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Arguments against human colonization of the solar system (moon/Mars/etc) sound just like trying ot argue against the westward expansion from the 13 colonies. W

• programmarchy 4y ago
  Yes, this. There’s a reason that Picard was the captain of Enterprise, rather than Data. Bio-nietzcheans will lead the way, not robo-nerds.
• perardi 4y ago
  the basic urge of a species to expand over all available domain Is that a basic urge? The actual glory of exploration? Or is it the need for resources? You reference the Donner Party, which was on its way to California, which had actual useable and useful resources. So of course people wanted to go there—there’s an ocean and sunshine. Mars has…uh…corrosive dust?
  • programmarchy 4y ago
    Why do you think Alex Honnold free climbed El Cap? Why do people pay money to go skiing, sky diving, or scuba diving?
    • djur 4y ago
      > Why do you think Alex Honnold free climbed El Cap? Not to live on it!
    • hospadar 4y ago
      To carry a single raisin to the top, then he climbed it a million more times to bring more raisins, then he made a jet engine from the raisins. Then he started bringing more raisins so that he could make a raisin plane for the amazing raisin engine. In the intervening thousand years, other climbers learned to cybernetically modify their bodies to be able to climb every rock face on the planet. The resulting boom in cybernetic technology granted immortality and immunity to all diseases to humanity. Humans never did master the raisin jet though (because they learned to transfer their conciseness over the internet so honestly jet engines seem kinda silly). /S
    • palata 4y ago
      Well the taxpayers did not have to invest trillions for that to happen, if I remember correctly :)
  • idlewords 4y ago
    It's doubly amusing since the conditions the Donner Party died in were like Hawaii compared to Mars.
• yongjik 4y ago
  Unfortunately, "the basic urge of a species to expand over all available domain" does not lift a thousand ton of people and equipment to an interplanetary orbit. Money does. Well... money might do, we don't know for sure, because it's not tried before at the required scale. Few will have an issue with a modern "Donner Party," who would buy interplanetary rockets out of their money, hop on them, never to be heard again. (Well, to be fair, if the party contains kids, people would object - consider that a sign of the society's progress since Donner's days.) What people argue against is those quasi-Donners who demand that Washington DC fund their rockets.
• lapcat 4y ago
  > Arguments against human colonization of the solar system (moon/Mars/etc) sound just like trying ot argue against the westward expansion from the 13 colonies. Did they claim that the American west had no atmosphere, water, food, topsoil, or life of any kind, and only 38% normal gravity?
  • Eji1700 4y ago
    And could only be reached after a months long journey with 0 ability to resupply of ANY kind. No trees and fruit, no fish and desalination, no colonies along the way. Just months of nothing (and yes i'm aware that because of this the plan is to try and orbit resupply "drops" and I personally think that's insane). If you want to see extra planetary colonization, the moon is the most obvious first step by a HUGE margin, and even if it was made of gold or some other precious material, it wouldn't be financially sane, but the advantages mars offers pale in comparison to the EXTREME disadvantages its immense distance offers. IF we can get something going on the moon, it makes literally everything else magnitudes easier. Doing anything else is, at best, a pointless exploration mission, and at worst, suicide by government spending. None of the mars plans are remotely realistic or grounded in reality, and all have so many points of failure it's going to be more worrying if we actually think we can get someone there.
    • rendall 4y ago
      Maybe the moon could be a launch pad for asteroid mining, which could more directly bring mineral wealth to the people of Earth.
      • sio8ohPi 4y ago
        Why drop into the Lunar gravity well at all then? LEO <-> Demos is less delta-V than LEO <-> Luna, and doesn't require low-ISP chemical rockets except for the initial boost.
        • rendall 4y ago
          > LEO <-> Demos It does not have to be an either/or mutually exclusive thing. Do not ignore the importance of psychology and symbolism in long-term, cooperative human effort. A moon base that people can visit and inhabit will make concrete what would otherwise be an abstract concept. It will be much easier to get funding, buy-in and cooperation from an Earthling who has been to the Moon than from someone who at best sees anything happening in space through screens.
• rendall 4y ago
  The article does not argue against human colonization of the solar system. The article argues that with current technology and capabilities, a manned mission to Mars would actually do more harm than good to space exploration itself. Also, this is reasoning by analogy. Mars is not West America. If you want to argue for a manned mission to Mars, the article makes some excellent points that, by refuting them directly, would strengthen your argument.
• viburnum 4y ago
  You know that conquering territory on earth was profitable for the winners, right? There’s no profit on Mars.
• ausbah 4y ago
  >Arguments against human colonization of the solar system (moon/Mars/etc) sound just like trying ot argue against the westward expansion from the 13 colonies if you're going from an moral perspective, European colonists had no right to colonize any part of the Americas. established civilizations already existed that were only driven out by mass death from foreign plagues and a desire for "we can so we will" mentality