15 ms·

There’s no planet B

163 points by nsoonhui 4y ago

chriswarbo 4y ago
> This futuristic dream-like scenario is being sold to us as a real scientific possibility, with billionaires planning to move humanity to Mars in the near future. As far as I'm aware, no billionaire has ever said anything about "moving humanity" to Mars or anywhere else; except to dismiss such claims as nonsense. Nobody is "planning" such a thing; let alone for "the near future". Musk wants there to be a colony on Mars in the near future. Bezos wants heavy manufacturing in orbit, or in-situ in the asteroid belt.
- deleted 4y ago
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- jbu 4y ago
  True. But whenever I discuss the climate crisis/future with non-billionaires (i.e. most people I know) there's a significant population of 'don't worry we'll move to mars if it gets too bad'. I mean, have you been on HN for long?
  - api 4y ago
    Really? I must hang in different circles. I've never heard anyone say anything like that who has any clue whatsoever about space flight and what it entails... or is any kind of real engineer with a grip on reality. Of course maybe I just dismiss clueless comments so rapidly that I don't register them. I have heard people say we could put a settlement on the Moon or Mars, which is possible.
  - chriswarbo 4y ago
    Refuting those claims doesn't require misattributing them.
- mrkeen 4y ago
  > As far as I'm aware, no billionaire has ever said anything about "moving humanity" to Mars or anywhere else; except to dismiss such claims as nonsense. Yes, it's even worse than that. Environmental types want to keep Earth habitable for humans, because Mars as a plan B is infeasible. > "Why are we doing this?" Musk said at the company's February 2022 Starship progress update. "I think this is an incredibly important thing for the future of life itself ... there's always some chance that something could go wrong on Earth. Dinosaurs are not around anymore!" So yeah, it's not really that we'll save humanity by moving it to Mars. It's that some people will go to Mars and the rest of us can die out here.
  - Majestic121 4y ago
    > It's that some people will go to Mars and the rest of us can die out here. If the alternative is that no-one goes to Mars and everybody dies, I'm OK with only some people going there. There are a lot of possible catastrophes that can wipe us out from Earth, and not all of them are preventable or due to mankind. Starting to move towards a direction were we at least have a temporary alternative, even if the alternative is much worse than Earth, and cannot sustain everyone, seems like a basic goal. Having a plan B does not mean that plan A is not the preferred solution.
    - paulryanrogers 4y ago
      There is a risk that seriously entertaining or promoting a plan B undermines efforts to execute plan A, sustainable lifestyles on Earth. Both are hard, yet quick and high visibility wins may be easier with Mars. "Look humans set foot on it!" (After X failed attempts and even the arrivals died soon after.) "Mars now has a habitat module!" (Vulnerable to radiation and completely dependent on shipments from Earth.)
      - chriswarbo 4y ago
        That argument makes sense for e.g. carbon capture schemes, or geoengineering: they seem like easy fixes, compared to the necessary sustainability improvements we actually need to make. "Move to Mars" sounds the opposite of easy.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > no billionaire has ever said anything about "moving humanity" to Mars > Musk wants there to be a colony on Mars in the near future. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/theyre-the-same-picture https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/theyre-the-same-picture
  - rcxdude 4y ago
    The difference is between "there's some humans living on mars, perhaps working towards self-sufficiency" and "we're moving everyone on earth to mars"
    - lapcat 4y ago
      The word "planning" in the quote "with billionaires planning to move humanity to Mars in the near future" is a link to another article: https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-planet-civilisation https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-p... The top of that article says, "Elon Musk argues that we must put a million people on Mars if we are to ensure that humanity has a future." So the author is giving the exact explanation of what it means "to move humanity to Mars". It's a straw man to suggest that the article author intended it to mean "everyone on earth". And a million is the bare minimum: > ‘Even at a million, you’re really assuming an incredible amount of productivity per person, because you would need to recreate the entire industrial base on Mars,’ he [Musk] said. Moreover, the whole justification for colonizing Mars is supposed to be if a disaster struck Earth. So in a sense you have moved all of humanity to Mars if humans on Earth go extinct.
      - chriswarbo 4y ago
        > The top of that article says, "Elon Musk argues that we must put a million people on Mars if we are to ensure that humanity has a future." Having a tiny fraction of humanity on a different world, which is entirely dependent on shipments from home for the foreseeable future, is an irrelevance to the problems we're facing on Earth. > Moreover, the whole justification for colonizing Mars is supposed to be if a disaster struck Earth. So in a sense you have moved all of humanity to Mars if humans on Earth go extinct. Sure, but those disasters are entirely unrelated to any of the problems we're facing right now. Nobody is claiming Mars is a refuge from, say, man-made climate change. It could be a refuge from, say, a gamma-ray burst crossing Earth's orbit in half a million years.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  I think one problem is that people hear the word colony and they add the term self-sustaining. on edit: fixed typo.
  - simiones 4y ago
    Well, they do when it's followed by "we shouldn't keep all our eggs in one basket". The only possible (though still extremely flimsy) reason for creating a Mars colony is if we think we can eventually make it self-sustaining. A non-self-sustaining colony on Mars is worse than useless.
    - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
      sure - however a non-self-sustaining colony on Mars might be the first hundred years, a self-sustaining colony may be the end goal but end goals may be long out.
      - palata 4y ago
        But we need civilisation to survive on Earth for those hundred years first. And right now it's not looking good.
      - simiones 4y ago
        It is very debatable whether a current-tech Mars colony being sustained for a hundred years is in any way a pre-requisite for a self-sustaining Mars colony. I would claim not - at least some of the biggest problems that we need to solve to create a self-sustaining colony in a harsh environment don't actually need us to be on Mars - there are significant problems we can first address right here on Earth. This is significant because unless and until we can solve these problems, there is no reason to try to establish a base on Mars.
- Tangurena2 4y ago
  That's a "motte & bailey" [0] type of argument. The billionaires talk about "saving humanity" or "making a lifeboat" but when they get questioned, they maneuver the discussion to the motte: "there is no planet B" (or the equivalent). Then, when the attention is elsewhere, back to fantasies of Mars. [0] - https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey
  - api 4y ago
    This is a straw man. I still don’t hear anyone serious saying humanity will pick up and move to Mars or anywhere else. They say a very small number of humans (relative to the billions of us) may try to go to the Moon or Mars. That is conceivable. In our lifetimes I could picture basically McMurdo station on the Moon and some flights back and forth to Mars. I could picture a mostly autonomous settlement somewhere in 100 years.
    - bulgur 4y ago
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      - hattmall 4y ago
        But why would a terraformed mars somehow be better than even a highly polluted earth? The only potentially legitimate reason for a move to Mars would be to get away from other people on earth.
        ben_w 4y ago
        A desire to explore and settle a new frontier isn't legitime?
        coldtea 4y ago
        Not so much. Populations look for new better frontiers, not merely new frontiers...
        4y ago
- phphphphp 4y ago
  > Musk wants there to be a colony on Mars in the near future. As a first step, to prove Mars is liveable. As far as I can recall, he believes that we must be a multi-planetary species to survive which means Earth is destined to die. Space is absolutely a “earth is doomed, we must leave” fantasy for Musk and his acolytes.
  - 28304283409234 4y ago
    Oh earth will be just fine. We are screwed. But earth? Just fine.
    - geraldwhen 4y ago
      Earth will eventually die. And all stars. It’s not conceivable to consider expanding the longevity of the human species by more than all of known history, however.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    > he believes that we must be a multi-planetary species to survive which means Earth is destined to die. I don't read it as "destined to die", just that there is a non-trivial chance. Mars… I want to be excited, but the more I think about it (and, bluntly, the more bad decisions Musk makes), the less I like the idea. That said, Mars is sufficiently difficult in all the right ways that if we can make a self-sustaining colony there, the only way life on Earth will end is some kind of self-replicating swarm, either in the sense of an engineered pandemic (specifically an engineered one: a merely natural one we can probably defeat just like COVID) or a more sci-fi von Neumann swarm. Mars has half our sunlight, it is colder than Antarctica, dryer than the Sahara, the air is thinner than the top of Everest, the soil is toxic, and we'd have to make any hydrocarbons from the air itself rather than digging them up. Make a Mars colony work despite all of that, we'd easily survive a repeat of the asteroid-ending impact or nuclear winter here on Earth.
  - chriswarbo 4y ago
    > As far as I can recall, he believes that we must be a multi-planetary species to survive which means Earth is destined to die. Yes; in several billion years, e.g. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1482552643343904770 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1482552643343904770 "There is a [100%] chance of all species extinction due to expansion of the sun, unless humanity makes life multiplanetary" Do you disagree with this assessment? Either way, it is irrelevant to the claim that "billionaires [are] planning to move humanity to Mars in the near future"
- api 4y ago
  > Bezos wants heavy manufacturing in orbit, or in-situ in the asteroid belt. Beltalowda!
- karmakaze 4y ago
  It's absurd to think that any rational person thinks that finding a suitable or terraforming a planet is a viable alternative to preserving the one we have. At the most living on Mars could be seen like a bomb-shelter for the privileged few, but even then not very soon so they'd also need life extension to make that work. At the same time, there's no reason not to continue to explore and expand. That's what tribes did when they discovered they weren't alone, and countries, and continents, etc.
  - palata 4y ago
    Is it? To be it sounds absurd to care about preserving the human species, and completely forgetting about biodiversity. Yet it really feels like some seemingly rational people think that sending a few humans to Mars matters, "to preserve the species"...
  - poulpy123 4y ago
    > At the most living on Mars could be seen like a bomb-shelter for the privileged few Not even. Having underground or underwater shelters would be much more feasible and useful for them
