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> Landing and then what you plan a flag and die? Pretty much, why do you think columbus set off? And he didn't even know if he'd actually find anything. I don

by zpeti 2y ago

> Landing and then what you plan a flag and die? Pretty much, why do you think columbus set off? And he didn't even know if he'd actually find anything. I don't understand your attitude and people like you, human beings have been explorers forever, and seem to value exploring even over survival potentially. I'd say it's pretty obviously evolutionarily coded into us. Maybe not you, but into many people.

simiones 2y ago
Columbus very very much didn't plan to die (though he very much would have if he didn't get lucky that there was a whole new continent there). His plan was to land in India, which he thought he would reach around the time he actually reached the new continent, because he had a completely wrong idea of how large the globe actually was (he alone had this wrong idea; the actual circumference of the globe was pretty well understood by this point). In general, human-based space exploration makes 0 sense. We have robots that can do everything a human in a life-support suit can, and don't need to carry 100 times their mass just to not day on the way there and back. Doing a few experiments with humans in space, like we do on the ISS, is indeed worth it for exploring the unknown unknowns of biology. Maybe some day, far in the future after we have explored Mars with many hundreds of robots, it will even make sense to send a human there. But until then, it's just a waste of everything.
- zpeti 2y ago
  Ok great, you’re definitely right, let’s not do it. What now? Will Elon stop? If Elon doesn’t stop, does that make you right?
  - simiones 2y ago
    I'm not saying it's impossible to send people to Mars and even bring them back. I'm saying there is no point whatsoever right now, at least no material or scientific purpose. Of course, building a "city" on Mars is well beyond our capabilities, so that will either not be attempted at all, or it will fail. Maybe by 2124, but more likely 2524.
    - avmich 2y ago
      > I'm saying there is no point whatsoever right now, at least no material or scientific purpose. "No point" here means "no reasonable goal". In this case reasonability is subjective - somebody sees obvious reasons why Mars colony could be useful for humanity, somebody doesn't. Pro arguments are science, learning how to live off another planet, certain insurance against planet-wide cataclysms, general progress in space engineering. There are contra arguments as well, but which are more important is also subjective - we don't have hard data or commonly accepted facts which would solve this arguments one way or another, so, to some, it's natural to investigate the matter further...
      - fwip 2y ago
        It's difficult to imagine any cataclysm that would result in the Earth being less habitable (even for us squishy humans) than Mars already is.
        avmich 2y ago
        It's really a matter of imagination :) . I learned about the existence of the Institute of the Problems of Asteroid Hazards long time ago, which suggested to me it's not a black-and-white type of question.
        ryandrake 2y ago
        It's not even just about habitability. There are many remote places on Earth that we consider a waste of time and effort to inhabit, which are themselves 100X more habitable than Mars. There's a reason we don't have large, thriving settlements on inland Greenland, deep in the Sahara Desert, and Antarctica, even though they are way more habitable than Mars. There's no reason to inhabit them.
    - jfoster 2y ago
      If people think like this, it won't happen even by 2524. Elon's job is to massively accelerate that timeline.
  - me_me_me 2y ago
    If elon decides to make humans fly and move objects with their will power. Will you defend it the same way? Cuz probability of both are closer to each other that to probability of them being achievable. Getting to mars would require a technological leap. Planes -> rockets kind of leap. Currently we have yet to be able to get back to the moon. Creating self sustained colony on earth would require some kind of technological miracle. And it will not be enough to use few nukes to malt ice caps on mars.
- elsonrodriguez 2y ago
  We will probably perform a human mission and return samples before a robot goes and picks up the Perseverance samples. We’ve been mars-capable since Apollo. It’s a matter of will, which is a political function of cost, which is falling rapidly.
  - me_me_me 2y ago
    > We’ve been mars-capable since Apollo. serious citation needed! you cant make shit up. Apollo and saturn5 were nowhere near getting humans to mars. Not even close. It got us to moon with bare minimum. A weekend trip vs 6 months trip. The scale up of needed resources is mind boggling. At every step. I mean pick any step and explain how Apollo could achieve it.
    - rtkwe 2y ago
      If you used multiple Saturn V rockets to launch and dock a multipart craft we could maybe have made it at least to orbit around Mars but landing would be a massively different story.
    - elsonrodriguez 2y ago
