? Our weather can potentially get incredibly violent and completely obliterate any structure we can conceivably make. There's a limit on how badly we can mess up. I think we should be focusing on establishing a space industry (or moon bases) before we even think about mars. And at that point, unless it's for hiking, we might find that we don't need planets anymore.
PurpleRamen 4y ago
Mars is more dead than earth will become in the next centuries. And even if they were in the same state, earth would still be the better candidate for fixing up, simply because it's in the habitable zone. And this all ignores the fact that we won't be able to bring a significant amount of humans away from earth, ever. Even transporting a village-amount of people will be still absurd expensive in the next decades.
sevenf0ur 4y ago
Escaping to Mars is just living in caves with extra steps.

bumby 4y ago

It’s would be orders of magnitude easier to make this “dead” planet more hospitable than to do the equivalent to Mars.

dijit 4y ago
this is the conclusion I keep coming to also; anything we develop that makes mars habitable would do so infinitely more effectively and easily here on earth. I guess that's not sexy but there is a part of me that looks on this planet with fresh eyes when I learn more about the universe. What we have is astonishingly beautiful and we will miss it terribly if leaving became the only option. So logically, emotionally, we shouldn't be looking at mars as longingly as we do.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > anything we develop that makes mars habitable would do so infinitely more effectively and easily here on earth This experiment turns CO2 into oxygen and expels CO. How is that “infinitely more effective and eas[y] here on Earth”?
  - dijit 4y ago
    Because we don’t have to ship the equipment to another celestial body where it cannot be maintained or debugged? If you’re suggesting that it has no use on earth then… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmo...
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > you’re suggesting that it has no use on earth Mars’ atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide with most of the remainder being inert gases [1]. That not only means this reaction yields a meaningful amount of oxygen per operating cycle [2], it also means you aren’t superheating corrosive gases. This is technology that has no use on Earth. It’s tremendously useful on Mars. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars [2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abp8636 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abp8636
      - dijit 4y ago
        From my perspective anything we do to make mars habitable can make earth habitable. If you’re telling me that a corrosive byproduct cannot be captured or reused: then that is likely also true of mars.
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > anything we do to make mars habitable can make earth habitable This is fundamentally false for the device this article highlights. Different chemistries. > you’re telling me that a corrosive byproduct cannot be captured or reused: then that is likely also true of mars It’s not. There isn’t oxygen. Superheating 95% CO2 with inert gases and running it over a catalyst in a device that can do about sixty operating cycles makes sense. Superheating a 20% oxygen gas mix [1] is immediately problematic for most metals; doing it to convert the 0.04% CO2 to oxygen makes no sense. (While pumping a bunch of CO into the atmosphere [2].) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth [2] https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/air-quality/carbon-monoxide https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/air-quality/carbon-mono...
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- ballenf 4y ago
  We should look at it about as longingly as as an offsite backup for critical data. If you only have one habitable planet, you have none. There's no need to romanticize our interest in Mars. It just becomes prudent at some point after becoming possible to evaluate other planets. Maybe we're close to that point, maybe not, but the only way answer that question is to begin the process of figuring out the cost to solve the challenges. The current equivalent GDP going toward Mars is rounding error on a rounding error on world total economic activity. There's probably more economic activity on discussions about Mars than there is in actual work toward Mars.
swarnie 4y ago
I'll text that to my Pakistani mate, presumably he can get SMS underwater
- bumby 4y ago
  Are you implying he’d prefer to migrate to Mars than for humans to address climate change on Earth?

im_down_w_otp 4y ago

I don't know if you've taken a look at Mars yet, but it's already dead. It'll be quite a trick to be able to animate a dead planet to life if one can't keep a live planet from dying.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> It'll be quite a trick to be able to animate a dead planet to life if one can't keep a live planet from dying Common refrain is about the folly of trying to fix human problems with technology. Earth is a human problem. We can fix it. But the politics are difficult. Mars is a technology problem. Our species is better at the latter than the former. In any case, the aims are far from competitive.
- im_down_w_otp 4y ago
  Perhaps. The problem of course is that as soon as there's a human on Mars... it becomes a human problem too. There's the dynamics between the humans there. The dynamics between the humans there & here. The dynamics between the people left here supporting the humans there. Unless the expectation is that humans are going to evolve into some blend of hyper-pragmatic altruists the moment they step foot on Mars... it seems like you're going to have a situation where everything is super tense all the time due to every little thing being both life & death and utterly existential, and then you get to mix normal human behavior into the mix. Such a common refrain strikes me as perhaps the most extreme form of myopia to consider Mars is anything but a pile of human problems the literal instant after the first major success of the technological solutions occurs. :shrug:
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > Unless the expectation is that humans are going to evolve into some blend of hyper-pragmatic altruists the moment they step foot on Mars Settler sociology is different. People who self select for that risk mode are different. The proximity of mortality is clearer; that influences culture. Much of modern socioeconomics involves compassionately recreating those conditions. On Mars, you get that for free.

clhodapp 4y ago

The thing I don't get is: I have to imagine that no matter how badly we screw up Earth, any technologies that we build to allow us to survive on Mars could just as well be used to make Earth "livable" again for less cost. Worst-case, it's pretty much the same thing without a rocket launch. I mean I do get the idea of defense against a cataclysmic event like an asteroid strike or wide-scale nuclear war but... That seems to be the only realistic reason to want to colonize Mars.

outworlder 4y ago
> no matter how badly we screw up Earth, Really? Our weather can potentially get incredibly violent and completely obliterate any structure we can conceivably make. There's a limit on how badly we can mess up. I think we should be focusing on establishing a space industry (or moon bases) before we even think about mars. And at that point, unless it's for hiking, we might find that we don't need planets anymore.

PurpleRamen 4y ago

Mars is more dead than earth will become in the next centuries. And even if they were in the same state, earth would still be the better candidate for fixing up, simply because it's in the habitable zone. And this all ignores the fact that we won't be able to bring a significant amount of humans away from earth, ever. Even transporting a village-amount of people will be still absurd expensive in the next decades.

sevenf0ur 4y ago

Escaping to Mars is just living in caves with extra steps.