Pinegulf 4y ago
> The scientific evidence is clear: the only celestial body that can support us is the one we evolved with. I must have missed the evidence. Exactly what were they? Additionally, don't stand in the way of those who wish to boldly go where no-one has gone before.
- truculent 4y ago
  When going boldly requires shared resources and has knock-on effects for everyone, shouldn't we all have a say?
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    No? I mean, if people who have money want to spend it on something like that, why should we have a say? It's their money, not ours. EDIT: ah, the perennial game of rationalizing taking from others when they aren't doing what you want them to do.
    - RGamma 4y ago
      (Edit: Liquid) Wealth represents economic surplus, much of which is gained unsustainably. The least we should expect is that this surplus doesn't also chase pipe dreams, because these have an additional opportunity cost.
      - api 4y ago
        The global perfume industry is about $50 billion. The porn industry is estimated to be between $6 and $15 billion. The NASA budget is $24 billion, so somewhere between porn and perfume. Also much of billionaires' net worth is fictitious paper. You can see this in Musk "losing" $150 billion dollars. That never really existed in the first place. It was leveraged value of things like stocks, not liquid wealth. What actually happened was that Musk's paper net worth was corrected to something a little bit closer to reality (but probably still on the high side). Actual wealth is physical: stuff, industrial capital, generation capacity, farm land, etc. If you magically redistributed paper wealth to everyone in the world you'd just get hyperinflation since there is not enough actual physical wealth to support all of humanity at anything like a "first world" standard. To get there requires probably another 50-100 years of continuous development, this time smarter using more sustainable practices since unsustainable fossil fuel based development can't get there. We could get a settlement on the Moon by spending a little more on space than perfume. It's a rounding error compared to the global economy. If you want to get mad about wasted wealth, get mad about global military budgets and war. That's just blowing shit up and we spend hundreds of times more on that than either space or sustainable development.
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greydius 4y ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qtTi_uyYynA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qtTi_uyYynA
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
Star Trek and similar science fiction entertainment is far more responsible for the public having a belief in "Planet B" than anything else. Guess one could argue that tv and movies are the creation of entities that are like billionaires given their wealth and influence but even pulpy midcentury sci-fi magazines written by nearly impoverished authors were pushing the vision of humanity spreading far beyond Earth. Almost everyone in the developed world grew up in a cultural environment steeped in this sci-fi vision of humanity in space.
mabbo 4y ago
Let's set aside the part that making a planet where we could live is hard. Just presume we did that, to start. Let's talk Logistics. Presume there are only 1 billion people left on Earth when we decide it's time to go. How do you get them there? The gravity well holding us here (and holding the air down so we can breath it) is pretty darn strong. Today we're hoping to get cost-to-orbit down to around $100/kg. I weigh a bit less than 100kg, so that's $10,000 just for my mass- not including the life support system I need. And then I'm just in orbit. If I'm moving to some kind of spin-gravity station in orbit, that's not too far away. But Mars? Mars is a months long trip in a best case. And don't get me started on planets on other stars. Even the most optimistic generation ships would be taking 10s of thousands of years to get there- longer than all of human history so far. If each ship held 100,000 people, you'd need 10,000 of them. And what power source would you use to move that massive ship, and keep the light and heat on between stars? (Antimatter, I guess?) If we can make Mars habitable, we can make Earth habitable for far less cost. I'm entirely in favour of building spin-gravity stations, Mars habitats, even terraformation of Mars and Venus. I just feel like it's never going to be the case that anything more than a tiny fraction of humans will leave Earth to go see those things.
- kneebonian 4y ago
  Wonderful article about overcoming Earth's gravity well available here https://what-if.xkcd.com/7/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/7/
- ben_w 4y ago
  If you really want to get a billion off earth quickly, you'd use a non-rocket system like a launch loop ($3/kg) or an orbital loop ($0.05/kg). I kinda agree that most humans won't leave Earth, at least for the foreseeable future, even if those things were magically built this year: even in 2019, international tourism was only 1.466 billion people, less than 20%.
  - m4rtink 4y ago
    While I don't see that mentioned very often I do think off-Earth settlements could have many benefits even for the Earth population - say research commoning from experience of living in space environments could have application on Earth. Also many asteroid strikes could be much more likely to be detected and averted using in-space instruments and infrastructure. Even more exotic stuff like dropping first responders from orbit to disaster areas might be useful, but would not ever be doable without infrastructure in place for supporting space operations.
eloff 4y ago
No matter how bad we fuck our planet, it’s still paradise compared to what else is out there. Elon Musk wants to go to mars, but Antarctica is much more amenable to life and nobody wants to live there. I understand it’s about having a backup plan for humanity. I think we could do it cheaper on Earth. I also don’t think we need one. It would be nearly impossible to make humans extinct at this point. We’re too adaptable and there’s too many of us. Civilization could fail, but humans would endure. We could get slammed by a giant asteroid that could kill 95% of the biomass on the planet, and we’d still survive in little pockets. We could nuke ourselves until the planet flows in the dark, but we’d still survive in places that were spared. Civilization is much more fragile.
- L_226 4y ago
  > nobody wants to live there Speak for yourself, I and many people I know would leap at the opportunity. As an Australian I have already considered applying for a rotation with the Australian Antarctic Division, and I will likely do so in the future when my life circumstances allow. With regards to your comment about bolide impact - you do realise that there is a non-zero probability of an impact that will destroy the actual crust of the Earth and remove the ability for _any_ life to exist on the planet right?
  - lgl 4y ago
    Agreed. Way too many people seem to think that any asteroid impact would be similar to a thermonuclear device and could somehow be "survivable", which would only be true for relatively "small" asteroids. The reality is that a large enough or fast enough mass hitting not only Earth but any of it's neighboring planets could completely destabilize the solar system on a (literally) planetary scale. So even our fear of asteroids hitting earth is already too modest as we should really worry about them hitting any planet, especially the inner ones.
    - z3c0 4y ago
      On the other side of things, celestial objects are not flying around at random. They have trajectories typically leading away from us, and the odds for one to suddenly veer through what is mostly a void to hit another spec of dust are just as astronomically small as surviving the impact, should it actually happen.
BaculumMeumEst 4y ago
great track by king gizzard & the wizard lizard https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qtTi_uyYynA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qtTi_uyYynA
- kroltan 4y ago
  Seeing the title I thought the article might be about it, for a second.
- hammeiam 4y ago
  One of their best albums to boot
  - skyyler 4y ago
    All of their albums are their best album. I've been particularly enjoying Butterfly 3000 recently, even though I thought it was weak when I first heard it.
- jibbers 4y ago
  Related: https://www.marsfortherich.com https://www.marsfortherich.com
lordfrito 4y ago
We're never getting off this planet. At least not in these carbon based bodies. Best to learn to live on the planet we have.
college_physics 4y ago
> There’s No Planet B The mere need to state this suggests we are facing a serious problem internalizing our condition. We are not taking seriously the implications of human choices and actions when multiplied by billions. The sustainability of our living on Earth was not even a visible problem 300 years ago [0]. It is far more of a problem now and could become a terminal problem 300 years from now. 300 years is nothing in the scheme of things. We should be scared. Not in a superficial, panicky way, but in a deep, culture-changing way. Obviously the problem does not yet hit the present generations severely enough (hence the luxury of idle talk). But it will certainly hit the ones following in the near future. [0] Alexander von Humbolt seems to be the first author that articulated environmental risk circa ~1800.
- palata 4y ago
  We don't have a lot of generations before major changes happen. I believe that we won't prevent anything: we'll just try to survive to whatever happens, more or less successfully.
  - college_physics 4y ago
    Its a plausible scenario. If past collapse events are a guide, future humans will simply accept whatever loss, blame it on barbaric earlier civilizations and move on with whatever is available. The difference is that we don't consider ourselves "barbarians", but maybe nobody did in the past either...
- poulpy123 4y ago
  > The sustainability of our living on Earth was not even a visible problem 300 years ago It was not even a problem 100 years ago, and I would even say 50 years ago except for some people (some being crazy)
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hooby 4y ago
Even if we manage to terraform and colonize another planet - that's not going to save us, if we destroy that other planet as well. And whatever other planet we do terraform and colonize is going to be a lot more fragile and a lot easier to destroy than earth is. If we can't manage to not destroy earth, there's no way we can manage to keep another planet going. So, we really should do everything to train and master those planet-preserving skills here on earth, because if we ever do settle another planet, we are going to need them!
- ReptileMan 4y ago
  If we have the technology to terraform a planet ... we can totally clean up the Earth too ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKIOSnKX96E&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKIOSnKX96E&t=1s This piece by Konstantin Kisin rightfully pointed out that the only peaceful way out of the bind is with technology.
  - palata 4y ago
    I, for one, believe that technology is the problem, not the solution.
  - hooby 4y ago
    Well, then let's develop the technology to clean up is planet now - so we can use it to terraform other planets later!
kryptiskt 4y ago
For me the best argument in favor of space settlement is moving industry and mining from Earth. That way we can continue to expand humanity's capabilities without it impacting the Earth's environment too much. So I think the asteroid belt is a lot more interesting than Mars as a target.
cannonpr 4y ago
