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I've yet to see an argument for colonizing Mars for this purpose, that wouldn't be a better argument if the goal were instead "build robust, distributed bunkers

I've yet to see an argument for colonizing Mars for this purpose, that wouldn't be a better argument if the goal were instead "build robust, distributed bunkers on earth, and pay families to live in them part-time so there's always someone there". Cheaper, and more effective. Most plausible post-apocalyptic Earths would be far easier to live on than Mars. The remaining threats that wouldn't also be pretty likely to take out Mars at the same time, would be something like a whole-crust-liquifying impact, which we'd have a pretty good chance of spotting well in advance, and we could put some of the savings into getting better at that. I think a bunch of smart people are also just romantics when it comes to space shit, and that's why they won't shut up about Mars, not because it's actually a good idea. Hell, building orbital habs is probably a better idea than colonizing Mars, for those purposes, if we must do space shit.

walleeee 4y ago
> Most plausible post-apocalyptic Earths would be far easier to live on than Mars. thank you how are we supposed to build a second home on a dead, ruthlessly hostile planet until we demonstrate ourselves capable of stabilizing the biosphere and building a sustainable long-term civilization here Earth is easy mode compared to Mars
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > how are we supposed to build a second home on a dead, ruthlessly hostile planet until we demonstrate ourselves capable of stabilizing the biosphere and building a sustainable long-term civilization here Because we can afford to make big mistakes in terraforming a dead, ruthlessly hostile planet.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    A few microscopic fungal-like spore things could throw a wrench in that. Now the planet is a nature reserve.
    - smegger001 4y ago
      why? fungel spores probaly are contaimination by what ever probe we sent there. any life evolving their would not be from any terrestrial evolutionary branch such as fungus
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        All this terror about "contaminating" other objects in the solar system with terran life is just misguided. We should all hope to get some terran life established on them. Heck, we need to build probes full of selected terran extremophiles and spray them into the Martian atmosphere.
        WalterBright 4y ago
        1. Any existing life there is, at this point, highly improbable 2. If there is any, how could terran life be competitive with it if the existing life has evolved to match the local environment over billions of years? 3. If there is existing life, how could a biologist not be able to easily distinguish it from terran life? 4. If the life there is ancient and now extinct, terran life isn't going to interfere with that
        anonymouskimmer 4y ago
        To answer part 2 with just one example: The native life of Mars, if it still exists, would exist in a state of homeostasis with its environment. It would have to in order to still remain existent. If terrestrial organisms were capable of replicating under martian conditions, they could easily eat everything up and then die off. Never quite getting the time necessary to adapt to the ecological limits of their new habitat. And by this process driving the native life to extinction as well. To answer part 3: We're still discovering new kingdoms of life on Earth (though it's unlikely we'll discover new domains). If localized panspermia exists within our solar system (from meteor impacts or the like) it's possible martian life and terrestrial life are related enough for the martian life to fit within the already existing family tree of terrestrial life. https://astronomy.com/news/2021/05/did-life-on-earth-come-from-outer-space https://astronomy.com/news/2021/05/did-life-on-earth-come-fr...
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Right—living on Mars is like living on Earth if it ambient surface radiation levels were significantly higher, nothing would grow in the soil anywhere without a ton of preparation, and you couldn't leave your house without a pressure suit. And there's no surface water. And the gravity's fucked up. And the temperatures suck for basically anything life-related. And none of the geological and chemical processes that keep our biosphere viable existed, at all. So... like Earth if several apocalypses happened at once, including a few nigh-impossible ones. Except it starts that way. And it's actually even worse than that. Sure, maybe we could slam some comets into it and do a ton of other sci-fi shit over a few centuries and it'd eventually get better, sorta, a little—but c'mon, seriously?
- smegger001 4y ago
