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> Much better idea to find the few people that are fine living and dying on mars What would be the point, though? Besides live streaming someone slowly dying f

> Much better idea to find the few people that are fine living and dying on mars What would be the point, though? Besides live streaming someone slowly dying from radiation poisoning? It’s not like a human can really do anything that a sufficiently complex robot wouldn’t be able to. Also I always assumed that the whole point of going there (or to the moon for that matter) was to show that we can successfully get humans there and back rather than anything else.

Fred34 3y ago
That’s fair enough. If the goal itself was to get people there and back for the technical challenge/knowledge then a one-way mission does not make much sense. But if the point was to start a long-term colony on mars then it would make sense to first send people that would not expect to come back. Robots are cool, but I’m guessing that us humans with our arms and fingers will be able to do general tasks better than robots will for a long while. Humans have ability to fix things, reach things, and to improvise which robots generally lack. Construction or factories on mars will require people on the ground managing those projects. There would also be a scientific benefit understanding how people age and how long-term social relations can last on mars.
- mulmen 3y ago
  > There would also be a scientific benefit understanding how people age and how long-term social relations can last on mars. This is an area of research that has been explored extensively around earth already. In anticipation of the “real thing”.
  - pavlov 3y ago
    Also, the psychology of spending hundreds of billions to build a colony that becomes a tomb is probably too creepy for politicians and voters to contemplate. Many cultures have a concept of sanctity of the grave, or right of sepulchre. From that point of view, what happens to the Mars habitat where those people died? Does it become a mausoleum forever? Anything else seems very fraught. It would be a bizarre spectacle to send another trillion-dollar crew whose first task is to clear out the corpses...
    - mulmen 3y ago
      You just keep sending more people to the colony. This is how humans do. We will do whatever we did the last time we explored a new frontier. How many European colonies failed in the new world? What did they do? Nothing new under the sun.
      - pavlov 3y ago
        Some important differences: - Sailing to New England didn’t cost a trillion dollars. - The expedition wasn’t live-streamed to every pocket back in England. - People didn’t know what could be found in America. There was a sense of adventure. In contrast, we know what’s on Mars and the answer is basically “nothing”.
        mulmen 3y ago
        No single journey to New England cost a trillion dollars but neither does a single manned trip to Mars. Over time hundreds of ships brought thousands of people to dozens of colonies. Ships kept bringing people even after the colonies were self-sustaining. How much did european colonization of the east coast cost? History is full of people selling everything and taking a one way trip into a new frontier.
        ffgjgf1 3y ago
        > How much did european colonization of the east coast cost? Not a lot. People actually paid to move there because it resulted in a significant improvement in living conditions/income/etc. on average (besides the few earliest attempts). Colonization and exploration was almost entirely driven by profit union at least the 1800s or so. Colonizing Mars wouldn’t be even remotely comparable in almost any way to what happened in the Americas/Australia/etc. > selling everything and taking a one way trip into a new frontier. Yeah, because there was a lot of free land there/natural resources/high demand for labor etc.
        ffgjgf1 3y ago
        > People didn’t know what could be found in America. There was a sense of adventure To be fair they kind of did. Or rather they never expected to finding anything extremely different to what they have experienced in Europe (besides very low population density and all the benefits resulting from that).
- Amezarak 3y ago
  There will never be a long-term colony on Mars. Mars is not a habitable planet. Compared to Earth, Mars has no atmosphere. (100k pascals vs 600 pascals.) Mars has no magnetic field. Mars has 1/3rd the gravity of Earth. We know low gravity has deleterious health effects. Anybody who lived on Mars would have to live inside a pressurized building at all times. Stepping outside would be lethal. If we're able to to build sustainable colonies in these conditions then we might as well focus on colonizing the Moon first. There would be nothing special about Mars, we might as well just live in space habitats. If there is a future of Martian colonization it involves extensive genetic engineering and massive terraforming projects we can only dream of now.