I don’t think most of us are getting off this planet, not with human bodies. I do however love Greg Evans vision of the future of colonisation. Von Neumann probes and we just send the people as data. In one of his books there are even the “retronaughts” a group of Elon musk like obsessives slowly travelling on a fusion rocket, as human civilisation expands at the speed of light ahead of them, constantly in denial about living in the past. I think if we can start getting some basic robotics to the asteroid belt that would be the first step to having more industrial capacity off planet, which will also help us save our basket by moving energy and pollution intensive things in orbit. The future belongs to our robots, not our human bodies.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
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fleddr 4y ago
Humans are simply not organized to take care of long term issues. A system of nation states ensures a "tragedy of the commons" situation where everybody optimizes for their own short term interests. One failed climate summit after the other cements this reality. And this isn't just national selfishness, most nation states have existential short term issues to deal with. At the national level, assuming a democracy, politicians run in 4-5 year terms. Who will get the vote? The politician promising tax cuts or the one proposing unpopular climate measures that increase your cost of living? You know the answer. The current narrative that our leaders are too corrupt or incompetent is only half the story. The issue very much is part of all of us. When giving the choice to do the long term thing, we prefer the short term thing. We're wired that way. Just like we're wired to go for junk food. We should start thinking that way going forward: we're too flawed and limited to do what is right for us in the long term. And then work from there. The idea that there's good people and bad people and we just need to convince the bad people, is flawed. My "lived experience" is that people do not care. They don't care about nature. They don't care about other countries. They care only about what is right in front of them, and what is there right now. Everything else is abstract and unimportant. This too you can read as evil or narcissism, but it's just how our species are. As individuals, we're not designed to take on the burden of an entire planet. We're small scale social primates and think and acts as such. The very idea of a global community (and abstract thinking) is brand new. My point is to not wait for a moment where we all "turn good". The current inaction or indifference is our natural state. At a global level, people will never ever prioritize long term issues over short term issues, this behavioral change isn't coming.
chrsw 4y ago
I'm trying to imagine a world where terraforming planets and intersteller travel are solved problems but keeping Earth hospitable is beyond our capability. Doesn't seem plausible. But on the flip side, I can clearly see how if we fail to keep this planet livable we have no hope of reaching other livable worlds.
tannhauser23 4y ago
This article is full of strawman arguments. I'm not aware of anyone who's arguing for moving billions of humans to another planet or for dedicating the resources of Earth to terraform Mars. It's not like Mars colonization proponents are keeping their plans secret - the authors could easily have googled what the actual propositions are, to wit: - Use current or near-current tech to send human missions to Mars - Use existing resources on Mars to the extent possible to support a research station - Let the settlement grow organically. It will be science-focused at first but may develop economic value over time (Robert Zubrin suggests asteroid mining or deuterium harvesting) Terraforming, if it happens at all, will be a centuries-long process by the Mars inhabitants, largely using resources available on that planet. No one's suggesting strip-mining Earth to make Mars habitable. I don't know why some people think that human missions to Mars are incompatible with fixing Earth's problems. We have the resources to do both.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > It's not like Mars colonization proponents are keeping their plans secret - the authors could easily have googled what the actual propositions are The word "planning" in "with billionaires planning to move humanity to Mars in the near future" is literally a hyperlink to another article discussing what the actual propositions are, i.e, "Elon Musk argues that we must put a million people on Mars if we are to ensure that humanity has a future". https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-planet-civilisation https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-p...
  - QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
    I wonder how much higher quality internet discourse sould be if million and billion didn't rhyme lol
- bashmelek 4y ago
  As someone who is generally pro-Mars colonization (and has Zubrin’s book), I feel this. We don’t need to dichotomize this and I welcome advances towards humans going beyond where we have ever been. At the same time, I realize there is a lot of pain and anxiety down here. The environment is being wrecked. Climate is changing beyond what an evolved ecosystem can handle. At the same time, there are poor nations trying to catch up, who will not like being told to slow down by the developed world. With collective action global poverty could be solved in the next 10 years. The worst of it, anyway. But suddenly the argument becomes that by giving a dollar to space exploration you are depriving a starving person? I simply cannot accept that hardline utilitarianism. Unfortunately, being just some internet person, I don’t have numbers on how much to spend on space technology. What should it be at this point in time, in comparison to all of our other needs? All I can say is greater than zero.
linuxftw 4y ago
Indeed. There's no reason to send another penny's worth of material to Mars ever again. There will never be a sustainable colony there, ever, in the history of mankind, unless we develop some sort of free-energy technology or teleportation system like a science fiction movie.
PaulHoule 4y ago
Not like we can count on it, but most of the living space in the universe is not on the surface of planets but rather could be built out of carbon and water rich asteroids (though it is Nitrogen that looks like the hardest thing to get right now) https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487 https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487 is a plan to build a structure that could support a population larger than the Earth. (I'd read that paper not just as boosterism or science fiction but also as a criticism of other space colonization schemes whose problems it addresses.) That kind of colony would be a solar economy but with deuterium-deuterium fusion you could support a similar lifestyle in the outer solar system or interstellar space. Hopping from comet to comet with a comfortable lifestyle, travelers could make it from star to star in 10,000 years ago but they might be completely uninterested in comparatively dry inner solar system bodies like the Earth and Mars when you could cut up a planet like Pluto to create much more living space. Mars is a small planet compared to the Earth. If you actually want to widen mankind's prospects, look to the asteroid belt, where it takes just 10⁷ kg of material per person to build a habitat as opposed to the 10ⁱ⁶ kg of planet needed to support you. So I think asteroids are a more interesting target than Mars, probably not that much harder but a much larger reward. Mars is a smaller planet than the Earth and would have a hard time outgrowing us, but Ceres really could be a path to the stars.
1970-01-01 4y ago
Let's assume we're not going anywhere because it's extremely hard. Now let's also assume the last century includes all of the methods to engineer energy mankind will ever create. See! There's no planet B! Colonization is impossible!
curation 4y ago
The concept of planet B is itself ideological. Climate change is a symptom of capitalism; which remains unchallenged. Why is it easier to imagine a zombie apocalypse than a different economic system. Varoufakis Another Now attempts this. Until we are able to imagine new economic structures our attempts to avoid "planet B" will continue to create new markets and that is it.
im_down_w_otp 4y ago
My strong suspicion is that the weak point of any interplanetary relocation attempt will be human behavior. Completely regardless of the technology.
ElectronCharge 4y ago
I’ve read most responses to this, here’s my take: 1) The overall concept would be a lot clearer if it were called Earth2 instead of “Planet B”. I agree it’s unlikely we’ll find something suitable “nearby” without terraforming. 2) We know there’s no Earth2 in our solar system. 3) There is no foreseeable path to interstellar travel other than generation ships, presumably after advance scouting. This is not worth considering with present technology. Time horizon for suitable technology is unknown. 4) Saving Earth and colonizing space are NOT mutually exclusive. 5) Abundant, clean energy resources are the only sane path to preserving Earth in more or less its present state. A rising standard of living is associated with lower (or no) population growth, and a cleaner environment. 6) Given sufficient energy, and expertise in interplanetary travel, the Moon and Mars can both become very nice habitats for humans. Almost all day-to-day existence will take place underground. Centrifuges may be needed for physiological reasons (shame on NASA for not studying this sufficiently). 7) Strictly space-based habitats may be better (one G centrifugal force is easy), the downside being that all materials must be transported from elsewhere unless asteroids are converted to habitats. Space habitats will require radiation shielding equivalent to a few feet of concrete. 8) The key thing for all of this, and also for improving standards of living for Earth-dwellers, is abundant energy. The only way to clean up our act on Earth is with massive energy abundance. 9) Solar can help everywhere, and wind can be part of Earth-based solutions, but advanced energy sources like fission and fusion MUST be used as part of the solution. 10) Nuclear powered space travel should be (and is in fact becoming) a priority. An intense focus on advanced space travel may eventually make interstellar travel possible. 11) It’s likely possible that given robust interplanetary travel, the Solar System alone could support a sustainable human population in the tens to hundreds of billions, as well as Earth being a near-pristine “life preserve” with a population of just a few billion. 12) More people should be getting STEM educations. ;-)
Haga 4y ago
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yellowapple 4y ago