      You can read up on Mars Direct for more info. The gist of it is that the Saturn V has enough delta v to get to Mars, on the count of Mars having an atmosphere, which can be used for aerobraking. Given the capability of reaching Mars with a Saturn V, the rest of the plan revolved around using Apollo hardware, with some modification, for both transport and habitats(re-use of empty stages featured prominently). Ultimately even if we had hit some roadblock with martian soil or what have you, in an alternate timeline we could have at least sent uncrewed test flights to Mars and back.
      - me_me_me 2y ago
        That is debatable at best, a crewed flight to mars is 8 months, crew of 3 You have roughly 40t at best for a craft that needs to land there. quick google. astronauts need around 1.7kg of food per day, x3 crew, x(8x30) days is: thats 1200 kg of food - one way - just to get there food. And then you are doing to do what exactly? > the rest of the plan revolved around using Apollo hardware, with some modification, for both transport and habitats(re-use of empty stages featured prominently). This is basically handwaving problems away, massive problems. The best I can agree is that a crewed fly-by could have been possible. But landing on mars would mean death sooner or later.
- keyringlight 2y ago
  Also when we see a benefit to humans being on another planet, then spend a few missions before sending the mass of robots, prefab materials and equipment so there's habitats ready or nearly ready so we're not confined to whatever we have on one spaceship
- _glass 2y ago
  Yeah, but it's in your text/comment. The logical thing is that it makes 0 sense. Columbus to not take the real circumference makes 0 sense. Let's go to Mars, start a civilization there. It'll be a lot of change for us humans. And only if you live somewhere you can really solve problems. Maybe it's a good plan against a nuclear war, whatever.
  - simiones 2y ago
    Columbus was just wrong, he was not motivated by some higher goal. And no, it's not a good plan against a nuclear war, Mars is far far far less hospitable than the Earth would be if we launched all of the nuclear weapons we have today. It's far more radioactive, dusty, cold, toxic, and everything.
    - rvnx 2y ago
      The tech we developed for Mars can become useful for the Earth of tomorrow, once World War III finishes.
      - simiones 2y ago
        Let's first build a self-sustaining mega-city in the Sahara desert, or in the Antarctic, and then we can use what we learn doing this to start thinking about a colony on Mars. Building new self-sustaining mega-cities on Earth has obvious direct advantages, and it is a reasonable first step and case study for doing so on another planet.
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- deleted 2y ago
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Ajay-p 2y ago
I think it is the indelible human nature, to go the furthest we can because it's there. At first I didn't agree with going to Mars, but if you think of it as the furthest place we know we can land on, and explore, then it makes sense. If we can safely land, and return from Mars, then it makes going even further a possibility.
- throw310822 2y ago
  Yes indeed. But still, nobody is building residential neighborhoods on the top of the Everest or in the middle of Antarctica. Exploring for the sake of it is indeed a human instinct. The idea that we should build settlements for people who would live there permanently is plain silly. We have the obsession of repeating the Age of Discovery- but people should get the difference between discovering the Americas, with their wealth of plants, animals, land and waters, and settling a planet where there isn't a sign of life, not even air to breathe.
  - fwip 2y ago
    And peoples.
  - aperrien 2y ago
    > But still, nobody is building residential neighborhoods on the top of the Everest or in the middle of Antarctica Nobody is permitted to build permanent habitats in either of those areas, even though they might be feasible.
me_me_me 2y ago
> Pretty much, why do you think columbus set off? And he didn't even know if he'd actually find anything. hahahah Columbus set of because he wanted money, wealth for the crown. not because he was explorer. Columbus, Vasco Da Gama, Cortez et al were not dreamers but entrepreneurs. >> Landing and then what you plan a flag and die? Nobody (within reasonable definition of nobody) wants to go to Everest to die on top. Nobody wants to dive to Marianas trench to get crush to death. Who would go to Mars without a way back?
- trafficante 2y ago
  >> Who would go to Mars without a way back? For a reasonable chance of being forever immortalized as one of the first humans to step foot on another planet? Granted, I myself will never get the opportunity so it’s easy for me to say “oh hell yes I’d sign up in a heartbeat”.
rtkwe 2y ago
You're misremember the actual history of Columbus which makes sense it's been mistaught and mythologized for a very long time. Columbus thought he would reach Asia, both because there were reports from Marco Polo that Asia was much larger than it turned out to be and some mistakes about the size of the Earth. He didn't think he was sailing off into nothingness hoping to find land, he was hoping to find a better trade route to Asia than going around the Horn of Africa or overland.

