3 ms·

Mars One is a cute prospect when it's just a dream, once reality sets and those people realise that the novelty of being in an inhospitable place, millions of k

by piva00 2y ago

Mars One is a cute prospect when it's just a dream, once reality sets and those people realise that the novelty of being in an inhospitable place, millions of kilometres away from any semblance of a life (air, water, food, nature, hobbies, loved ones, etc.) wouldn't be a good choice to live for 20-50 years I highly doubt that even 1% of those millionaires would still choose to be shipped off.

adastra22 2y ago
You’re projecting. A significant number will want to go BECAUSE OF the hardship. Frontier mentality.
- piva00 2y ago
  You're mixing explorers with frontier mentality. When life was hard and the prospect of getting to new land on a frontier to potentially improve your (and most of the time your family's) life, it gave people very potential tangible benefits to go there against the risks. Going to Mars, a deserted place where living a bare life is only ever possible if a lot of life support infrastructure in small pods is running 24/7 without a hitch. Where there is no direct benefit in terms of human accumulation, not at least for a few generations. Which millionaire living a good life on Earth would consciously choose living in a cramped pod with strangers for the rest of their life, to look out onto a Red Desert of nothingness every day? The novelty of doing a short walk around will disappear fast, the motivation of "let's build a city here" would be 100% dependent on the provisions sent by Earth, and there would be no end in sight for your life in little pods while you toil away Martian soil, lose muscles, have to consume a diet of potatoes, while at any time if your life support systems fail you and everyone else you might bonded with are done. Explorers without much to lose on Earth might embark on this, millionaires living a cushy life not so much.
  - adastra22 2y ago
    Just because it’s not for you doesn’t mean there aren’t people who have dreamed their whole life of doing this and would sell everything they own to pay their way if given the opportunity.
    - piva00 2y ago
      Of course there is, there are people willing to do a lot of things. At the same time the overlapping of people with the means to do it and willing to endure the conditions is extremely small... You are attacking an argument I didn't make, my argument is that the people who possess enough to be the ones paying for a one-ticket to Mars are much less inclined to go live under those conditions. You are going to need a lot of people if you want to transform a barren planet.
- avmich 2y ago
  Imagine that a significant number of people went, say, to Mars. Now they are there, and suddenly they want better conditions. Could it trigger crash program in terraforming to improve the conditions, so that mere decades away Mars would be more hospitable? What money couldn't do here?
  - adastra22 2y ago
    The framing of the question is odd. It makes the colonists seem passive spectators. What is holding back the terraforming of Mars is not money but human agency--people living there and doing the work. The people who want to go, want to take part in this endeavour. They're not going to go there and then sit on their behinds and lobby for better living conditions; they're going there to do the work themselves of building a 2nd garden of Eden.
    - tsimionescu 2y ago
      No, the thing stopping the terraforming of Mars is any realistic idea of how to do it. Maybe in a few hundred years we'll have the technology to terraform a barren, cold, almost atmosphere-less planet to make it livable to humans, but not before then. And it will still take 1000 years to reach a livable state after you start. And however this may be achieved, it definitely doesn't require humans living on Mars to do it. In fact, it is almost certainly going to only be possible if you don't have people there already, with life support systems adapted to the old status quo.
      - adastra22 2y ago
        Terraforming has been well studied and we certainly have very good ideas for how to accomplish it. It is a centuries-long process, and no one is claiming otherwise, but not some impossible fever dream. The biggest gains are from rising temperatures, and global warming is something we actually have some experience with, after all. I don't see how you expect it to be accomplished remotely though, without people on-site to build things, repair things, and most importantly create and expand local infrastructure so as to not need imports from Earth.

by piva00 2y ago

adastra22 2y ago

You’re projecting. A significant number will want to go BECAUSE OF the hardship. Frontier mentality.

piva00 2y ago
You're mixing explorers with frontier mentality. When life was hard and the prospect of getting to new land on a frontier to potentially improve your (and most of the time your family's) life, it gave people very potential tangible benefits to go there against the risks. Going to Mars, a deserted place where living a bare life is only ever possible if a lot of life support infrastructure in small pods is running 24/7 without a hitch. Where there is no direct benefit in terms of human accumulation, not at least for a few generations. Which millionaire living a good life on Earth would consciously choose living in a cramped pod with strangers for the rest of their life, to look out onto a Red Desert of nothingness every day? The novelty of doing a short walk around will disappear fast, the motivation of "let's build a city here" would be 100% dependent on the provisions sent by Earth, and there would be no end in sight for your life in little pods while you toil away Martian soil, lose muscles, have to consume a diet of potatoes, while at any time if your life support systems fail you and everyone else you might bonded with are done. Explorers without much to lose on Earth might embark on this, millionaires living a cushy life not so much.
- adastra22 2y ago
  Just because it’s not for you doesn’t mean there aren’t people who have dreamed their whole life of doing this and would sell everything they own to pay their way if given the opportunity.
  - piva00 2y ago
    Of course there is, there are people willing to do a lot of things. At the same time the overlapping of people with the means to do it and willing to endure the conditions is extremely small... You are attacking an argument I didn't make, my argument is that the people who possess enough to be the ones paying for a one-ticket to Mars are much less inclined to go live under those conditions. You are going to need a lot of people if you want to transform a barren planet.
avmich 2y ago
Imagine that a significant number of people went, say, to Mars. Now they are there, and suddenly they want better conditions. Could it trigger crash program in terraforming to improve the conditions, so that mere decades away Mars would be more hospitable? What money couldn't do here?
- adastra22 2y ago
  The framing of the question is odd. It makes the colonists seem passive spectators. What is holding back the terraforming of Mars is not money but human agency--people living there and doing the work. The people who want to go, want to take part in this endeavour. They're not going to go there and then sit on their behinds and lobby for better living conditions; they're going there to do the work themselves of building a 2nd garden of Eden.
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    No, the thing stopping the terraforming of Mars is any realistic idea of how to do it. Maybe in a few hundred years we'll have the technology to terraform a barren, cold, almost atmosphere-less planet to make it livable to humans, but not before then. And it will still take 1000 years to reach a livable state after you start. And however this may be achieved, it definitely doesn't require humans living on Mars to do it. In fact, it is almost certainly going to only be possible if you don't have people there already, with life support systems adapted to the old status quo.
    - adastra22 2y ago
      Terraforming has been well studied and we certainly have very good ideas for how to accomplish it. It is a centuries-long process, and no one is claiming otherwise, but not some impossible fever dream. The biggest gains are from rising temperatures, and global warming is something we actually have some experience with, after all. I don't see how you expect it to be accomplished remotely though, without people on-site to build things, repair things, and most importantly create and expand local infrastructure so as to not need imports from Earth.