> From an astronomer’s perspective, Mars is Earth’s identical twin. I know of precisely zero astronomers who consider Mars to be Earth's identical twin. Usually that's said of Venus, not Mars. > The proposed absolute best-case scenario for terraforming Mars leaves us with an atmosphere we are incapable of breathing That ain't the proposed "absolute best-case scenario". The actual best-case scenario comes from the steps after thickening the atmosphere with carbon dioxide - namely, the "grow plants in an atmosphere wherein they can actually breathe and not immediately freeze to death or get zapped to death by cosmic radiation". Also, carbon dioxide ain't the only gas that would be involved. Water vapor is just as crucial. Neither are sufficiently abundant on Mars to be useful for terraforming, but asteroids tend to be rich with hydrocarbons and water - and NASA has already been testing the feasibility of redirecting asteroids. > a more realistic scenario might be to build habitat domes on its surface Outside of sci-fi that's rarely proposed. The more typical proposal (besides smaller, non-dome habitats) is to build underground. Easier to shield against radiation, easier to mitigate leaks. > for example, this concept does not consider plate tectonics, which are thought to be crucial to sustain life on Earth. Thought by whom? The link doesn't seem to assert that, and there's no reason to believe that plate tectonics contribute in any meaningful way to sustaining life on Earth. They likely contributed to creating life on Earth, but last I checked I ain't a thermophilic microbe huddled around a geothermal vent on the ocean floor. > Earth’s current aeon, the Phanerozoic, began only around 541 million years ago with the Cambrian explosion [...] In 1 billion years, the gradual warming of our Sun is predicted to cause Earth’s oceans to boil away. While this certainly sounds worrying, 1 billion years is a long, long time. The author's inconsistency on whether time periods are relatively "long" or "short" depending on whether it helps or hinder's the author's argument makes it increasingly difficult to assume the author is arguing in good faith. ---- While I agree fully with the article that the destruction of Earth's biosphere can and must be prevented, I disagree strongly with the article's implicit conclusion that expanding beyond Earth is not a component of that. Earth is already straining to support the human population and its modern standard of living; that'll only get worse as the population grows, as those currently living in poorer parts of the world rightly demand a standard of living closer to that of the richer parts of the world, and as the richer parts of the world push the expected average standard of living yet higher. We need to get as many humans off of Earth as we physically can, before Earth evicts us. We need to be moving as close to the entirety of our industry as possible into orbit, the Moon, and beyond. We need to give Earth an opportunity to heal from the damage we've done to it - and we need to buy time until we have the technological means to affordably do so.
benreesman 4y ago
I think that concern over the climate on Earth has reached “too much of a healthy thing” levels. Climate change is almost certainly going to cause human and economic disasters on a massive scale, but it’s not going to eradicate the human species or most likely even meaningfully set civilization back more than completely avoidable policy stuff. It’s probably going to be “bad world war” level bad, which is very bad but not fatal to the species. And perhaps more importantly, it’s like too late right? Even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels today we’re already in for a pretty massive chunk of the present forecasts I think? And the Mars colonization stuff just makes no sense from a species survival standpoint: an arbitrarily polluted Earth is vastly more hospitable than Mars. Detecting and altering the course of asteroids is dramatically, dramatically more feasible than a self-sufficient Mars, and if it’s a GRB rather than an asteroid you’re just screwed no matter what. Now if people want to colonize Mars because it’s awesome, I mean be my guest, but don’t sell it as asteroid insurance.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  Probably a bit worse than "bad world war". A lot of the people currently alive are alive because of relatively fragile technological developments (eg. the Green Revolution, global shipping, globalized finance) from the last 50-60 years. World population was 3B in 1960, now it's 8B. Take away fossil fuels and globalization and I'd expect many of these people to die. (Well, everybody's going to die, but die without leaving surviving descendants.) I'd expect world population to revert back to its pre-industrialization levels (~1.2B as of 1850), which implies a die-off of about 85% of people. It wouldn't necessarily be a sharp die-off, but just people having fewer surviving children as resources become more scarce, fertility declines, fewer offspring survive, and fewer of the surviving offspring choose to reproduce. It would also be very unevenly distributed, with some regions becoming basically uninhabited while others have only minor effects or even benefit. By contrast, WW2 killed off about 15% of the population in the worst-affected regions (Poland, Lithuania, the USSR) and only 0.32% in the U.S.
  - benreesman 4y ago
    I hope I didn’t imply that it’s a minor thing, and if I did I regret it. Climate change (to the extent that our computer models of chaotic phenomena are directionally accurate which I think they are) is going to be devastating. I don’t think that it’s going to kill of 85% of people, because to your point it will happen over time: a failed harvest here, a flooded city there over decades or centuries. We will have the opportunity if we take it to adapt incrementally and help the most recently impacted incrementally. Now we might just leave the impacted for the wolves, and that’s a depressingly likely outcome, but we could choose something better. A lot of dystopian thought and fiction was premised on unbounded Malthusian catastrophe, and it isn’t playing out that way to my surprise and I think most people’s surprise. But we haven’t even scratched the surface of options that are available with current technology, one example would be widespread deployment of quite safe fission energy. It’s going to be bad, but how bad depends a lot on what we do.
tamaharbor 4y ago
Why don’t we learn how to adapt to a changing earth rather than go elsewhere?
- MrOwnPut 4y ago
  Because you can't adapt to a planet-killing asteroid. That's what the backup is for. Yes, you should focus on a primary, but that's no excuse to not have a backup.
  - palata 4y ago
    A very unlikely planet-killing asteroid. I can live with the odds. To those who can't, may I ask a question? When you walk in the street to go to work, do you wear bullet-proof gear in case someone shoots you? I mean it may happen, just like the asteroid. It just feels weird to not accept some risk. Let's face it: space exploration is cool, that's all. No need to find excuses :)
    - MrOwnPut 4y ago
      > A very unlikely planet-killing asteroid There's heavy evidence there's already been a mass extinction once from an asteroid. > I can live with the odds. You may be able to, but a lot of people don't want to gamble the existence of the human race if there's a chance we don't have to. You may also live with the odds of no backup to a database, but others here will attest to the importance... > Let's face it: space exploration is cool, that's all. No need to find excuses :) Well, you asked "why do this and not focus on Earth", so I gave you one reason. But yes, I agree, space exploration is cool all on it's own, so I don't see what the complaint is.
      - palata 4y ago
        > There's heavy evidence there's already been a mass extinction once from an asteroid. There's evidence that many more humans have died from pollution. Then we could question whether the solution to the asteroid threat is to try to send a few humans on Mars or to prepare autonomous missions that would reach the asteroid and prevent it from reaching the Earth (e.g. by changing its course). > but a lot of people don't want to gamble the existence of the human race if there's a chance we don't have to. Sure. If the asteroid was one of the higher risks on the list, it would make sense. But right now the biggest risk to humans, by a very wide margin, is human activity. > Well, you asked "why do this and not focus on Earth", so I gave you one reason. It was not me asking, but I think this is a bad reason. It is probably much easier to prevent the hypothetical asteroid from colliding with Earth than to go live in space.
tracerbulletx 4y ago
I think the most useful thing that will come from investment in rockets and space travel will probably be asteroid defense.
shadytrees 4y ago
Related: https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm
roryisok 4y ago
So many posts on here (and I suppose the original post too) are making this a binary argument "Either we fix Earth, or we go to Mars". What happened to doing both? They're not incompatible with each other. We don't have to destroy Earth to build a Martian colony. We don't have to abandon the space program to fix climate change. Everyone's looking for a fight today.
- palata 4y ago
  Actually, more than Climate Change, we face an energy problem. The more we use fossil fuels, the greater the climate problem. But even if we keep burning oil, it's not unlimited. So sooner or later we will have to decide what we do with the energy we have, and at that point it conflicts. If the goal is to reach Mars in a hundred years, chances are that we run out of fossil fuel before that. Maybe we should start preparing for a world with less energy. And artistic performances like sending people on Mars don't sound like a constructive way to use that energy.
lucas_membrane 4y ago
If we want to give a planet like Mars -- less sunlight, slower spin, less gravity, different tides and magnetism, different tilt of its axis -- a habitable and sustainable earth-like environment, can that be done even if given an adequate supply of everything? To get earth-like atmosperic pressure, the atmosphere has to be taller on account of the reduced gravity. To get earth-like warmth, more greenhouse effect is required. So earth-like but not here is not nearly earth-identical. Problems? How quickly would an atmosphere like that leak away from the planet? What kind of weather might it have? How do you fabricate a biosphere for this unhinged sci-fi environment that will choose to grow into one that will both tolerate and sustain a large human presence? How hard is that? Boldly go, but do your homework first.
- palata 4y ago
  The article actually talks about that, concluding that the atmosphere would most likely be unbreathable, whatever we do. So it says that we would live under domes, with the daily risk of a life-threatening leak.
lucas_membrane 4y ago
How long will it take, (1) if billionaire X establishes a (successful?) colony on planet B, until billionaire Y does the same, only different? (2) after the second colony is established, how long until the implicit competition between the colonies becomes palpable as they compete for the highest-value resource thereabout?
tagami 4y ago
What if that killer asteroid hits Mars while we make these (century-long) plans? I love space exploration (my company runs projects in LEO, and has plans for the lunar surface), but there are substantial issues that will not be solved in years or decades. The best backup we can provide is working toward a civilization that respects and honors our home and all the life we share it with.
6510 4y ago
there is no plan
mikewarot 4y ago
Before you can live somewhere else permanently, you need a logistics supply chain to make everything you'll ever need in that new home. We should make a backup supply chain here on Earth. Specifically, an open source library documenting every single product and the sources from which it came, and how it is produced. This could, in theory, then be used as a checklist to make sure we packed all the stuff we need in our metaphorical luggage before embarking on such a journey. Perhaps we should have a contest to see how many of a list of things can be made with a toolkit and local resources. Here are your tools, all the knowledge you'll need and X amount of time... see how many of these things you can make the indicated amounts of. I know from watching John Plant's channel Primitive Technology[1] that you can extract iron from red bacterial mud, and reduce it using tools and technology starting with a rock and working up from there. In theory you can make a lathe with a lathe, a mill with a mill, etc. It would be interesting to see how small a toolkit it really takes. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA
poulpy123 4y ago
That a very excellent article that summarize my thoughts in a much better way that I could do myself

