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> If going to Mars is worth doing, it's worth doing at scale I don't think this is true. If the main value is getting credit for putting the first human there

> If going to Mars is worth doing, it's worth doing at scale I don't think this is true. If the main value is getting credit for putting the first human there, and doing a few experiments on soil samples or somesuch, then it definitely wouldn't be worth scaling things up, the same way its not worth doing missions to the deep sea, Antarctica or the Moon at scale...

hersko 3y ago
> the main value is getting credit for putting the first human there, and doing a few experiments on soil samples or somesuch... This is old thinking. I take the goal of self sustainable society on Mars very seriously. Will it happen in our lifetime? Probably not, but it is the goal we should be working towards.
- pc86 3y ago
  Why? I'm not being snarky (at least not intentionally). But you're saying a thing that is at the very least a superpower-level goal, if not a civilization-level goal, that is very clearly not a current priority, should. What's more you're saying it in a way as if it's completely self-evident that we should change our global priorities to focus on this without the slightest evidence supporting that assertion.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    Well where do you see humanity in the future? In a realistic but also optimistic future? To me all of these futures involves us being a multiplanetary species, and starting to expand out into the cosmos more broadly. It's not only the only way we'll ever become a post-scarcity species, but also the only way we can secure our own survival as a species. There have been countless mass extinction events on Earth, and we're well overdue for another one, and it will come. You're also probably grossly overestimating the cost. The SpaceX Starship program has been privately funded on a budget of ~$2 billion a year including all costs - research and development, construction, launches, etc. And once built it's expected to revolutionize space (again) sending launch costs to less than $10 million per flight, and price per pound to space into the low dollars! And once we can start transiting massive amounts of cargo to Mars, at a very affordable cost, colonization is very much within the domain of possibilities. I would not contrast prices against NASA. NASA is largely used as a tool for pork and graft by Congress, that occasionally launches something. Their latest ship, the SLS [1], is literally reusing Space Shuttle era tech. I mean literally - the SLS is reusing refurbished Space Shuttle RS-25D engines, solid rocket boosters, and more. Managing to spend tens of billions of dollars over 13 years (and counting) to develop this is the special sort of talent you can only get from a company like Boeing. So colonization will be costly, but it's nothing like a civilizational goal. It's just that our civilization only has governments mostly interested in fighting and dominating one another, just as has been the case for the entirety of human civilization. So we never really get to see what we could actually achieve if we tried. But what's finally changed is that these sort of grand achievements no longer require governments. Costs are plummeting at the same time private capital has skyrocketed. So the future looks brighter than ever! [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System
    - thfuran 3y ago
      There's no such thing as post-scarcity. The observable universe is finite.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        You could reasonably define "post-scarcity" as "we've got more supply than we need". In this regard, you can define scarcity and post-scarcity independently for every consumed resource. We've been post-scarcity for oxygen since before we evolved; post-scarcity for water in most of the settled world; and now? Now we're post-scarcity for biros, photocopier paper, USB cables and wall-warts, and tchotchkes. The only reason we're not post-scarcity for intellectual property is that we've created rules to induce artificial scarcity.
        thfuran 3y ago
        >We've been post-scarcity for oxygen since before we evolved Have we? Our supply has been getting tainted with worrying levels of trace contaminants. If we had 100x as much atmosphere, maybe that wouldn't be an issue yet. >post-scarcity for water in most of the settled world https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/imminent-risk-global-water-crisis-warns-un-world-water-development-report-2023 https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/imminent-risk-global-wate...
        ben_w 3y ago
        > Have we? Yes. > Our supply has been getting tainted with worrying levels of trace contaminants. Note that I wrote "oxygen" not "clean air". You're not literally asphyxiating, you're not even close. > https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/imminent-risk-global-water-crisis-warns-un-world-water-development-report-2023 https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/imminent-risk-global-wate... """Globally, 2 billion people (26% of the population) do not have safe drinking water and 3.6 billion (46%) lack access to safely managed sanitation,""" As you quoted me, most of the settled world. Most. As in, more than 50%.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    If we don't, all of this will have been for nothing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU41J86Rrg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU41J86Rrg8
pfdietz 3y ago
Let me turn it around, then: if it's not worth doing Mars at scale, it's not worth doing it at all.
- thfuran 3y ago
  Is there anything you own at least one of but fewer than ten thousand of? You should get rid of it immediately.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure generalizing "going to Mars" to "anything whatsoever" is a bit of a non sequitur.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      If you don't think it's a general property of things worth doing, what in particular about going to Mars means it's only worth doing at scale? It's a frankly bizarre claim that you've so far made totally unsupported.
      - pfdietz 3y ago
        Obviously I meant there are specific aspects of going to Mars that justify the statement, even if I didn't list them. I am not required to laboriously explain the justification behind any statement I make. We could discuss this further if you like. Your assumption that I had no such aspects and meant that as a universal rule is clearly not listening to me in good faith.
        thfuran 3y ago
        It's definitely not obvious if you spout off something that sounds like a platitude without elaboration that you actually only mean something very specific (let alone what specifically you mean), and while you're correct that you're not actually obligated to do so, you should provide some explanation if you have any interest in communicating effectively. Failing to do so is likely to lead to misunderstandings. But you've repeatedly missed opportunities to explain your position, even dodging explicit requests for clarification. That seems more like bad faith than just not reading your mind correctly.
andrewflnr 3y ago
Personally I feel the main value of going to Mars is figuring out if it has or ever had life. That kind of search will benefit from scale. More tools to do more experiments, range farther from home base, maybe multiple landing teams. We could find ways to use an arbitrarily large payload. I guess that's not exactly what GP had in mind, though.