  >how are we supposed to build a second home on a dead, ruthlessly hostile planet until we demonstrate ourselves capable of stabilizing the biosphere and building a sustainable long-term civilization here because its unique challenges and constraints may make us develop technology that we wouldn't otherwise that may in turn out to be useful back on earth. Much of our technological advancements come from military research, where there was no civilian demand. We developed computers so we could break encryption, we developed the internet as a successor to arpanet a military network originally made to maintain command and control in event of nuclear exchange. standardized clothes sizing was invented to make uniforms more cheaply. satellites were invented so we could spy on our military rivals. the entire space program was a spin off of ICBM program. Nuclear power came from atomic bomb research, we have developed many advaced prosthetic due to injured veterans needing them. weather prodiction thanks to radar to detect enemy planes. But what if we could have something less self destructive than war that would germinate new technologies? Thats what a reasons to colonizes space. space colonization gives us many of the same challenges war does without the need for mass loss of life. Needs for new materials, new means of generating power, new modes of transportation. space exploration will give us new frontiers to strive against rather than find better ways to murder each-other. the ease of earth doesn't provide those challenges. I can dig up my back yard throw seed on the ground and will have vegetables to eat in the fall but i have learned nothing, find a way to grow food from lunar or martian regolith and you just have invented a way to rapidly create new soil and solved earths soil erosion problems ans well as found new ways of removing toxins from contaminated environments.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    >I can dig up my back yard throw seed on the ground and will have vegetables to eat in the fall but i have learned nothing, find a way to grow food from lunar or martian regolith and you just have invented a way to rapidly create new soil and solved earths soil erosion problems ans well as found new ways of removing toxins from contaminated environments. We already have no till agriculture. The plants terraform the soil for us. The problem with this terraformation is that you need to rotate the plants because every plant terraforms the soil in a different way. Plants don't deplete the soil unless you replant the same plant over and over again and destroy terraforming progress through tillage and harvest it and then never bring the poop back. Some people will now say that avoiding soil depletion in the short term is a bad idea because it means using a little bit more land (or bring up incorrect numbers).
- munificent 4y ago
  Agreed 1000000% and this argument bugs the fuck out of me. If we can't successfully terraform Earth how the fuck are we going to terraform Mars?
- mLuby 4y ago
  It goes both ways. Learning to live on a dead world like Mars (or better yet, off-world altogether) will necessarily entail significant improvements in recycling, atmospheric control, and energy management. Those same technologies could be critical to reversing the damage we've done to our homeworld and enabling us to live on it sustainably.
- naasking 4y ago
  > sustainable long-term civilization here Earth is easy mode compared to Mars Which is easier, building a colony on Mars or solving politics? I rest my case. Mars, here we come!
  - walleeee 4y ago
    Do you imagine a Mars colony will not have its own politics? Politics is arguably motivated in large part by scarcity. On Mars resources are a lot harder to come by than on Earth. You could make an argument that a shared struggle against extreme conditions would stabilize societies and make cooperation a necessity, but a Mars colony is going to need a lot of help from Earth to get on its feet, in which case we still need to solve terrestrial politics anyway.
    - naasking 4y ago
      > Do you imagine a Mars colony will not have its own politics A Mars colony would be small by necessity. Everyone will know everyone else. In such communities "politics" is not nearly so abstract. For instance, you can't convince yourself that climate change is not happening when you personally know the experts in that field taking the measurements and crunching the data. There will always be disagreements but nowhere near the type of nonsense we see here on Earth.
tcmart14 4y ago
Pretty much. I want to colonize Mars, but not as a solution to apocalypse scenarios. Long-long term it would help, but yea, it isn't the optimal solution to solve current problems we are facing now. Still want to colonize it, but just because it would be cool. Whether we take 5 years or 150 years to do it or 1,000 years to do it, doesn't bother me. Although doing it in the next 30 years would mean there is a good chance I could see it happen, but thats about it.
ianburrell 4y ago
One big problem with Mars is that requires technology to live on. Most of the risks are civilization ending events not extinction level events. When civilization fails, on Earth the survivors bang rocks together, on Mars they die. It turns civilization ending into extinction. One big question is if can make Mars civilization that would survive Earth collapse. It is possible that there are some things, like biological samples or advanced technology that have to come from mother planet. Mars will likely take a long time to become self-sufficient and until then it isn’t a backup. The easier self-sufficiency is, the less Mars is needed as backup. The final thing is that colonizing Mars could introduce risks. It would involve developing technology that makes disaster more likely, like advanced AI, genetic engineering, or moving asteroids in space. Or could be adding a place for conflict leading to Earth-Mars war that destroys both planets.
naasking 4y ago
> Most plausible post-apocalyptic Earths would be far easier to live on than Mars. Most, but not all right? So then you agree that there is still a case for colonies on other worlds, if only to cover those less plausible scenarios.

