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I fail to understand how going to Mars is sensible. It is a dead planet. It had water and even possibly life before Earth. It is a lesson for which where Earth

by bmitc 3y ago

I fail to understand how going to Mars is sensible. It is a dead planet. It had water and even possibly life before Earth. It is a lesson for which where Earth is headed by our actions. I don't understand how accelerating climate change and the Earth towards a dead planet to get to a dead planet makes any sense. Let probes and automated systems do it.

matthewfelgate 3y ago
Going to Mars has about 0% affect on Global Warming on Earth.
- bmitc 3y ago
  I'd appreciate not being called a liar, whether you think I am wrong or not. (Edit: Parent comment has since been edited.) Developing, testing, and sending the massive rockets required for human travels to Mars, not to mention the other supporting systems development required over sending only unmanned systems, has "about 0%" affect on climate change? The environmental and ecosystem damage that rockets do is alone incredibly disruptive. I simply see little reason, aside from ego, to send humans to Mars.
  - matthewfelgate 3y ago
    Yes, about 0%. If you want to fix climate change there are much better targets.
    - bmitc 3y ago
      Being wrong is not lying. (Edit: Again parent comment was edited.) However, I am not wrong with currently presented facts, of which you are free to bring yourself and haven't as of yet. First Google result: https://time.com/6273065/space-travel-climate-impact/ https://time.com/6273065/space-travel-climate-impact/ and https://research.noaa.gov/2022/06/21/projected-increase-in-space-travel-may-damage-ozone-layer/ https://research.noaa.gov/2022/06/21/projected-increase-in-s... > Indeed, according to the NOAA report, a single passenger aboard a rocket is responsible for 100 times more climate-changing pollution than a passenger aboard an airplane. > The researchers found that this level of activity would increase annual temperatures in the stratosphere by 0.5 – 2° Celsius or approximately 1-4°Farenheit, which would change global circulation patterns by slowing the subtropical jet streams as much as 3.5%, and weakening the stratospheric overturning circulation.
      - matthewfelgate 3y ago
        [flagged]
    - Delphiza 3y ago
      Agreed. "Q: What is the difference between a million and a billion. A: About a billion" (don't remember the source). Space travel carbon costs are as close to 0% as makes no difference. There are about 8,000 commercial planes in the air right now.
      - bmitc 3y ago
        The parent commenter edited their comments several times, so the argument there now is different than it was. My original comment above does not say that rockets should be the top focus on reducing climate change. It says they are a contributor to climate change, which they are. I don't see why we're wanting to send humans to Mars and doing so will thus needlessly increase the impact of rockets on the environment. Yes, there are worse things than rockets, but the impact is definitely not zero, and more and more rockets are going off, so the impact will only increase. The rockets required for human flight are much, much larger than those for unmanned missions. Further, the negative affect of rockets on the local environment, that is local to the launch sites, is very underrated. As noted in the linked article from the NOAA, the impact of rockets needs more study, and the impact is different than airplanes and is estimated to increase the temperature of the stratosphere by degrees, and not a fraction of degrees. This has downstream effects that are not good and is again different than airplanes. Lastly, yes, planes are bad, too, and we should absolutely reconsider plane fuel and flight use.
        matthewfelgate 3y ago
        The impact of rockets on climate change is about 0%.
lisper 3y ago
> I fail to understand how going to Mars is sensible. It isn't. It's a relic of intuitions born in our ancestral environment when exploration tended to be profitable. But that's because our ancestral explorations all took place in the relatively benign environment of earth. It's barely realistic to do a sample return mission to Mars. Sending humans there is a pipe dream.
RealityVoid 3y ago
Maybe a cold answer, but if we could establish a self-sustaining Mars colony, then we can probably find ways to cope with ecological collapse on earth as well.
- soco 3y ago
  It's just, what could possibly work on Mars - domes and such - might not be the solution we want on Earth. But again with the current level of climate concern, we might very well land under a dome as a best case scenario.
slowmovintarget 3y ago
"Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes, and - all of this - all of this - was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars." While that quote is intentionally more poetry than science (it's from Babylon 5) it reflects a kernel of the truth. Right now, we have all of our eggs in one basket. We must act with great care toward that basket, surely. But we should also strive as a species to see that there is more than one basket. Mars is the first baby step toward the stars, and we should go to the stars.
- bmitc 3y ago
  That is overly sentimental and romantic and doesn't match reality. The effort to sustain life on Mars is more than we know, and it is much, much, much, much more effort to sustain life on Mars (even if we knew how to do it) than it is to address our problems here on Earth. And say we go to Mars, which we can basically simulate here on Earth anyway. How does that get us closer "to the stars"? If we can't survive here on Earth, literally the most perfect habitat for us, then what in the world is the point of "going to the stars", whatever that means in the first place? What are we going to do there? Destroy whatever secondary Earth we find? What physics is there to say that we can even get to another solar system before we destroy the habitability of the Earth? We can "go to the stars" without sending man out first. I still see no current reason to send humans to Mars other than to waste resources. > Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. Yea, and that's a minimum of 400-500 million years out, and it's going to get a lot hotter before it goes cold. And umpteen million other things on Earth, such as the geological structure, will have drastically changed by then. You shouldn't act like humanity actually has the ability to effectively worry about such a date when we can't even do most stuff today with any longer than a year or two horizon. The likelihood of disaster, such as asteroid or meteor impact or a Venus-type situation or other ecosystem collapse scenarios, before the Sun exhausts itself is basically 99.<however many 9s you want>%. Going to Mars doesn't give us anymore data on how to escape the Sun's evolution. And I highly question any claim that humanity even has the ability to be an interstellar species, which is a separate question from capability.

