10 ms·

The reason people want to colonize Mars is because it solves the problem of an extinction event on earth wiping out all of humanity (assuming the Mars colony ev

The reason people want to colonize Mars is because it solves the problem of an extinction event on earth wiping out all of humanity (assuming the Mars colony eventually becomes self sustaining). Populating Antarctica doesn't solve that problem. From what I can tell people are talking about two different things here. Group 1 is talking about how we prevent humans from going extinct in the long term by setting up a Mars colony. Group 2 is talking about doing something easier before we jump to something harder (Antarctica -> LEO -> Moon -> Mars). I don't know why these two groups always feel so at odds with each other online, as it seems like both philosophies end up in the same place. Group 3 are the people who think we should save Earth INSTEAD of going to Mars, and I think they miss the point entirely.

kibwen 4y ago
It's difficult to think of extinction events that satisfy both of the following criteria: 1. An event that affects the Earth without affecting Mars. 2. An event that leaves the Earth more uninhabitable than Mars, even temporarily. A gamma ray burst or rogue star that destroys the Earth would just as easily destroy Mars. Meanwhile, even a colossal meteor strike such as the one that killed the dinosaurs, despite leaving the Earth a shattered ruin for millenia, would still result in a planet that is more habitable than Mars. The bottom line is that Mars is an awful backup for life.
- omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
  My impression is that underground human settlements on another planet would better handle a GRB than the status quo on Earth.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    But we have ~8 billion people on Earth. So even if a very low percentage survive within underground settlements here it would be far better situation than being on Mars.
    - omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
      Definitely, assuming we build underground settlements here. The difference is that on Mars, we're for the most part forced to build underground. On Earth we have to choose to do so, and we haven't done enough of that so far.
      - a2800276 4y ago
        > and we haven't done enough of that so far. Yet we still have infinitely more underground settlements on earth than we can conceivably have on Mars in any imaginable future...
        omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
        We had infinitely more non-reusable rockets than we had reusable rockets several years ago. That doesn't mean not trying to do something is a great idea.
- mikea1 4y ago
  > The bottom line is that Mars is an awful backup for life. In the near term, absolutely. But the long term goal is to colonize multiple planets/moons. Eventually, Mars will be one of many worlds on which life finds a foothold, which is perhaps the best backup for life that humanity can currently deliver. But we still need to take that first step.
- 493579620678 4y ago
  I think it's easy to imagine how something like a meteor or nuclear war could end our civilization without killing all humans on earth. A new civilization would almost certainly arise, and it could be better or worse, but it would probably be very alien to us. At least as alien as Ancient Rome. A settlement on Mars could conceivably preserve our cultures and current civilization in the face of such an event.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    Would you want to preserve the culture that destroyed itself on Earth? Seeding libraries for the culture that rose from the ashes would achieve whatever you are trying to.
    - TchoBeer 4y ago
      ngl some kind of long term space or underground storage solution sounds like something worth attempting.
  - throwawayoaky 4y ago
    > A settlement on Mars could conceivably preserve our cultures and current civilization in the face of such an event. huh. most honest answer I've seen so far. "We're going to mars so we can later to go war with Earth, ideally when they are weak" BTW Do you guys think building big chemical rockets just automatically advances your matsci/chem/bio timeline? It doesn't. That's the effect of massive government cheese. Fun fact about the age of discovery: shit was already discovered. Domesticated food, fresh water, and abundant friends were already there. The universe is bored of generating new challenges for your particular kind of aggressive. It has lots of fun new problems for people who are willing to work together though. Sorry.
    - m4rtink 4y ago
      Abundant friends were not always a given or would often not be friends anymore after repeated visits for some reason.
    - 4y ago
Barrin92 4y ago
I never bought that argument. It's like some secularized version of America as a City Upon a Hill. The isolationism works for like 50 years or something, but afterwards the entire system is just going to be integrated, just like any new settlement on Earth was that served as a temporary refuge. Distance that seemed to provide safety is going to go from large to small to non-existent very quickly as technology develops, and probably much faster than in the past. Any global extinction event is then just going to be a solar-system extinction event, Expanse style. To save enough humans from extinction in case of catastrophy probably some vaults are enough.
lapcat 4y ago
> The reason people want to colonize Mars is because it solves the problem of an extinction event on earth wiping out all of humanity (assuming the Mars colony eventually becomes self sustaining). Life on Earth survived the mass extinction event 66 million years ago, obviously, otherwise we wouldn't be here now. The dinosaurs were wiped out, but the dinosaurs had nowhere to hide and were completely unprepared for the asteroid impact. It's important to keep in mind that the Earth after the asteroid hit was still vastly more livable and conducive to life than Mars is now. Mars is more hostile to life than a big asteroid impact, because Mars has no habitat to start with. Mars has no benefit whatsoever to humans as far as Earth disaster survival is concerned, except for the fact that Mars is not Earth. A much better plan to avoid extinction is multifold: (1) Stop destroying our own environment, duh. (2) Get rid of nuclear weapons. (3) Stop killing each other in general. (4) Invest in asteroid detection and deflection. (5) Build shelters on Earth capable of surviving disaster, such as underground. It also wouldn't hurt to (6) Stop being afraid of vaccination. We've got everything we need here already: normal gravity, breathable atmosphere, food, water, raw materials, people. It would be sooooooo much easier to build disaster shelters on Earth than to permanently populate Mars. The difference in difficulty level makes Mars a total joke in comparison. As a species, if we can't even get our shit together on Earth enough to stop polluting, stop killing, stop the threat of nuclear war, and vaccinate against contagious diseases, then we have no hope of long-term survival anywhere, because of our own stupidity. You can forget living on Mars, a massively hostile environment, if we can't do it right here on Earth, which was practically made for us.
- dento 4y ago
  Colonizing Mars is going to be easier than solving tragedy of the commons.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    How can you bring humans to Mars without also bringing human nature, i.e., human flaws? We'll wreck Mars quicker than Earth, because Mars is already a wreck.
    - 4y ago
wheelerof4te 4y ago
Chance of an asteroid hitting Mars is tens or even hundreds times greater than it hitting Earth. Not to mention that Mars has barely any atmosphere, so even a relatively small meteor (5-15 meters across) will be able to penetrate it and cause chaos. If we have to terraform anything, why not first learn to do it here on Earth? Plenty of inhospitable space that we can turn green, no need to go to Mars. Doing that will almost double the amount of living space for the human population. Earth is a big planet. There is also ample space deeper underground. Why not make entire high-tech undergound cities? Doing it will allow us to plan similar projects on Mars, or even some day, on Titan. Conditions underground on very cold planets should be much more "habitable", than those on freezing surface. While we are at it, even the Moon has cave systems where various research can be made and where people can get shelter from radiation.
- m4rtink 4y ago
  >Chance of an asteroid hitting Mars is tens or even hundreds times greater than it hitting Earth. Not to mention that Mars has barely any atmosphere, so even a relatively small meteor (5-15 meters across) will be able to penetrate it and cause chaos With no ocean and barely any atmosphere the damage would also be much more localized. Most of the damage from the Chelyabinsk meteor was caused by the shock wave as it exploded high in the atmosphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
freejazz 4y ago
"The reason people want to colonize Mars is because it solves the problem of an extinction event on earth wiping out all of humanity (assuming the Mars colony eventually becomes self sustaining). Populating Antarctica doesn't solve that problem." It doesn't.