  - hersko 3y ago
    Gravity on mars is probably a lot more viable for long term living than on the moon.
    - Amezarak 3y ago
      Sure. But the real issue is both of them are absolutely lethal and uninhabitable environments. There is no plan or even real dream to change that. Stepping outside on Mars will kill you just as dead as it will on the Moon. If you're going to force colonizing one of them for some bizarre reason and at huge expense you may as well pick the closer one. It's much more feasible to just build a bunch of habitats using rotation to generate artificial gravity than to plonk yourself down in a gravity well that is totally hostile to human life, and even that stretches the bounds of possibility, let alone practicality or desirability. We all watched Star [Trek|Wars] growing up, I get it. Mars is not a viable colonization project. The best you could ever hope for would be, at tremendous expense, an Antarctic-style research station.
mulmen 3y ago
The point is to sustain human life on another planet. That’s incredibly challenging and the quality of life will be poor for the first generations. Human history is full of people who have done exactly this.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago
  That’s not even remotely comparable. North America etc. turned out to be effectively more “habitable” than the old world due the abundance of fertile land and other resources relative to population. That can never happen on Mars. > Human history is full of people who have done exactly this. Are there any self-sustainable colonies in Antarctica (which is more habitable than Mars by at least several magnitudes)? So not humans have never done anything even remotely close to what colonizing Mars would require.
rkagerer 3y ago
It’s not like a human can really do anything that a sufficiently complex robot wouldn’t be able to. Being the first human to set foot on Mars stands out as one task it couldn't complete.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago
  Sure, Humans going to Mars and back would be cool. Attempting to establish any permanent presence there let a lone a colony with more than a dozen or so people there would be an inconceivable massive waste of resources. Something that nobody should be allowed to even try to do in the foreseeable future even id that person managed to get enough resources for that.
  - rkagerer 3y ago
    In your opinion what would it take to make it worthwhile? Eg. If you scale out to a 10,000 year timeframe and this is step 1 leading to a self-sufficient backup for Earth, then one day some event seriously threatened to take out our home planet, suddenly the ~whole population would feel the expense was worth it whatever the magnitude.
    - ffgjgf1 3y ago
      I don’t really feel capable of giving a reasonable answer to that question. The ability to terraform it? > If you scale out to a 10,000 year timeframe AFAIK there were no events at last several hundred million years that had a realistic chance of making the Earth less habitable that Mars. So unless we had a ways to cheaply transport millions of people to Mars (maybe space station or the moon would be a better option though?) focusing on building infrastructure that would allow us to minimize the impact of meteorites or massive volcanic eruptions as much as possible.
adrianN 3y ago
It’s a lot harder to build a sufficiently complex robot than to send a human.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago
  If it’s a one way trip then perhaps, otherwise that’s not obvious to me at all. And in any case if the only purpose of sending humans to Mars is to prove that we can, why go the easiest and most unethical route?
zizee 3y ago
What's the point of doing anything? People have said the same of many great endeavours, and it is often hard to predict all everything that results from tackling big challenges. I suspect that there is likely nothing anyone could suggest would succeed in shifting you position.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago
  > many great endeavours Usually due to practical or religious (so practical from the perspective of the people doing them) reasons > I suspect that there is likely nothing anyone could suggest would succeed in shifting you position. I’m not sure about that. A rational and well thought out argument might do that.

