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If we can manage to build the infrastructure to colonize Mars, then the tools for probing other planets will become cheap and ubiquitous. But if people only adv
by wahern 4y ago
If we can manage to build the infrastructure to colonize Mars, then the tools for probing other planets will become cheap and ubiquitous. But if people only advocate for the latter and not the former, we'll never get anywhere. Also why the moon isn't a sufficiently challenging objective in its own right at this point; worthwhile for building incidental infrastructure, but not the center of attention.
- labster 4y agoIf lunar colonies aren’t very challenging, why aren’t there hundreds by now?
- badpun 4y agoBecause they're pointless? :)
- shjake 4y agoSame as on Mars or any other place outside of Earth that we know of to be fair
- simmerup 4y agoWhy did China visit the Americas but instead of colonising or establishing trade... just leave? Sometimes the will just isn't there.
- saalweachter 4y agoWhy did the Atlantean civilization fall? (Gavin Menzies, the author behind the claim China circumnavigated the world before Columbus was born, wrote a third book about how Atlantis did it first. It was equally convincing.)
- _dain_ 4y agoare you referring to precolumbian chinese contact? there was none fyi.
- bmitc 4y agoI view colonizing Mars with anything other than robots, even if it can be done, as a pointless exercise. And I don't see how a colony on Mars even helps with probes. We send material from Earth to Mars and then send probes from Mars? How is that more efficient? Do we even know what materials could theoretically be mined on Mars? And probes are launched with gravitational assists.
- Barrin92 4y agothe entire planet settlement stuff is kind of useless. I think the much more interesting thing to look for is human structures in cislunar space. For one you can put a reasonable amount of people there in the near future relatively safely and there's economic incentives. We'd have access to resources without having to lift things out of gravity wells. Even putting climate damaging industry there is something people have argued about. Better sell than putting a handful of people on a dead rock in my opinion.
- theonlybutlet 4y agoI doubt there's any notable ones between here and the moon, by now I'm sure we'd know. We could potentially capture one elsewhere and bring it here.
- echelon 4y agoThe human story ends on Earth. Humans are evolved to fit this gravity well. We use the gasses and metabolites here. Trying to leave the planet and make it all work in the dark, cold, bleakness of our solar system is ridiculous. Our lives are fragile and our lifespans too short to make anything offworld viable. Our robot descendants will inherit the stars instead. There's nothing wrong with human life being just a stepping stone to bootstrap the hand off.
- ceejayoz 4y ago> Trying to leave the planet and make it all work in the dark, cold, bleakness of our solar system is ridiculous. “Trying to leave the savanna and make it all work in the dark, cold, bleakness of Europe is ridiculous.” - some early hominid, fairly recently