by zpeti 2y ago

simiones 2y ago

Columbus very very much didn't plan to die (though he very much would have if he didn't get lucky that there was a whole new continent there). His plan was to land in India, which he thought he would reach around the time he actually reached the new continent, because he had a completely wrong idea of how large the globe actually was (he alone had this wrong idea; the actual circumference of the globe was pretty well understood by this point). In general, human-based space exploration makes 0 sense. We have robots that can do everything a human in a life-support suit can, and don't need to carry 100 times their mass just to not day on the way there and back. Doing a few experiments with humans in space, like we do on the ISS, is indeed worth it for exploring the unknown unknowns of biology. Maybe some day, far in the future after we have explored Mars with many hundreds of robots, it will even make sense to send a human there. But until then, it's just a waste of everything.

zpeti 2y ago
Ok great, you’re definitely right, let’s not do it. What now? Will Elon stop? If Elon doesn’t stop, does that make you right?
- simiones 2y ago
  I'm not saying it's impossible to send people to Mars and even bring them back. I'm saying there is no point whatsoever right now, at least no material or scientific purpose. Of course, building a "city" on Mars is well beyond our capabilities, so that will either not be attempted at all, or it will fail. Maybe by 2124, but more likely 2524.
  - avmich 2y ago
    > I'm saying there is no point whatsoever right now, at least no material or scientific purpose. "No point" here means "no reasonable goal". In this case reasonability is subjective - somebody sees obvious reasons why Mars colony could be useful for humanity, somebody doesn't. Pro arguments are science, learning how to live off another planet, certain insurance against planet-wide cataclysms, general progress in space engineering. There are contra arguments as well, but which are more important is also subjective - we don't have hard data or commonly accepted facts which would solve this arguments one way or another, so, to some, it's natural to investigate the matter further...
    - fwip 2y ago
      It's difficult to imagine any cataclysm that would result in the Earth being less habitable (even for us squishy humans) than Mars already is.
      - avmich 2y ago
        It's really a matter of imagination :) . I learned about the existence of the Institute of the Problems of Asteroid Hazards long time ago, which suggested to me it's not a black-and-white type of question.
      - ryandrake 2y ago
        It's not even just about habitability. There are many remote places on Earth that we consider a waste of time and effort to inhabit, which are themselves 100X more habitable than Mars. There's a reason we don't have large, thriving settlements on inland Greenland, deep in the Sahara Desert, and Antarctica, even though they are way more habitable than Mars. There's no reason to inhabit them.
  - jfoster 2y ago
    If people think like this, it won't happen even by 2524. Elon's job is to massively accelerate that timeline.
- me_me_me 2y ago
  If elon decides to make humans fly and move objects with their will power. Will you defend it the same way? Cuz probability of both are closer to each other that to probability of them being achievable. Getting to mars would require a technological leap. Planes -> rockets kind of leap. Currently we have yet to be able to get back to the moon. Creating self sustained colony on earth would require some kind of technological miracle. And it will not be enough to use few nukes to malt ice caps on mars.
elsonrodriguez 2y ago
We will probably perform a human mission and return samples before a robot goes and picks up the Perseverance samples. We’ve been mars-capable since Apollo. It’s a matter of will, which is a political function of cost, which is falling rapidly.
- me_me_me 2y ago
  > We’ve been mars-capable since Apollo. serious citation needed! you cant make shit up. Apollo and saturn5 were nowhere near getting humans to mars. Not even close. It got us to moon with bare minimum. A weekend trip vs 6 months trip. The scale up of needed resources is mind boggling. At every step. I mean pick any step and explain how Apollo could achieve it.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    If you used multiple Saturn V rockets to launch and dock a multipart craft we could maybe have made it at least to orbit around Mars but landing would be a massively different story.
  - elsonrodriguez 2y ago
    You can read up on Mars Direct for more info. The gist of it is that the Saturn V has enough delta v to get to Mars, on the count of Mars having an atmosphere, which can be used for aerobraking. Given the capability of reaching Mars with a Saturn V, the rest of the plan revolved around using Apollo hardware, with some modification, for both transport and habitats(re-use of empty stages featured prominently). Ultimately even if we had hit some roadblock with martian soil or what have you, in an alternate timeline we could have at least sent uncrewed test flights to Mars and back.
    - me_me_me 2y ago
      That is debatable at best, a crewed flight to mars is 8 months, crew of 3 You have roughly 40t at best for a craft that needs to land there. quick google. astronauts need around 1.7kg of food per day, x3 crew, x(8x30) days is: thats 1200 kg of food - one way - just to get there food. And then you are doing to do what exactly? > the rest of the plan revolved around using Apollo hardware, with some modification, for both transport and habitats(re-use of empty stages featured prominently). This is basically handwaving problems away, massive problems. The best I can agree is that a crewed fly-by could have been possible. But landing on mars would mean death sooner or later.
keyringlight 2y ago
Also when we see a benefit to humans being on another planet, then spend a few missions before sending the mass of robots, prefab materials and equipment so there's habitats ready or nearly ready so we're not confined to whatever we have on one spaceship
_glass 2y ago
Yeah, but it's in your text/comment. The logical thing is that it makes 0 sense. Columbus to not take the real circumference makes 0 sense. Let's go to Mars, start a civilization there. It'll be a lot of change for us humans. And only if you live somewhere you can really solve problems. Maybe it's a good plan against a nuclear war, whatever.
- simiones 2y ago
  Columbus was just wrong, he was not motivated by some higher goal. And no, it's not a good plan against a nuclear war, Mars is far far far less hospitable than the Earth would be if we launched all of the nuclear weapons we have today. It's far more radioactive, dusty, cold, toxic, and everything.
  - rvnx 2y ago
    The tech we developed for Mars can become useful for the Earth of tomorrow, once World War III finishes.
    - simiones 2y ago
      Let's first build a self-sustaining mega-city in the Sahara desert, or in the Antarctic, and then we can use what we learn doing this to start thinking about a colony on Mars. Building new self-sustaining mega-cities on Earth has obvious direct advantages, and it is a reasonable first step and case study for doing so on another planet.
- deleted 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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Ajay-p 2y ago

