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> 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 futu
by 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[deleted]
- jbu 4y agoTrue. 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 agoReally? 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 agoRefuting 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 agoThere 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 agoThat 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.
- chr1 4y agoWell, there is still similar chance of an asteroid hitting Mars instead of Earth so it's not like they are moving to a safe space leaving "the rest of us to die". In fact if you are so worried about going the way of dinosaurs you must support establishment of a colony, because the industry developed for that will be the best way to change the path of an asteroid flying to earth.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoAsteroids aside, Mars is inhospitable at the moment and will remain so for thousands of years, forcing any inhabitants to live in similar or worse conditions as the researchers on Antarctica. And at least the people in Antarctica don't have to worry about breatheable air.
- 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 agoThe 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 agoThe 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 agoI think one problem is that people hear the word colony and they add the term self-sustaining. on edit: fixed typo.
- simiones 4y agoWell, 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 agosure - 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 agoBut we need civilisation to survive on Earth for those hundred years first. And right now it's not looking good.
- simiones 4y agoIt 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 agoThat'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 agoThis 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.
- 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 agoOh earth will be just fine. We are screwed. But earth? Just fine.
- geraldwhen 4y agoEarth 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 agoIt'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 agoIs 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