kibwen 4y ago

It's difficult to think of extinction events that satisfy both of the following criteria: 1. An event that affects the Earth without affecting Mars. 2. An event that leaves the Earth more uninhabitable than Mars, even temporarily. A gamma ray burst or rogue star that destroys the Earth would just as easily destroy Mars. Meanwhile, even a colossal meteor strike such as the one that killed the dinosaurs, despite leaving the Earth a shattered ruin for millenia, would still result in a planet that is more habitable than Mars. The bottom line is that Mars is an awful backup for life.

omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
My impression is that underground human settlements on another planet would better handle a GRB than the status quo on Earth.
- threeseed 4y ago
  But we have ~8 billion people on Earth. So even if a very low percentage survive within underground settlements here it would be far better situation than being on Mars.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
    Definitely, assuming we build underground settlements here. The difference is that on Mars, we're for the most part forced to build underground. On Earth we have to choose to do so, and we haven't done enough of that so far.
    - a2800276 4y ago
      > and we haven't done enough of that so far. Yet we still have infinitely more underground settlements on earth than we can conceivably have on Mars in any imaginable future...
      - omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
        We had infinitely more non-reusable rockets than we had reusable rockets several years ago. That doesn't mean not trying to do something is a great idea.
mikea1 4y ago
> The bottom line is that Mars is an awful backup for life. In the near term, absolutely. But the long term goal is to colonize multiple planets/moons. Eventually, Mars will be one of many worlds on which life finds a foothold, which is perhaps the best backup for life that humanity can currently deliver. But we still need to take that first step.
493579620678 4y ago
I think it's easy to imagine how something like a meteor or nuclear war could end our civilization without killing all humans on earth. A new civilization would almost certainly arise, and it could be better or worse, but it would probably be very alien to us. At least as alien as Ancient Rome. A settlement on Mars could conceivably preserve our cultures and current civilization in the face of such an event.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  Would you want to preserve the culture that destroyed itself on Earth? Seeding libraries for the culture that rose from the ashes would achieve whatever you are trying to.
  - TchoBeer 4y ago
    ngl some kind of long term space or underground storage solution sounds like something worth attempting.
- throwawayoaky 4y ago
  > A settlement on Mars could conceivably preserve our cultures and current civilization in the face of such an event. huh. most honest answer I've seen so far. "We're going to mars so we can later to go war with Earth, ideally when they are weak" BTW Do you guys think building big chemical rockets just automatically advances your matsci/chem/bio timeline? It doesn't. That's the effect of massive government cheese. Fun fact about the age of discovery: shit was already discovered. Domesticated food, fresh water, and abundant friends were already there. The universe is bored of generating new challenges for your particular kind of aggressive. It has lots of fun new problems for people who are willing to work together though. Sorry.
  - m4rtink 4y ago
    Abundant friends were not always a given or would often not be friends anymore after repeated visits for some reason.
  - 4y ago