walleeee 4y ago

> Most plausible post-apocalyptic Earths would be far easier to live on than Mars. thank you how are we supposed to build a second home on a dead, ruthlessly hostile planet until we demonstrate ourselves capable of stabilizing the biosphere and building a sustainable long-term civilization here Earth is easy mode compared to Mars

WalterBright 4y ago
> how are we supposed to build a second home on a dead, ruthlessly hostile planet until we demonstrate ourselves capable of stabilizing the biosphere and building a sustainable long-term civilization here Because we can afford to make big mistakes in terraforming a dead, ruthlessly hostile planet.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  A few microscopic fungal-like spore things could throw a wrench in that. Now the planet is a nature reserve.
  - smegger001 4y ago
    why? fungel spores probaly are contaimination by what ever probe we sent there. any life evolving their would not be from any terrestrial evolutionary branch such as fungus
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      All this terror about "contaminating" other objects in the solar system with terran life is just misguided. We should all hope to get some terran life established on them. Heck, we need to build probes full of selected terran extremophiles and spray them into the Martian atmosphere.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        1. Any existing life there is, at this point, highly improbable 2. If there is any, how could terran life be competitive with it if the existing life has evolved to match the local environment over billions of years? 3. If there is existing life, how could a biologist not be able to easily distinguish it from terran life? 4. If the life there is ancient and now extinct, terran life isn't going to interfere with that
        anonymouskimmer 4y ago
        To answer part 2 with just one example: The native life of Mars, if it still exists, would exist in a state of homeostasis with its environment. It would have to in order to still remain existent. If terrestrial organisms were capable of replicating under martian conditions, they could easily eat everything up and then die off. Never quite getting the time necessary to adapt to the ecological limits of their new habitat. And by this process driving the native life to extinction as well. To answer part 3: We're still discovering new kingdoms of life on Earth (though it's unlikely we'll discover new domains). If localized panspermia exists within our solar system (from meteor impacts or the like) it's possible martian life and terrestrial life are related enough for the martian life to fit within the already existing family tree of terrestrial life. https://astronomy.com/news/2021/05/did-life-on-earth-come-from-outer-space https://astronomy.com/news/2021/05/did-life-on-earth-come-fr...
yamtaddle 4y ago
Right—living on Mars is like living on Earth if it ambient surface radiation levels were significantly higher, nothing would grow in the soil anywhere without a ton of preparation, and you couldn't leave your house without a pressure suit. And there's no surface water. And the gravity's fucked up. And the temperatures suck for basically anything life-related. And none of the geological and chemical processes that keep our biosphere viable existed, at all. So... like Earth if several apocalypses happened at once, including a few nigh-impossible ones. Except it starts that way. And it's actually even worse than that. Sure, maybe we could slam some comets into it and do a ton of other sci-fi shit over a few centuries and it'd eventually get better, sorta, a little—but c'mon, seriously?
smegger001 4y ago
>how are we supposed to build a second home on a dead, ruthlessly hostile planet until we demonstrate ourselves capable of stabilizing the biosphere and building a sustainable long-term civilization here because its unique challenges and constraints may make us develop technology that we wouldn't otherwise that may in turn out to be useful back on earth. Much of our technological advancements come from military research, where there was no civilian demand. We developed computers so we could break encryption, we developed the internet as a successor to arpanet a military network originally made to maintain command and control in event of nuclear exchange. standardized clothes sizing was invented to make uniforms more cheaply. satellites were invented so we could spy on our military rivals. the entire space program was a spin off of ICBM program. Nuclear power came from atomic bomb research, we have developed many advaced prosthetic due to injured veterans needing them. weather prodiction thanks to radar to detect enemy planes. But what if we could have something less self destructive than war that would germinate new technologies? Thats what a reasons to colonizes space. space colonization gives us many of the same challenges war does without the need for mass loss of life. Needs for new materials, new means of generating power, new modes of transportation. space exploration will give us new frontiers to strive against rather than find better ways to murder each-other. the ease of earth doesn't provide those challenges. I can dig up my back yard throw seed on the ground and will have vegetables to eat in the fall but i have learned nothing, find a way to grow food from lunar or martian regolith and you just have invented a way to rapidly create new soil and solved earths soil erosion problems ans well as found new ways of removing toxins from contaminated environments.
- imtringued 4y ago
  >I can dig up my back yard throw seed on the ground and will have vegetables to eat in the fall but i have learned nothing, find a way to grow food from lunar or martian regolith and you just have invented a way to rapidly create new soil and solved earths soil erosion problems ans well as found new ways of removing toxins from contaminated environments. We already have no till agriculture. The plants terraform the soil for us. The problem with this terraformation is that you need to rotate the plants because every plant terraforms the soil in a different way. Plants don't deplete the soil unless you replant the same plant over and over again and destroy terraforming progress through tillage and harvest it and then never bring the poop back. Some people will now say that avoiding soil depletion in the short term is a bad idea because it means using a little bit more land (or bring up incorrect numbers).
munificent 4y ago
Agreed 1000000% and this argument bugs the fuck out of me. If we can't successfully terraform Earth how the fuck are we going to terraform Mars?
mLuby 4y ago
It goes both ways. Learning to live on a dead world like Mars (or better yet, off-world altogether) will necessarily entail significant improvements in recycling, atmospheric control, and energy management. Those same technologies could be critical to reversing the damage we've done to our homeworld and enabling us to live on it sustainably.
naasking 4y ago
> sustainable long-term civilization here Earth is easy mode compared to Mars Which is easier, building a colony on Mars or solving politics? I rest my case. Mars, here we come!
- walleeee 4y ago
  Do you imagine a Mars colony will not have its own politics? Politics is arguably motivated in large part by scarcity. On Mars resources are a lot harder to come by than on Earth. You could make an argument that a shared struggle against extreme conditions would stabilize societies and make cooperation a necessity, but a Mars colony is going to need a lot of help from Earth to get on its feet, in which case we still need to solve terrestrial politics anyway.
  - naasking 4y ago
    > Do you imagine a Mars colony will not have its own politics A Mars colony would be small by necessity. Everyone will know everyone else. In such communities "politics" is not nearly so abstract. For instance, you can't convince yourself that climate change is not happening when you personally know the experts in that field taking the measurements and crunching the data. There will always be disagreements but nowhere near the type of nonsense we see here on Earth.