163 points by nsoonhui 4y ago

> This futuristic dream-like scenario is being sold to us as a real scientific possibility, with billionaires planning to move humanity to Mars in the near future. As far as I'm aware, no billionaire has ever said anything about "moving humanity" to Mars or anywhere else; except to dismiss such claims as nonsense. Nobody is "planning" such a thing; let alone for "the near future". Musk wants there to be a colony on Mars in the near future. Bezos wants heavy manufacturing in orbit, or in-situ in the asteroid belt.

deleted 4y ago
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jbu 4y ago
True. But whenever I discuss the climate crisis/future with non-billionaires (i.e. most people I know) there's a significant population of 'don't worry we'll move to mars if it gets too bad'. I mean, have you been on HN for long?
- api 4y ago
  Really? I must hang in different circles. I've never heard anyone say anything like that who has any clue whatsoever about space flight and what it entails... or is any kind of real engineer with a grip on reality. Of course maybe I just dismiss clueless comments so rapidly that I don't register them. I have heard people say we could put a settlement on the Moon or Mars, which is possible.
- chriswarbo 4y ago
  Refuting those claims doesn't require misattributing them.
mrkeen 4y ago
> As far as I'm aware, no billionaire has ever said anything about "moving humanity" to Mars or anywhere else; except to dismiss such claims as nonsense. Yes, it's even worse than that. Environmental types want to keep Earth habitable for humans, because Mars as a plan B is infeasible. > "Why are we doing this?" Musk said at the company's February 2022 Starship progress update. "I think this is an incredibly important thing for the future of life itself ... there's always some chance that something could go wrong on Earth. Dinosaurs are not around anymore!" So yeah, it's not really that we'll save humanity by moving it to Mars. It's that some people will go to Mars and the rest of us can die out here.
- Majestic121 4y ago
  > It's that some people will go to Mars and the rest of us can die out here. If the alternative is that no-one goes to Mars and everybody dies, I'm OK with only some people going there. There are a lot of possible catastrophes that can wipe us out from Earth, and not all of them are preventable or due to mankind. Starting to move towards a direction were we at least have a temporary alternative, even if the alternative is much worse than Earth, and cannot sustain everyone, seems like a basic goal. Having a plan B does not mean that plan A is not the preferred solution.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    There is a risk that seriously entertaining or promoting a plan B undermines efforts to execute plan A, sustainable lifestyles on Earth. Both are hard, yet quick and high visibility wins may be easier with Mars. "Look humans set foot on it!" (After X failed attempts and even the arrivals died soon after.) "Mars now has a habitat module!" (Vulnerable to radiation and completely dependent on shipments from Earth.)
    - chriswarbo 4y ago
      That argument makes sense for e.g. carbon capture schemes, or geoengineering: they seem like easy fixes, compared to the necessary sustainability improvements we actually need to make. "Move to Mars" sounds the opposite of easy.
lapcat 4y ago
> no billionaire has ever said anything about "moving humanity" to Mars > Musk wants there to be a colony on Mars in the near future. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/theyre-the-same-picture https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/theyre-the-same-picture
- rcxdude 4y ago
  The difference is between "there's some humans living on mars, perhaps working towards self-sufficiency" and "we're moving everyone on earth to mars"
  - lapcat 4y ago
    The word "planning" in the quote "with billionaires planning to move humanity to Mars in the near future" is a link to another article: https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-planet-civilisation https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-p... The top of that article says, "Elon Musk argues that we must put a million people on Mars if we are to ensure that humanity has a future." So the author is giving the exact explanation of what it means "to move humanity to Mars". It's a straw man to suggest that the article author intended it to mean "everyone on earth". And a million is the bare minimum: > ‘Even at a million, you’re really assuming an incredible amount of productivity per person, because you would need to recreate the entire industrial base on Mars,’ he [Musk] said. Moreover, the whole justification for colonizing Mars is supposed to be if a disaster struck Earth. So in a sense you have moved all of humanity to Mars if humans on Earth go extinct.
    - chriswarbo 4y ago
      > The top of that article says, "Elon Musk argues that we must put a million people on Mars if we are to ensure that humanity has a future." Having a tiny fraction of humanity on a different world, which is entirely dependent on shipments from home for the foreseeable future, is an irrelevance to the problems we're facing on Earth. > Moreover, the whole justification for colonizing Mars is supposed to be if a disaster struck Earth. So in a sense you have moved all of humanity to Mars if humans on Earth go extinct. Sure, but those disasters are entirely unrelated to any of the problems we're facing right now. Nobody is claiming Mars is a refuge from, say, man-made climate change. It could be a refuge from, say, a gamma-ray burst crossing Earth's orbit in half a million years.
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
I think one problem is that people hear the word colony and they add the term self-sustaining. on edit: fixed typo.
- simiones 4y ago
  Well, they do when it's followed by "we shouldn't keep all our eggs in one basket". The only possible (though still extremely flimsy) reason for creating a Mars colony is if we think we can eventually make it self-sustaining. A non-self-sustaining colony on Mars is worse than useless.
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    sure - however a non-self-sustaining colony on Mars might be the first hundred years, a self-sustaining colony may be the end goal but end goals may be long out.
    - palata 4y ago
      But we need civilisation to survive on Earth for those hundred years first. And right now it's not looking good.
    - simiones 4y ago
      It is very debatable whether a current-tech Mars colony being sustained for a hundred years is in any way a pre-requisite for a self-sustaining Mars colony. I would claim not - at least some of the biggest problems that we need to solve to create a self-sustaining colony in a harsh environment don't actually need us to be on Mars - there are significant problems we can first address right here on Earth. This is significant because unless and until we can solve these problems, there is no reason to try to establish a base on Mars.
Tangurena2 4y ago
That's a "motte & bailey" [0] type of argument. The billionaires talk about "saving humanity" or "making a lifeboat" but when they get questioned, they maneuver the discussion to the motte: "there is no planet B" (or the equivalent). Then, when the attention is elsewhere, back to fantasies of Mars. [0] - https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey
- api 4y ago
  This is a straw man. I still don’t hear anyone serious saying humanity will pick up and move to Mars or anywhere else. They say a very small number of humans (relative to the billions of us) may try to go to the Moon or Mars. That is conceivable. In our lifetimes I could picture basically McMurdo station on the Moon and some flights back and forth to Mars. I could picture a mostly autonomous settlement somewhere in 100 years.
  - bulgur 4y ago
    [dead]
    - hattmall 4y ago
      But why would a terraformed mars somehow be better than even a highly polluted earth? The only potentially legitimate reason for a move to Mars would be to get away from other people on earth.
      - ben_w 4y ago
        A desire to explore and settle a new frontier isn't legitime?
        coldtea 4y ago
        Not so much. Populations look for new better frontiers, not merely new frontiers...
        4y ago
phphphphp 4y ago
> Musk wants there to be a colony on Mars in the near future. As a first step, to prove Mars is liveable. As far as I can recall, he believes that we must be a multi-planetary species to survive which means Earth is destined to die. Space is absolutely a “earth is doomed, we must leave” fantasy for Musk and his acolytes.
- 28304283409234 4y ago
  Oh earth will be just fine. We are screwed. But earth? Just fine.
  - geraldwhen 4y ago
    Earth will eventually die. And all stars. It’s not conceivable to consider expanding the longevity of the human species by more than all of known history, however.
- ben_w 4y ago
  > he believes that we must be a multi-planetary species to survive which means Earth is destined to die. I don't read it as "destined to die", just that there is a non-trivial chance. Mars… I want to be excited, but the more I think about it (and, bluntly, the more bad decisions Musk makes), the less I like the idea. That said, Mars is sufficiently difficult in all the right ways that if we can make a self-sustaining colony there, the only way life on Earth will end is some kind of self-replicating swarm, either in the sense of an engineered pandemic (specifically an engineered one: a merely natural one we can probably defeat just like COVID) or a more sci-fi von Neumann swarm. Mars has half our sunlight, it is colder than Antarctica, dryer than the Sahara, the air is thinner than the top of Everest, the soil is toxic, and we'd have to make any hydrocarbons from the air itself rather than digging them up. Make a Mars colony work despite all of that, we'd easily survive a repeat of the asteroid-ending impact or nuclear winter here on Earth.
- chriswarbo 4y ago
  > As far as I can recall, he believes that we must be a multi-planetary species to survive which means Earth is destined to die. Yes; in several billion years, e.g. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1482552643343904770 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1482552643343904770 "There is a [100%] chance of all species extinction due to expansion of the sun, unless humanity makes life multiplanetary" Do you disagree with this assessment? Either way, it is irrelevant to the claim that "billionaires [are] planning to move humanity to Mars in the near future"
api 4y ago
> Bezos wants heavy manufacturing in orbit, or in-situ in the asteroid belt. Beltalowda!
karmakaze 4y ago
It's absurd to think that any rational person thinks that finding a suitable or terraforming a planet is a viable alternative to preserving the one we have. At the most living on Mars could be seen like a bomb-shelter for the privileged few, but even then not very soon so they'd also need life extension to make that work. At the same time, there's no reason not to continue to explore and expand. That's what tribes did when they discovered they weren't alone, and countries, and continents, etc.
- palata 4y ago
  Is it? To be it sounds absurd to care about preserving the human species, and completely forgetting about biodiversity. Yet it really feels like some seemingly rational people think that sending a few humans to Mars matters, "to preserve the species"...
- poulpy123 4y ago
  > At the most living on Mars could be seen like a bomb-shelter for the privileged few Not even. Having underground or underwater shelters would be much more feasible and useful for them