Barrin92 4y ago

I never bought that argument. It's like some secularized version of America as a City Upon a Hill. The isolationism works for like 50 years or something, but afterwards the entire system is just going to be integrated, just like any new settlement on Earth was that served as a temporary refuge. Distance that seemed to provide safety is going to go from large to small to non-existent very quickly as technology develops, and probably much faster than in the past. Any global extinction event is then just going to be a solar-system extinction event, Expanse style. To save enough humans from extinction in case of catastrophy probably some vaults are enough.

lapcat 4y ago

> The reason people want to colonize Mars is because it solves the problem of an extinction event on earth wiping out all of humanity (assuming the Mars colony eventually becomes self sustaining). Life on Earth survived the mass extinction event 66 million years ago, obviously, otherwise we wouldn't be here now. The dinosaurs were wiped out, but the dinosaurs had nowhere to hide and were completely unprepared for the asteroid impact. It's important to keep in mind that the Earth after the asteroid hit was still vastly more livable and conducive to life than Mars is now. Mars is more hostile to life than a big asteroid impact, because Mars has no habitat to start with. Mars has no benefit whatsoever to humans as far as Earth disaster survival is concerned, except for the fact that Mars is not Earth. A much better plan to avoid extinction is multifold: (1) Stop destroying our own environment, duh. (2) Get rid of nuclear weapons. (3) Stop killing each other in general. (4) Invest in asteroid detection and deflection. (5) Build shelters on Earth capable of surviving disaster, such as underground. It also wouldn't hurt to (6) Stop being afraid of vaccination. We've got everything we need here already: normal gravity, breathable atmosphere, food, water, raw materials, people. It would be sooooooo much easier to build disaster shelters on Earth than to permanently populate Mars. The difference in difficulty level makes Mars a total joke in comparison. As a species, if we can't even get our shit together on Earth enough to stop polluting, stop killing, stop the threat of nuclear war, and vaccinate against contagious diseases, then we have no hope of long-term survival anywhere, because of our own stupidity. You can forget living on Mars, a massively hostile environment, if we can't do it right here on Earth, which was practically made for us.

dento 4y ago
Colonizing Mars is going to be easier than solving tragedy of the commons.
- lapcat 4y ago
  How can you bring humans to Mars without also bringing human nature, i.e., human flaws? We'll wreck Mars quicker than Earth, because Mars is already a wreck.
  - 4y ago

wheelerof4te 4y ago

Chance of an asteroid hitting Mars is tens or even hundreds times greater than it hitting Earth. Not to mention that Mars has barely any atmosphere, so even a relatively small meteor (5-15 meters across) will be able to penetrate it and cause chaos. If we have to terraform anything, why not first learn to do it here on Earth? Plenty of inhospitable space that we can turn green, no need to go to Mars. Doing that will almost double the amount of living space for the human population. Earth is a big planet. There is also ample space deeper underground. Why not make entire high-tech undergound cities? Doing it will allow us to plan similar projects on Mars, or even some day, on Titan. Conditions underground on very cold planets should be much more "habitable", than those on freezing surface. While we are at it, even the Moon has cave systems where various research can be made and where people can get shelter from radiation.

m4rtink 4y ago
>Chance of an asteroid hitting Mars is tens or even hundreds times greater than it hitting Earth. Not to mention that Mars has barely any atmosphere, so even a relatively small meteor (5-15 meters across) will be able to penetrate it and cause chaos With no ocean and barely any atmosphere the damage would also be much more localized. Most of the damage from the Chelyabinsk meteor was caused by the shock wave as it exploded high in the atmosphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor

freejazz 4y ago

"The reason people want to colonize Mars is because it solves the problem of an extinction event on earth wiping out all of humanity (assuming the Mars colony eventually becomes self sustaining). Populating Antarctica doesn't solve that problem." It doesn't.