tcmart14 4y ago

Pretty much. I want to colonize Mars, but not as a solution to apocalypse scenarios. Long-long term it would help, but yea, it isn't the optimal solution to solve current problems we are facing now. Still want to colonize it, but just because it would be cool. Whether we take 5 years or 150 years to do it or 1,000 years to do it, doesn't bother me. Although doing it in the next 30 years would mean there is a good chance I could see it happen, but thats about it.

ianburrell 4y ago

One big problem with Mars is that requires technology to live on. Most of the risks are civilization ending events not extinction level events. When civilization fails, on Earth the survivors bang rocks together, on Mars they die. It turns civilization ending into extinction. One big question is if can make Mars civilization that would survive Earth collapse. It is possible that there are some things, like biological samples or advanced technology that have to come from mother planet. Mars will likely take a long time to become self-sufficient and until then it isn’t a backup. The easier self-sufficiency is, the less Mars is needed as backup. The final thing is that colonizing Mars could introduce risks. It would involve developing technology that makes disaster more likely, like advanced AI, genetic engineering, or moving asteroids in space. Or could be adding a place for conflict leading to Earth-Mars war that destroys both planets.

naasking 4y ago

> Most plausible post-apocalyptic Earths would be far easier to live on than Mars. Most, but not all right? So then you agree that there is still a case for colonies on other worlds, if only to cover those less plausible scenarios.