Pinegulf 4y ago

> The scientific evidence is clear: the only celestial body that can support us is the one we evolved with. I must have missed the evidence. Exactly what were they? Additionally, don't stand in the way of those who wish to boldly go where no-one has gone before.

truculent 4y ago
When going boldly requires shared resources and has knock-on effects for everyone, shouldn't we all have a say?
- pfdietz 4y ago
  No? I mean, if people who have money want to spend it on something like that, why should we have a say? It's their money, not ours. EDIT: ah, the perennial game of rationalizing taking from others when they aren't doing what you want them to do.
  - RGamma 4y ago
    (Edit: Liquid) Wealth represents economic surplus, much of which is gained unsustainably. The least we should expect is that this surplus doesn't also chase pipe dreams, because these have an additional opportunity cost.
    - api 4y ago
      The global perfume industry is about $50 billion. The porn industry is estimated to be between $6 and $15 billion. The NASA budget is $24 billion, so somewhere between porn and perfume. Also much of billionaires' net worth is fictitious paper. You can see this in Musk "losing" $150 billion dollars. That never really existed in the first place. It was leveraged value of things like stocks, not liquid wealth. What actually happened was that Musk's paper net worth was corrected to something a little bit closer to reality (but probably still on the high side). Actual wealth is physical: stuff, industrial capital, generation capacity, farm land, etc. If you magically redistributed paper wealth to everyone in the world you'd just get hyperinflation since there is not enough actual physical wealth to support all of humanity at anything like a "first world" standard. To get there requires probably another 50-100 years of continuous development, this time smarter using more sustainable practices since unsustainable fossil fuel based development can't get there. We could get a settlement on the Moon by spending a little more on space than perfume. It's a rounding error compared to the global economy. If you want to get mad about wasted wealth, get mad about global military budgets and war. That's just blowing shit up and we spend hundreds of times more on that than either space or sustainable development.

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greydius 4y ago

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qtTi_uyYynA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qtTi_uyYynA

Mountain_Skies 4y ago

Star Trek and similar science fiction entertainment is far more responsible for the public having a belief in "Planet B" than anything else. Guess one could argue that tv and movies are the creation of entities that are like billionaires given their wealth and influence but even pulpy midcentury sci-fi magazines written by nearly impoverished authors were pushing the vision of humanity spreading far beyond Earth. Almost everyone in the developed world grew up in a cultural environment steeped in this sci-fi vision of humanity in space.

mabbo 4y ago

Let's set aside the part that making a planet where we could live is hard. Just presume we did that, to start. Let's talk Logistics. Presume there are only 1 billion people left on Earth when we decide it's time to go. How do you get them there? The gravity well holding us here (and holding the air down so we can breath it) is pretty darn strong. Today we're hoping to get cost-to-orbit down to around $100/kg. I weigh a bit less than 100kg, so that's $10,000 just for my mass- not including the life support system I need. And then I'm just in orbit. If I'm moving to some kind of spin-gravity station in orbit, that's not too far away. But Mars? Mars is a months long trip in a best case. And don't get me started on planets on other stars. Even the most optimistic generation ships would be taking 10s of thousands of years to get there- longer than all of human history so far. If each ship held 100,000 people, you'd need 10,000 of them. And what power source would you use to move that massive ship, and keep the light and heat on between stars? (Antimatter, I guess?) If we can make Mars habitable, we can make Earth habitable for far less cost. I'm entirely in favour of building spin-gravity stations, Mars habitats, even terraformation of Mars and Venus. I just feel like it's never going to be the case that anything more than a tiny fraction of humans will leave Earth to go see those things.

kneebonian 4y ago
Wonderful article about overcoming Earth's gravity well available here https://what-if.xkcd.com/7/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/7/
ben_w 4y ago
If you really want to get a billion off earth quickly, you'd use a non-rocket system like a launch loop ($3/kg) or an orbital loop ($0.05/kg). I kinda agree that most humans won't leave Earth, at least for the foreseeable future, even if those things were magically built this year: even in 2019, international tourism was only 1.466 billion people, less than 20%.
- m4rtink 4y ago
  While I don't see that mentioned very often I do think off-Earth settlements could have many benefits even for the Earth population - say research commoning from experience of living in space environments could have application on Earth. Also many asteroid strikes could be much more likely to be detected and averted using in-space instruments and infrastructure. Even more exotic stuff like dropping first responders from orbit to disaster areas might be useful, but would not ever be doable without infrastructure in place for supporting space operations.

eloff 4y ago

No matter how bad we fuck our planet, it’s still paradise compared to what else is out there. Elon Musk wants to go to mars, but Antarctica is much more amenable to life and nobody wants to live there. I understand it’s about having a backup plan for humanity. I think we could do it cheaper on Earth. I also don’t think we need one. It would be nearly impossible to make humans extinct at this point. We’re too adaptable and there’s too many of us. Civilization could fail, but humans would endure. We could get slammed by a giant asteroid that could kill 95% of the biomass on the planet, and we’d still survive in little pockets. We could nuke ourselves until the planet flows in the dark, but we’d still survive in places that were spared. Civilization is much more fragile.

L_226 4y ago
> nobody wants to live there Speak for yourself, I and many people I know would leap at the opportunity. As an Australian I have already considered applying for a rotation with the Australian Antarctic Division, and I will likely do so in the future when my life circumstances allow. With regards to your comment about bolide impact - you do realise that there is a non-zero probability of an impact that will destroy the actual crust of the Earth and remove the ability for _any_ life to exist on the planet right?
- lgl 4y ago
  Agreed. Way too many people seem to think that any asteroid impact would be similar to a thermonuclear device and could somehow be "survivable", which would only be true for relatively "small" asteroids. The reality is that a large enough or fast enough mass hitting not only Earth but any of it's neighboring planets could completely destabilize the solar system on a (literally) planetary scale. So even our fear of asteroids hitting earth is already too modest as we should really worry about them hitting any planet, especially the inner ones.
  - z3c0 4y ago
    On the other side of things, celestial objects are not flying around at random. They have trajectories typically leading away from us, and the odds for one to suddenly veer through what is mostly a void to hit another spec of dust are just as astronomically small as surviving the impact, should it actually happen.

BaculumMeumEst 4y ago

great track by king gizzard & the wizard lizard https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qtTi_uyYynA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qtTi_uyYynA

kroltan 4y ago
Seeing the title I thought the article might be about it, for a second.
hammeiam 4y ago
One of their best albums to boot
- skyyler 4y ago
  All of their albums are their best album. I've been particularly enjoying Butterfly 3000 recently, even though I thought it was weak when I first heard it.
jibbers 4y ago
Related: https://www.marsfortherich.com https://www.marsfortherich.com

lordfrito 4y ago

We're never getting off this planet. At least not in these carbon based bodies. Best to learn to live on the planet we have.

college_physics 4y ago

> There’s No Planet B The mere need to state this suggests we are facing a serious problem internalizing our condition. We are not taking seriously the implications of human choices and actions when multiplied by billions. The sustainability of our living on Earth was not even a visible problem 300 years ago [0]. It is far more of a problem now and could become a terminal problem 300 years from now. 300 years is nothing in the scheme of things. We should be scared. Not in a superficial, panicky way, but in a deep, culture-changing way. Obviously the problem does not yet hit the present generations severely enough (hence the luxury of idle talk). But it will certainly hit the ones following in the near future. [0] Alexander von Humbolt seems to be the first author that articulated environmental risk circa ~1800.

palata 4y ago
We don't have a lot of generations before major changes happen. I believe that we won't prevent anything: we'll just try to survive to whatever happens, more or less successfully.
- college_physics 4y ago
  Its a plausible scenario. If past collapse events are a guide, future humans will simply accept whatever loss, blame it on barbaric earlier civilizations and move on with whatever is available. The difference is that we don't consider ourselves "barbarians", but maybe nobody did in the past either...
poulpy123 4y ago
> The sustainability of our living on Earth was not even a visible problem 300 years ago It was not even a problem 100 years ago, and I would even say 50 years ago except for some people (some being crazy)

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hooby 4y ago

Even if we manage to terraform and colonize another planet - that's not going to save us, if we destroy that other planet as well. And whatever other planet we do terraform and colonize is going to be a lot more fragile and a lot easier to destroy than earth is. If we can't manage to not destroy earth, there's no way we can manage to keep another planet going. So, we really should do everything to train and master those planet-preserving skills here on earth, because if we ever do settle another planet, we are going to need them!