I think it is the indelible human nature, to go the furthest we can because it's there. At first I didn't agree with going to Mars, but if you think of it as the furthest place we know we can land on, and explore, then it makes sense. If we can safely land, and return from Mars, then it makes going even further a possibility.

throw310822 2y ago
Yes indeed. But still, nobody is building residential neighborhoods on the top of the Everest or in the middle of Antarctica. Exploring for the sake of it is indeed a human instinct. The idea that we should build settlements for people who would live there permanently is plain silly. We have the obsession of repeating the Age of Discovery- but people should get the difference between discovering the Americas, with their wealth of plants, animals, land and waters, and settling a planet where there isn't a sign of life, not even air to breathe.
- fwip 2y ago
  And peoples.
- aperrien 2y ago
  > But still, nobody is building residential neighborhoods on the top of the Everest or in the middle of Antarctica Nobody is permitted to build permanent habitats in either of those areas, even though they might be feasible.

me_me_me 2y ago

> Pretty much, why do you think columbus set off? And he didn't even know if he'd actually find anything. hahahah Columbus set of because he wanted money, wealth for the crown. not because he was explorer. Columbus, Vasco Da Gama, Cortez et al were not dreamers but entrepreneurs. >> Landing and then what you plan a flag and die? Nobody (within reasonable definition of nobody) wants to go to Everest to die on top. Nobody wants to dive to Marianas trench to get crush to death. Who would go to Mars without a way back?

trafficante 2y ago
>> Who would go to Mars without a way back? For a reasonable chance of being forever immortalized as one of the first humans to step foot on another planet? Granted, I myself will never get the opportunity so it’s easy for me to say “oh hell yes I’d sign up in a heartbeat”.

rtkwe 2y ago

You're misremember the actual history of Columbus which makes sense it's been mistaught and mythologized for a very long time. Columbus thought he would reach Asia, both because there were reports from Marco Polo that Asia was much larger than it turned out to be and some mistakes about the size of the Earth. He didn't think he was sailing off into nothingness hoping to find land, he was hoping to find a better trade route to Asia than going around the Horn of Africa or overland.