Fred34 3y ago

That’s fair enough. If the goal itself was to get people there and back for the technical challenge/knowledge then a one-way mission does not make much sense. But if the point was to start a long-term colony on mars then it would make sense to first send people that would not expect to come back. Robots are cool, but I’m guessing that us humans with our arms and fingers will be able to do general tasks better than robots will for a long while. Humans have ability to fix things, reach things, and to improvise which robots generally lack. Construction or factories on mars will require people on the ground managing those projects. There would also be a scientific benefit understanding how people age and how long-term social relations can last on mars.

mulmen 3y ago
> There would also be a scientific benefit understanding how people age and how long-term social relations can last on mars. This is an area of research that has been explored extensively around earth already. In anticipation of the “real thing”.
- pavlov 3y ago
  Also, the psychology of spending hundreds of billions to build a colony that becomes a tomb is probably too creepy for politicians and voters to contemplate. Many cultures have a concept of sanctity of the grave, or right of sepulchre. From that point of view, what happens to the Mars habitat where those people died? Does it become a mausoleum forever? Anything else seems very fraught. It would be a bizarre spectacle to send another trillion-dollar crew whose first task is to clear out the corpses...
  - mulmen 3y ago
    You just keep sending more people to the colony. This is how humans do. We will do whatever we did the last time we explored a new frontier. How many European colonies failed in the new world? What did they do? Nothing new under the sun.
    - pavlov 3y ago
      Some important differences: - Sailing to New England didn’t cost a trillion dollars. - The expedition wasn’t live-streamed to every pocket back in England. - People didn’t know what could be found in America. There was a sense of adventure. In contrast, we know what’s on Mars and the answer is basically “nothing”.
      - mulmen 3y ago
        No single journey to New England cost a trillion dollars but neither does a single manned trip to Mars. Over time hundreds of ships brought thousands of people to dozens of colonies. Ships kept bringing people even after the colonies were self-sustaining. How much did european colonization of the east coast cost? History is full of people selling everything and taking a one way trip into a new frontier.
        ffgjgf1 3y ago
        > How much did european colonization of the east coast cost? Not a lot. People actually paid to move there because it resulted in a significant improvement in living conditions/income/etc. on average (besides the few earliest attempts). Colonization and exploration was almost entirely driven by profit union at least the 1800s or so. Colonizing Mars wouldn’t be even remotely comparable in almost any way to what happened in the Americas/Australia/etc. > selling everything and taking a one way trip into a new frontier. Yeah, because there was a lot of free land there/natural resources/high demand for labor etc.
      - ffgjgf1 3y ago
        > People didn’t know what could be found in America. There was a sense of adventure To be fair they kind of did. Or rather they never expected to finding anything extremely different to what they have experienced in Europe (besides very low population density and all the benefits resulting from that).
Amezarak 3y ago
There will never be a long-term colony on Mars. Mars is not a habitable planet. Compared to Earth, Mars has no atmosphere. (100k pascals vs 600 pascals.) Mars has no magnetic field. Mars has 1/3rd the gravity of Earth. We know low gravity has deleterious health effects. Anybody who lived on Mars would have to live inside a pressurized building at all times. Stepping outside would be lethal. If we're able to to build sustainable colonies in these conditions then we might as well focus on colonizing the Moon first. There would be nothing special about Mars, we might as well just live in space habitats. If there is a future of Martian colonization it involves extensive genetic engineering and massive terraforming projects we can only dream of now.
- hersko 3y ago
  Gravity on mars is probably a lot more viable for long term living than on the moon.
  - Amezarak 3y ago
    Sure. But the real issue is both of them are absolutely lethal and uninhabitable environments. There is no plan or even real dream to change that. Stepping outside on Mars will kill you just as dead as it will on the Moon. If you're going to force colonizing one of them for some bizarre reason and at huge expense you may as well pick the closer one. It's much more feasible to just build a bunch of habitats using rotation to generate artificial gravity than to plonk yourself down in a gravity well that is totally hostile to human life, and even that stretches the bounds of possibility, let alone practicality or desirability. We all watched Star [Trek|Wars] growing up, I get it. Mars is not a viable colonization project. The best you could ever hope for would be, at tremendous expense, an Antarctic-style research station.

mulmen 3y ago

The point is to sustain human life on another planet. That’s incredibly challenging and the quality of life will be poor for the first generations. Human history is full of people who have done exactly this.

ffgjgf1 3y ago
That’s not even remotely comparable. North America etc. turned out to be effectively more “habitable” than the old world due the abundance of fertile land and other resources relative to population. That can never happen on Mars. > Human history is full of people who have done exactly this. Are there any self-sustainable colonies in Antarctica (which is more habitable than Mars by at least several magnitudes)? So not humans have never done anything even remotely close to what colonizing Mars would require.

rkagerer 3y ago

It’s not like a human can really do anything that a sufficiently complex robot wouldn’t be able to. Being the first human to set foot on Mars stands out as one task it couldn't complete.

ffgjgf1 3y ago
Sure, Humans going to Mars and back would be cool. Attempting to establish any permanent presence there let a lone a colony with more than a dozen or so people there would be an inconceivable massive waste of resources. Something that nobody should be allowed to even try to do in the foreseeable future even id that person managed to get enough resources for that.
- rkagerer 3y ago
  In your opinion what would it take to make it worthwhile? Eg. If you scale out to a 10,000 year timeframe and this is step 1 leading to a self-sufficient backup for Earth, then one day some event seriously threatened to take out our home planet, suddenly the ~whole population would feel the expense was worth it whatever the magnitude.
  - ffgjgf1 3y ago
    I don’t really feel capable of giving a reasonable answer to that question. The ability to terraform it? > If you scale out to a 10,000 year timeframe AFAIK there were no events at last several hundred million years that had a realistic chance of making the Earth less habitable that Mars. So unless we had a ways to cheaply transport millions of people to Mars (maybe space station or the moon would be a better option though?) focusing on building infrastructure that would allow us to minimize the impact of meteorites or massive volcanic eruptions as much as possible.

adrianN 3y ago

It’s a lot harder to build a sufficiently complex robot than to send a human.

ffgjgf1 3y ago
If it’s a one way trip then perhaps, otherwise that’s not obvious to me at all. And in any case if the only purpose of sending humans to Mars is to prove that we can, why go the easiest and most unethical route?

zizee 3y ago

What's the point of doing anything? People have said the same of many great endeavours, and it is often hard to predict all everything that results from tackling big challenges. I suspect that there is likely nothing anyone could suggest would succeed in shifting you position.

ffgjgf1 3y ago
> many great endeavours Usually due to practical or religious (so practical from the perspective of the people doing them) reasons > I suspect that there is likely nothing anyone could suggest would succeed in shifting you position. I’m not sure about that. A rational and well thought out argument might do that.