ReptileMan 4y ago
If we have the technology to terraform a planet ... we can totally clean up the Earth too ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKIOSnKX96E&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKIOSnKX96E&t=1s This piece by Konstantin Kisin rightfully pointed out that the only peaceful way out of the bind is with technology.
- palata 4y ago
  I, for one, believe that technology is the problem, not the solution.
- hooby 4y ago
  Well, then let's develop the technology to clean up is planet now - so we can use it to terraform other planets later!

kryptiskt 4y ago

For me the best argument in favor of space settlement is moving industry and mining from Earth. That way we can continue to expand humanity's capabilities without it impacting the Earth's environment too much. So I think the asteroid belt is a lot more interesting than Mars as a target.

cannonpr 4y ago

I don’t think most of us are getting off this planet, not with human bodies. I do however love Greg Evans vision of the future of colonisation. Von Neumann probes and we just send the people as data. In one of his books there are even the “retronaughts” a group of Elon musk like obsessives slowly travelling on a fusion rocket, as human civilisation expands at the speed of light ahead of them, constantly in denial about living in the past. I think if we can start getting some basic robotics to the asteroid belt that would be the first step to having more industrial capacity off planet, which will also help us save our basket by moving energy and pollution intensive things in orbit. The future belongs to our robots, not our human bodies.

newaccount2021 4y ago
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fleddr 4y ago

Humans are simply not organized to take care of long term issues. A system of nation states ensures a "tragedy of the commons" situation where everybody optimizes for their own short term interests. One failed climate summit after the other cements this reality. And this isn't just national selfishness, most nation states have existential short term issues to deal with. At the national level, assuming a democracy, politicians run in 4-5 year terms. Who will get the vote? The politician promising tax cuts or the one proposing unpopular climate measures that increase your cost of living? You know the answer. The current narrative that our leaders are too corrupt or incompetent is only half the story. The issue very much is part of all of us. When giving the choice to do the long term thing, we prefer the short term thing. We're wired that way. Just like we're wired to go for junk food. We should start thinking that way going forward: we're too flawed and limited to do what is right for us in the long term. And then work from there. The idea that there's good people and bad people and we just need to convince the bad people, is flawed. My "lived experience" is that people do not care. They don't care about nature. They don't care about other countries. They care only about what is right in front of them, and what is there right now. Everything else is abstract and unimportant. This too you can read as evil or narcissism, but it's just how our species are. As individuals, we're not designed to take on the burden of an entire planet. We're small scale social primates and think and acts as such. The very idea of a global community (and abstract thinking) is brand new. My point is to not wait for a moment where we all "turn good". The current inaction or indifference is our natural state. At a global level, people will never ever prioritize long term issues over short term issues, this behavioral change isn't coming.

chrsw 4y ago

I'm trying to imagine a world where terraforming planets and intersteller travel are solved problems but keeping Earth hospitable is beyond our capability. Doesn't seem plausible. But on the flip side, I can clearly see how if we fail to keep this planet livable we have no hope of reaching other livable worlds.

tannhauser23 4y ago

This article is full of strawman arguments. I'm not aware of anyone who's arguing for moving billions of humans to another planet or for dedicating the resources of Earth to terraform Mars. It's not like Mars colonization proponents are keeping their plans secret - the authors could easily have googled what the actual propositions are, to wit: - Use current or near-current tech to send human missions to Mars - Use existing resources on Mars to the extent possible to support a research station - Let the settlement grow organically. It will be science-focused at first but may develop economic value over time (Robert Zubrin suggests asteroid mining or deuterium harvesting) Terraforming, if it happens at all, will be a centuries-long process by the Mars inhabitants, largely using resources available on that planet. No one's suggesting strip-mining Earth to make Mars habitable. I don't know why some people think that human missions to Mars are incompatible with fixing Earth's problems. We have the resources to do both.

lapcat 4y ago
> It's not like Mars colonization proponents are keeping their plans secret - the authors could easily have googled what the actual propositions are The word "planning" in "with billionaires planning to move humanity to Mars in the near future" is literally a hyperlink to another article discussing what the actual propositions are, i.e, "Elon Musk argues that we must put a million people on Mars if we are to ensure that humanity has a future". https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-planet-civilisation https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-p...
- QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
  I wonder how much higher quality internet discourse sould be if million and billion didn't rhyme lol
bashmelek 4y ago
As someone who is generally pro-Mars colonization (and has Zubrin’s book), I feel this. We don’t need to dichotomize this and I welcome advances towards humans going beyond where we have ever been. At the same time, I realize there is a lot of pain and anxiety down here. The environment is being wrecked. Climate is changing beyond what an evolved ecosystem can handle. At the same time, there are poor nations trying to catch up, who will not like being told to slow down by the developed world. With collective action global poverty could be solved in the next 10 years. The worst of it, anyway. But suddenly the argument becomes that by giving a dollar to space exploration you are depriving a starving person? I simply cannot accept that hardline utilitarianism. Unfortunately, being just some internet person, I don’t have numbers on how much to spend on space technology. What should it be at this point in time, in comparison to all of our other needs? All I can say is greater than zero.

linuxftw 4y ago

Indeed. There's no reason to send another penny's worth of material to Mars ever again. There will never be a sustainable colony there, ever, in the history of mankind, unless we develop some sort of free-energy technology or teleportation system like a science fiction movie.

PaulHoule 4y ago

Not like we can count on it, but most of the living space in the universe is not on the surface of planets but rather could be built out of carbon and water rich asteroids (though it is Nitrogen that looks like the hardest thing to get right now) https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487 https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487 is a plan to build a structure that could support a population larger than the Earth. (I'd read that paper not just as boosterism or science fiction but also as a criticism of other space colonization schemes whose problems it addresses.) That kind of colony would be a solar economy but with deuterium-deuterium fusion you could support a similar lifestyle in the outer solar system or interstellar space. Hopping from comet to comet with a comfortable lifestyle, travelers could make it from star to star in 10,000 years ago but they might be completely uninterested in comparatively dry inner solar system bodies like the Earth and Mars when you could cut up a planet like Pluto to create much more living space. Mars is a small planet compared to the Earth. If you actually want to widen mankind's prospects, look to the asteroid belt, where it takes just 10⁷ kg of material per person to build a habitat as opposed to the 10ⁱ⁶ kg of planet needed to support you. So I think asteroids are a more interesting target than Mars, probably not that much harder but a much larger reward. Mars is a smaller planet than the Earth and would have a hard time outgrowing us, but Ceres really could be a path to the stars.

1970-01-01 4y ago

Let's assume we're not going anywhere because it's extremely hard. Now let's also assume the last century includes all of the methods to engineer energy mankind will ever create. See! There's no planet B! Colonization is impossible!

curation 4y ago

The concept of planet B is itself ideological. Climate change is a symptom of capitalism; which remains unchallenged. Why is it easier to imagine a zombie apocalypse than a different economic system. Varoufakis Another Now attempts this. Until we are able to imagine new economic structures our attempts to avoid "planet B" will continue to create new markets and that is it.

im_down_w_otp 4y ago

My strong suspicion is that the weak point of any interplanetary relocation attempt will be human behavior. Completely regardless of the technology.

ElectronCharge 4y ago

I’ve read most responses to this, here’s my take: 1) The overall concept would be a lot clearer if it were called Earth2 instead of “Planet B”. I agree it’s unlikely we’ll find something suitable “nearby” without terraforming. 2) We know there’s no Earth2 in our solar system. 3) There is no foreseeable path to interstellar travel other than generation ships, presumably after advance scouting. This is not worth considering with present technology. Time horizon for suitable technology is unknown. 4) Saving Earth and colonizing space are NOT mutually exclusive. 5) Abundant, clean energy resources are the only sane path to preserving Earth in more or less its present state. A rising standard of living is associated with lower (or no) population growth, and a cleaner environment. 6) Given sufficient energy, and expertise in interplanetary travel, the Moon and Mars can both become very nice habitats for humans. Almost all day-to-day existence will take place underground. Centrifuges may be needed for physiological reasons (shame on NASA for not studying this sufficiently). 7) Strictly space-based habitats may be better (one G centrifugal force is easy), the downside being that all materials must be transported from elsewhere unless asteroids are converted to habitats. Space habitats will require radiation shielding equivalent to a few feet of concrete. 8) The key thing for all of this, and also for improving standards of living for Earth-dwellers, is abundant energy. The only way to clean up our act on Earth is with massive energy abundance. 9) Solar can help everywhere, and wind can be part of Earth-based solutions, but advanced energy sources like fission and fusion MUST be used as part of the solution. 10) Nuclear powered space travel should be (and is in fact becoming) a priority. An intense focus on advanced space travel may eventually make interstellar travel possible. 11) It’s likely possible that given robust interplanetary travel, the Solar System alone could support a sustainable human population in the tens to hundreds of billions, as well as Earth being a near-pristine “life preserve” with a population of just a few billion. 12) More people should be getting STEM educations. ;-)

