37 ms·

Let me pose a different question. If the purpose of Mars is being a lifeboat for some life-ending disaster on Earth, why doesn't that group of people go and bu

by vkou 4y ago

Let me pose a different question. If the purpose of Mars is being a lifeboat for some life-ending disaster on Earth, why doesn't that group of people go and build a self-sufficient colony in the Antarctic? It'll get you 90% of the way there for way less than 10% of the effort. Necessity is the mother of invention, and nobody is doing it because it's not actually necessary. Martian colonisation is more of a religion, than the product of an actual positive cost/benefit analysis.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> the purpose of Mars is being a lifeboat for some life-ending disaster on Earth, why doesn't that group of people go and build a self-sufficient colony in the Antarctic? There are various reasons for wanting to go to Mars. I don't think most people's primary motivation is species-level survival.
- vkou 4y ago
  Like what? A research outpost? You have to get into a knife fight with your peers to get a grad student who works for ramen on your lab's funding proposal, you're not going to get the amortized cost of a real lab on Mars approved. For that money, there's a thousand languishing research proposals that we should be looking into instead. There are no economic reasons to go there, either. It's too far away, it's too dangerous, and shipping anything is too much work. There are no military reasons to go there, either. The military is happy to put weapons in orbit, but Mars is too far away.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > research outpost? Sure. Tourism, too. Many of us have an exploration urge and instinct, and I can't say it's all rational. > there's a thousand languishing research proposals that we should be looking into instead But we're not. People are motivated by passion. I'm not convinced every engineer at SpaceX would be engineering without that mission in their head. I'm also certain the capital being pumped into SpaceX isn't fungible into other research. Mars, Inc. made a good pitch. It got people excited and involved. I get the sour grapes. We all have pet projects we'd prefer be prioritized instead. But I don't see us fighting over a fixed-sized pie.
  - kwhitefoot 4y ago
    George Mallory's reply to why he wanted to climb Everest will do: "Because it's there."
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    The "research outposts" thing was pretty much solved by sending robots to these hostile environments. They have some serious limitations, but it's a lot cheaper to send a few kilograms on a robot than a few hundred kilograms of meat to carry out a few known procedures.
fragmede 4y ago
Because any calamity serious enough to threaten humanity on that level is likely to threaten Antarctica just as seriously.

by vkou 4y ago

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> the purpose of Mars is being a lifeboat for some life-ending disaster on Earth, why doesn't that group of people go and build a self-sufficient colony in the Antarctic? There are various reasons for wanting to go to Mars. I don't think most people's primary motivation is species-level survival.

vkou 4y ago
Like what? A research outpost? You have to get into a knife fight with your peers to get a grad student who works for ramen on your lab's funding proposal, you're not going to get the amortized cost of a real lab on Mars approved. For that money, there's a thousand languishing research proposals that we should be looking into instead. There are no economic reasons to go there, either. It's too far away, it's too dangerous, and shipping anything is too much work. There are no military reasons to go there, either. The military is happy to put weapons in orbit, but Mars is too far away.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > research outpost? Sure. Tourism, too. Many of us have an exploration urge and instinct, and I can't say it's all rational. > there's a thousand languishing research proposals that we should be looking into instead But we're not. People are motivated by passion. I'm not convinced every engineer at SpaceX would be engineering without that mission in their head. I'm also certain the capital being pumped into SpaceX isn't fungible into other research. Mars, Inc. made a good pitch. It got people excited and involved. I get the sour grapes. We all have pet projects we'd prefer be prioritized instead. But I don't see us fighting over a fixed-sized pie.
- kwhitefoot 4y ago
  George Mallory's reply to why he wanted to climb Everest will do: "Because it's there."
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  The "research outposts" thing was pretty much solved by sending robots to these hostile environments. They have some serious limitations, but it's a lot cheaper to send a few kilograms on a robot than a few hundred kilograms of meat to carry out a few known procedures.

fragmede 4y ago

Because any calamity serious enough to threaten humanity on that level is likely to threaten Antarctica just as seriously.