hersko 3y ago

> the main value is getting credit for putting the first human there, and doing a few experiments on soil samples or somesuch... This is old thinking. I take the goal of self sustainable society on Mars very seriously. Will it happen in our lifetime? Probably not, but it is the goal we should be working towards.

pc86 3y ago
Why? I'm not being snarky (at least not intentionally). But you're saying a thing that is at the very least a superpower-level goal, if not a civilization-level goal, that is very clearly not a current priority, should. What's more you're saying it in a way as if it's completely self-evident that we should change our global priorities to focus on this without the slightest evidence supporting that assertion.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Well where do you see humanity in the future? In a realistic but also optimistic future? To me all of these futures involves us being a multiplanetary species, and starting to expand out into the cosmos more broadly. It's not only the only way we'll ever become a post-scarcity species, but also the only way we can secure our own survival as a species. There have been countless mass extinction events on Earth, and we're well overdue for another one, and it will come. You're also probably grossly overestimating the cost. The SpaceX Starship program has been privately funded on a budget of ~$2 billion a year including all costs - research and development, construction, launches, etc. And once built it's expected to revolutionize space (again) sending launch costs to less than $10 million per flight, and price per pound to space into the low dollars! And once we can start transiting massive amounts of cargo to Mars, at a very affordable cost, colonization is very much within the domain of possibilities. I would not contrast prices against NASA. NASA is largely used as a tool for pork and graft by Congress, that occasionally launches something. Their latest ship, the SLS [1], is literally reusing Space Shuttle era tech. I mean literally - the SLS is reusing refurbished Space Shuttle RS-25D engines, solid rocket boosters, and more. Managing to spend tens of billions of dollars over 13 years (and counting) to develop this is the special sort of talent you can only get from a company like Boeing. So colonization will be costly, but it's nothing like a civilizational goal. It's just that our civilization only has governments mostly interested in fighting and dominating one another, just as has been the case for the entirety of human civilization. So we never really get to see what we could actually achieve if we tried. But what's finally changed is that these sort of grand achievements no longer require governments. Costs are plummeting at the same time private capital has skyrocketed. So the future looks brighter than ever! [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System
  - thfuran 3y ago
    There's no such thing as post-scarcity. The observable universe is finite.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      You could reasonably define "post-scarcity" as "we've got more supply than we need". In this regard, you can define scarcity and post-scarcity independently for every consumed resource. We've been post-scarcity for oxygen since before we evolved; post-scarcity for water in most of the settled world; and now? Now we're post-scarcity for biros, photocopier paper, USB cables and wall-warts, and tchotchkes. The only reason we're not post-scarcity for intellectual property is that we've created rules to induce artificial scarcity.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        >We've been post-scarcity for oxygen since before we evolved Have we? Our supply has been getting tainted with worrying levels of trace contaminants. If we had 100x as much atmosphere, maybe that wouldn't be an issue yet. >post-scarcity for water in most of the settled world https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/imminent-risk-global-water-crisis-warns-un-world-water-development-report-2023 https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/imminent-risk-global-wate...
        ben_w 3y ago
        > Have we? Yes. > Our supply has been getting tainted with worrying levels of trace contaminants. Note that I wrote "oxygen" not "clean air". You're not literally asphyxiating, you're not even close. > https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/imminent-risk-global-water-crisis-warns-un-world-water-development-report-2023 https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/imminent-risk-global-wate... """Globally, 2 billion people (26% of the population) do not have safe drinking water and 3.6 billion (46%) lack access to safely managed sanitation,""" As you quoted me, most of the settled world. Most. As in, more than 50%.
- ben_w 3y ago
  If we don't, all of this will have been for nothing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU41J86Rrg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU41J86Rrg8

pfdietz 3y ago

Let me turn it around, then: if it's not worth doing Mars at scale, it's not worth doing it at all.

thfuran 3y ago
Is there anything you own at least one of but fewer than ten thousand of? You should get rid of it immediately.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure generalizing "going to Mars" to "anything whatsoever" is a bit of a non sequitur.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    If you don't think it's a general property of things worth doing, what in particular about going to Mars means it's only worth doing at scale? It's a frankly bizarre claim that you've so far made totally unsupported.
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      Obviously I meant there are specific aspects of going to Mars that justify the statement, even if I didn't list them. I am not required to laboriously explain the justification behind any statement I make. We could discuss this further if you like. Your assumption that I had no such aspects and meant that as a universal rule is clearly not listening to me in good faith.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        It's definitely not obvious if you spout off something that sounds like a platitude without elaboration that you actually only mean something very specific (let alone what specifically you mean), and while you're correct that you're not actually obligated to do so, you should provide some explanation if you have any interest in communicating effectively. Failing to do so is likely to lead to misunderstandings. But you've repeatedly missed opportunities to explain your position, even dodging explicit requests for clarification. That seems more like bad faith than just not reading your mind correctly.

andrewflnr 3y ago

Personally I feel the main value of going to Mars is figuring out if it has or ever had life. That kind of search will benefit from scale. More tools to do more experiments, range farther from home base, maybe multiple landing teams. We could find ways to use an arbitrarily large payload. I guess that's not exactly what GP had in mind, though.