Haga 4y ago

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yellowapple 4y ago

> From an astronomer’s perspective, Mars is Earth’s identical twin. I know of precisely zero astronomers who consider Mars to be Earth's identical twin. Usually that's said of Venus, not Mars. > The proposed absolute best-case scenario for terraforming Mars leaves us with an atmosphere we are incapable of breathing That ain't the proposed "absolute best-case scenario". The actual best-case scenario comes from the steps after thickening the atmosphere with carbon dioxide - namely, the "grow plants in an atmosphere wherein they can actually breathe and not immediately freeze to death or get zapped to death by cosmic radiation". Also, carbon dioxide ain't the only gas that would be involved. Water vapor is just as crucial. Neither are sufficiently abundant on Mars to be useful for terraforming, but asteroids tend to be rich with hydrocarbons and water - and NASA has already been testing the feasibility of redirecting asteroids. > a more realistic scenario might be to build habitat domes on its surface Outside of sci-fi that's rarely proposed. The more typical proposal (besides smaller, non-dome habitats) is to build underground. Easier to shield against radiation, easier to mitigate leaks. > for example, this concept does not consider plate tectonics, which are thought to be crucial to sustain life on Earth. Thought by whom? The link doesn't seem to assert that, and there's no reason to believe that plate tectonics contribute in any meaningful way to sustaining life on Earth. They likely contributed to creating life on Earth, but last I checked I ain't a thermophilic microbe huddled around a geothermal vent on the ocean floor. > Earth’s current aeon, the Phanerozoic, began only around 541 million years ago with the Cambrian explosion [...] In 1 billion years, the gradual warming of our Sun is predicted to cause Earth’s oceans to boil away. While this certainly sounds worrying, 1 billion years is a long, long time. The author's inconsistency on whether time periods are relatively "long" or "short" depending on whether it helps or hinder's the author's argument makes it increasingly difficult to assume the author is arguing in good faith. ---- While I agree fully with the article that the destruction of Earth's biosphere can and must be prevented, I disagree strongly with the article's implicit conclusion that expanding beyond Earth is not a component of that. Earth is already straining to support the human population and its modern standard of living; that'll only get worse as the population grows, as those currently living in poorer parts of the world rightly demand a standard of living closer to that of the richer parts of the world, and as the richer parts of the world push the expected average standard of living yet higher. We need to get as many humans off of Earth as we physically can, before Earth evicts us. We need to be moving as close to the entirety of our industry as possible into orbit, the Moon, and beyond. We need to give Earth an opportunity to heal from the damage we've done to it - and we need to buy time until we have the technological means to affordably do so.

benreesman 4y ago

I think that concern over the climate on Earth has reached “too much of a healthy thing” levels. Climate change is almost certainly going to cause human and economic disasters on a massive scale, but it’s not going to eradicate the human species or most likely even meaningfully set civilization back more than completely avoidable policy stuff. It’s probably going to be “bad world war” level bad, which is very bad but not fatal to the species. And perhaps more importantly, it’s like too late right? Even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels today we’re already in for a pretty massive chunk of the present forecasts I think? And the Mars colonization stuff just makes no sense from a species survival standpoint: an arbitrarily polluted Earth is vastly more hospitable than Mars. Detecting and altering the course of asteroids is dramatically, dramatically more feasible than a self-sufficient Mars, and if it’s a GRB rather than an asteroid you’re just screwed no matter what. Now if people want to colonize Mars because it’s awesome, I mean be my guest, but don’t sell it as asteroid insurance.

nostrademons 4y ago
Probably a bit worse than "bad world war". A lot of the people currently alive are alive because of relatively fragile technological developments (eg. the Green Revolution, global shipping, globalized finance) from the last 50-60 years. World population was 3B in 1960, now it's 8B. Take away fossil fuels and globalization and I'd expect many of these people to die. (Well, everybody's going to die, but die without leaving surviving descendants.) I'd expect world population to revert back to its pre-industrialization levels (~1.2B as of 1850), which implies a die-off of about 85% of people. It wouldn't necessarily be a sharp die-off, but just people having fewer surviving children as resources become more scarce, fertility declines, fewer offspring survive, and fewer of the surviving offspring choose to reproduce. It would also be very unevenly distributed, with some regions becoming basically uninhabited while others have only minor effects or even benefit. By contrast, WW2 killed off about 15% of the population in the worst-affected regions (Poland, Lithuania, the USSR) and only 0.32% in the U.S.
- benreesman 4y ago
  I hope I didn’t imply that it’s a minor thing, and if I did I regret it. Climate change (to the extent that our computer models of chaotic phenomena are directionally accurate which I think they are) is going to be devastating. I don’t think that it’s going to kill of 85% of people, because to your point it will happen over time: a failed harvest here, a flooded city there over decades or centuries. We will have the opportunity if we take it to adapt incrementally and help the most recently impacted incrementally. Now we might just leave the impacted for the wolves, and that’s a depressingly likely outcome, but we could choose something better. A lot of dystopian thought and fiction was premised on unbounded Malthusian catastrophe, and it isn’t playing out that way to my surprise and I think most people’s surprise. But we haven’t even scratched the surface of options that are available with current technology, one example would be widespread deployment of quite safe fission energy. It’s going to be bad, but how bad depends a lot on what we do.

tamaharbor 4y ago

Why don’t we learn how to adapt to a changing earth rather than go elsewhere?

MrOwnPut 4y ago
Because you can't adapt to a planet-killing asteroid. That's what the backup is for. Yes, you should focus on a primary, but that's no excuse to not have a backup.
- palata 4y ago
  A very unlikely planet-killing asteroid. I can live with the odds. To those who can't, may I ask a question? When you walk in the street to go to work, do you wear bullet-proof gear in case someone shoots you? I mean it may happen, just like the asteroid. It just feels weird to not accept some risk. Let's face it: space exploration is cool, that's all. No need to find excuses :)
  - MrOwnPut 4y ago
    > A very unlikely planet-killing asteroid There's heavy evidence there's already been a mass extinction once from an asteroid. > I can live with the odds. You may be able to, but a lot of people don't want to gamble the existence of the human race if there's a chance we don't have to. You may also live with the odds of no backup to a database, but others here will attest to the importance... > Let's face it: space exploration is cool, that's all. No need to find excuses :) Well, you asked "why do this and not focus on Earth", so I gave you one reason. But yes, I agree, space exploration is cool all on it's own, so I don't see what the complaint is.
    - palata 4y ago
      > There's heavy evidence there's already been a mass extinction once from an asteroid. There's evidence that many more humans have died from pollution. Then we could question whether the solution to the asteroid threat is to try to send a few humans on Mars or to prepare autonomous missions that would reach the asteroid and prevent it from reaching the Earth (e.g. by changing its course). > but a lot of people don't want to gamble the existence of the human race if there's a chance we don't have to. Sure. If the asteroid was one of the higher risks on the list, it would make sense. But right now the biggest risk to humans, by a very wide margin, is human activity. > Well, you asked "why do this and not focus on Earth", so I gave you one reason. It was not me asking, but I think this is a bad reason. It is probably much easier to prevent the hypothetical asteroid from colliding with Earth than to go live in space.

tracerbulletx 4y ago

I think the most useful thing that will come from investment in rockets and space travel will probably be asteroid defense.

shadytrees 4y ago

Related: https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm

roryisok 4y ago

So many posts on here (and I suppose the original post too) are making this a binary argument "Either we fix Earth, or we go to Mars". What happened to doing both? They're not incompatible with each other. We don't have to destroy Earth to build a Martian colony. We don't have to abandon the space program to fix climate change. Everyone's looking for a fight today.

palata 4y ago
Actually, more than Climate Change, we face an energy problem. The more we use fossil fuels, the greater the climate problem. But even if we keep burning oil, it's not unlimited. So sooner or later we will have to decide what we do with the energy we have, and at that point it conflicts. If the goal is to reach Mars in a hundred years, chances are that we run out of fossil fuel before that. Maybe we should start preparing for a world with less energy. And artistic performances like sending people on Mars don't sound like a constructive way to use that energy.

lucas_membrane 4y ago

If we want to give a planet like Mars -- less sunlight, slower spin, less gravity, different tides and magnetism, different tilt of its axis -- a habitable and sustainable earth-like environment, can that be done even if given an adequate supply of everything? To get earth-like atmosperic pressure, the atmosphere has to be taller on account of the reduced gravity. To get earth-like warmth, more greenhouse effect is required. So earth-like but not here is not nearly earth-identical. Problems? How quickly would an atmosphere like that leak away from the planet? What kind of weather might it have? How do you fabricate a biosphere for this unhinged sci-fi environment that will choose to grow into one that will both tolerate and sustain a large human presence? How hard is that? Boldly go, but do your homework first.

palata 4y ago
The article actually talks about that, concluding that the atmosphere would most likely be unbreathable, whatever we do. So it says that we would live under domes, with the daily risk of a life-threatening leak.

lucas_membrane 4y ago

How long will it take, (1) if billionaire X establishes a (successful?) colony on planet B, until billionaire Y does the same, only different? (2) after the second colony is established, how long until the implicit competition between the colonies becomes palpable as they compete for the highest-value resource thereabout?

tagami 4y ago

What if that killer asteroid hits Mars while we make these (century-long) plans? I love space exploration (my company runs projects in LEO, and has plans for the lunar surface), but there are substantial issues that will not be solved in years or decades. The best backup we can provide is working toward a civilization that respects and honors our home and all the life we share it with.

6510 4y ago

there is no plan

mikewarot 4y ago

Before you can live somewhere else permanently, you need a logistics supply chain to make everything you'll ever need in that new home. We should make a backup supply chain here on Earth. Specifically, an open source library documenting every single product and the sources from which it came, and how it is produced. This could, in theory, then be used as a checklist to make sure we packed all the stuff we need in our metaphorical luggage before embarking on such a journey. Perhaps we should have a contest to see how many of a list of things can be made with a toolkit and local resources. Here are your tools, all the knowledge you'll need and X amount of time... see how many of these things you can make the indicated amounts of. I know from watching John Plant's channel Primitive Technology[1] that you can extract iron from red bacterial mud, and reduce it using tools and technology starting with a rock and working up from there. In theory you can make a lathe with a lathe, a mill with a mill, etc. It would be interesting to see how small a toolkit it really takes. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA

poulpy123 4y ago

That a very excellent article that summarize my thoughts in a much better way that I could do myself