by bmitc 3y ago

matthewfelgate 3y ago

Going to Mars has about 0% affect on Global Warming on Earth.

bmitc 3y ago
I'd appreciate not being called a liar, whether you think I am wrong or not. (Edit: Parent comment has since been edited.) Developing, testing, and sending the massive rockets required for human travels to Mars, not to mention the other supporting systems development required over sending only unmanned systems, has "about 0%" affect on climate change? The environmental and ecosystem damage that rockets do is alone incredibly disruptive. I simply see little reason, aside from ego, to send humans to Mars.
- matthewfelgate 3y ago
  Yes, about 0%. If you want to fix climate change there are much better targets.
  - bmitc 3y ago
    Being wrong is not lying. (Edit: Again parent comment was edited.) However, I am not wrong with currently presented facts, of which you are free to bring yourself and haven't as of yet. First Google result: https://time.com/6273065/space-travel-climate-impact/ https://time.com/6273065/space-travel-climate-impact/ and https://research.noaa.gov/2022/06/21/projected-increase-in-space-travel-may-damage-ozone-layer/ https://research.noaa.gov/2022/06/21/projected-increase-in-s... > Indeed, according to the NOAA report, a single passenger aboard a rocket is responsible for 100 times more climate-changing pollution than a passenger aboard an airplane. > The researchers found that this level of activity would increase annual temperatures in the stratosphere by 0.5 – 2° Celsius or approximately 1-4°Farenheit, which would change global circulation patterns by slowing the subtropical jet streams as much as 3.5%, and weakening the stratospheric overturning circulation.
    - matthewfelgate 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - Delphiza 3y ago
    Agreed. "Q: What is the difference between a million and a billion. A: About a billion" (don't remember the source). Space travel carbon costs are as close to 0% as makes no difference. There are about 8,000 commercial planes in the air right now.
    - bmitc 3y ago
      The parent commenter edited their comments several times, so the argument there now is different than it was. My original comment above does not say that rockets should be the top focus on reducing climate change. It says they are a contributor to climate change, which they are. I don't see why we're wanting to send humans to Mars and doing so will thus needlessly increase the impact of rockets on the environment. Yes, there are worse things than rockets, but the impact is definitely not zero, and more and more rockets are going off, so the impact will only increase. The rockets required for human flight are much, much larger than those for unmanned missions. Further, the negative affect of rockets on the local environment, that is local to the launch sites, is very underrated. As noted in the linked article from the NOAA, the impact of rockets needs more study, and the impact is different than airplanes and is estimated to increase the temperature of the stratosphere by degrees, and not a fraction of degrees. This has downstream effects that are not good and is again different than airplanes. Lastly, yes, planes are bad, too, and we should absolutely reconsider plane fuel and flight use.
      - matthewfelgate 3y ago
        The impact of rockets on climate change is about 0%.

lisper 3y ago

> I fail to understand how going to Mars is sensible. It isn't. It's a relic of intuitions born in our ancestral environment when exploration tended to be profitable. But that's because our ancestral explorations all took place in the relatively benign environment of earth. It's barely realistic to do a sample return mission to Mars. Sending humans there is a pipe dream.

RealityVoid 3y ago

Maybe a cold answer, but if we could establish a self-sustaining Mars colony, then we can probably find ways to cope with ecological collapse on earth as well.

soco 3y ago
It's just, what could possibly work on Mars - domes and such - might not be the solution we want on Earth. But again with the current level of climate concern, we might very well land under a dome as a best case scenario.

slowmovintarget 3y ago

"Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes, and - all of this - all of this - was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars." While that quote is intentionally more poetry than science (it's from Babylon 5) it reflects a kernel of the truth. Right now, we have all of our eggs in one basket. We must act with great care toward that basket, surely. But we should also strive as a species to see that there is more than one basket. Mars is the first baby step toward the stars, and we should go to the stars.

bmitc 3y ago
That is overly sentimental and romantic and doesn't match reality. The effort to sustain life on Mars is more than we know, and it is much, much, much, much more effort to sustain life on Mars (even if we knew how to do it) than it is to address our problems here on Earth. And say we go to Mars, which we can basically simulate here on Earth anyway. How does that get us closer "to the stars"? If we can't survive here on Earth, literally the most perfect habitat for us, then what in the world is the point of "going to the stars", whatever that means in the first place? What are we going to do there? Destroy whatever secondary Earth we find? What physics is there to say that we can even get to another solar system before we destroy the habitability of the Earth? We can "go to the stars" without sending man out first. I still see no current reason to send humans to Mars other than to waste resources. > Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. Yea, and that's a minimum of 400-500 million years out, and it's going to get a lot hotter before it goes cold. And umpteen million other things on Earth, such as the geological structure, will have drastically changed by then. You shouldn't act like humanity actually has the ability to effectively worry about such a date when we can't even do most stuff today with any longer than a year or two horizon. The likelihood of disaster, such as asteroid or meteor impact or a Venus-type situation or other ecosystem collapse scenarios, before the Sun exhausts itself is basically 99.<however many 9s you want>%. Going to Mars doesn't give us anymore data on how to escape the Sun's evolution. And I highly question any claim that humanity even has the ability to be an interstellar species, which is a separate question from capability.