10 ms·

I am surprised this obviously correct take is so controversial! The problem, essentially, is that the "more everything forever" crowd wants to get paid for the

I am surprised this obviously correct take is so controversial! The problem, essentially, is that the "more everything forever" crowd wants to get paid for the idea of the future today and then will never actually deliver what they promise. They are selling snake oil for the new millennium. Yes, of course I support space travel and settling on mars. I expect that, if we doubled or tripled NASA's budget, we could get a few humans on mars within 100 years (optimistically). It will be hard! There are many problems to solve (as the book seems to note). There's a place there for SpaceX and all other competent private companies - I love public-private partnerships. I actually think this kind of low-information escapism about the future (we will "fix it" with technology in a way that is impossible) is similar to religious faith in a coming apocalypse. Faith in an impossible event raising you up and casting down your doubters and opponents. Technology can do a lot! It has a lot of potential! But we cannot fix any of our big problems (climate change, eventually making humans multi-planet, equality) with technology alone and the people who tell you we can just want to scam you out of your money.

margalabargala 1y ago
100 years optimistically? We developed and flew the Saturn V in less than a decade. We have plenty of rockets that can do one way trips to Mars that if we really, really needed to get a person there could do it with some modifications. It's mainly a question of will. If the will existed, we could do it in a decade with doubled or tripled funding. Not a century.
- aeturnum 1y ago
  I really think you are under estimating things here. The trip to mars is ~145x longer (at minimum!) than the trip to the moon. Let's say it only takes us twice the time to develop a rocket & ship that can do that (and come back ofc) - so that's 20 years (for 145x the distance). Then you gotta develop structures and building techniques, some of which you can look at with robots, but some of which will need human feedback. The trip itself takes 7~10 months, adding extra time. If all of humanity devoted ourselves to setting up a mars base it would take less than 100 years! My timeline was based on NASA with 2-4x the budget, which I think is very reasonable. I think you are being foolish.
  - kurthr 1y ago
    Yes, the quote "a million earthlings will be living on Mars in 20 years", is hilarious. It would require us to start launching hundreds of SpaceX Starship rockets a day every day, now. It's just dumb. I know that there can be an amazing level of self confidence and denial of current reality required to build a new company from scratch, but this stretches all bounds of credulity. I just don't believe that they believe what they're saying. It's so far beyond marketing hype and "self driving" being available in 2018. At some point, this moves from encouraging hype to pure cult level deceit.
    - hnbad 1y ago
      Remember that the quote is coming from the same guy who has been promising FSD for years and hasn't come any closer to delivering it because it turns out that the devil is in the details. Elon Musk allegedly has a photographic memory that allows him to commit entire science books to memory but he apparently fails to appreciate real-world complexity. Even if you would want to give him credit for being a hype man, ideas guy, visionary, whatever, it's pretty obvious that he doesn't concern himself with the nitty gritty of every step of the way and he also doesn't seem to actually conceptualize them. It's very much like the reasoning problem many of us software developers face: because we're used to working in extremely complex business domains without having actual real-world domain expertise, we overestimate our understanding of those domains and thus underestimate the complexity of various domains in general. We look at problems, recognize patterns we're familiar with and think the problem is trivial to solve. Hence "second system syndrome" and all that - even when looking at software we underestimate the complexity because we see the general structure and mistake the complexity for cruft.
  - margalabargala 1y ago
    The goal was "get a few humans on Mars". Not the insane goal of "a million in 20 years". Firstly, there's no reason the trip can't be one-way, or at least, temporarily one-way. Secondly, there's not a huge need to develop a new rocket. We've delivered lots of one-way cargo to Mars using the Atlas V; something like the SLS could deliver much more, plenty for a couple humans to get there and not die. We've already launched SLS uncrewed around the moon, there's no reason to think it would take decades of dedication to launch one again 1-way to Mars.
- skybrian 1y ago
  Rockets are the easy part. More: The Shape of a Mars Mission: https://idlewords.com/2025/02/the_shape_of_a_mars_mission.htm https://idlewords.com/2025/02/the_shape_of_a_mars_mission.ht... Why Not Mars: https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm
- moomin 1y ago
  We haven't created a self-sustaining human population in earth orbit yet. We need to constantly supply the space station and even when we do, the health impact of staying there is really serious. That's table stakes for a Mars mission and no improvements in rocketry will compensate for the fact we simply can't keep someone alive for that long outside of earth atmosphere. Honestly, the number of people who think they know the ins and outs of living on Mars because they saw a Matt Damon movie is bizarre.
xnx 1y ago
> Yes, of course I support space travel and settling on mars. I expect that, "of course"? Why? Putting people in space, on the moon, or on Mars seems like a huge waste of resources. We could have (conservatively) 100 JWST or 1000 Pathfinders for the price of a human mission to Mars.
- aeturnum 1y ago
  I agree that missions to colonize exoplanets should be low on the priority list per marginal dollar - and also I think we should fund such research because its popular and interesting. We should fund it on the lowest practical level, which probably means establishing a 'starter' base on the moon and a base on mars in the coming centuries.
paulpauper 1y ago
There is no pleasing the NYTs or other tech critics like Wired, Axios, or Arts Technica. Either tech is too profit-focused, too focused on mundane or minutia, violates user privacy, or its proposals are too far-fetched or unworkable. What would be the perfect tech or the perfect tech company? One that makes minimal profits , works on products that are not too outlandish, does not make big promises yet is able to secure large investments with modest proposals.
- foobiekr 1y ago
  Most of the criticism on display here is the outrageous, implausible lies that the tech industry leaders are telling to stupid people who believe it for propaganda purposes to avoid regulation and scrutiny. None of the bullshit coming out of Musk, for example, is real, it’s not even plausible, it’s just lies for dumb people.
  - cheevly 1y ago
    No you
- sashank_1509 1y ago
  Well said, I can’t imagine what the perfect tech company to the NyT journalist is, I assume it is something run by committee that uses 100’s of their journalists opinions to make every simple decision.
shipp02 1y ago
>actually think this kind of low-information escapism about the future I think this is called techno-utopianism. The "leaders" in technology have been doing this ever since the industrial revolution. People sold the idea that street lights would fix "public morals" and eliminate crime. Also see the progress trap and professor Simon Penny's work and what he calls the end of the anthropocene.
- kaonwarb 1y ago
  There is some evidence that street lights reduce crime! E.g. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10940-020-09490-6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10940-020-09490-6
  - pdimitar 1y ago
    Reduce, yes, absolutely. Eliminate -- no.
    - Ukv 1y ago
      Were there any serious claims that street lights would entirely eliminate crime? A "sizable reductions in nighttime outdoor index crimes" sounds like a pretty positive result.
      - pdimitar 1y ago
        I can't claim anything objectively because I never truly looked at it scientifically. I simply come from bad neighborhoods and the amount of times I heard "shhh, don't go there, people will see you" from guys who clearly were looking to start for trouble, was substantial in its own right. Anecdotal evidence, sure, but from a psychological point of view the people who want to steal or harm others feel much safer doing so in the darkness, I have found.
aoeusnth1 1y ago
100 years optimistically!? That's an incredibly pessimistic timeline, maybe one of the most hardline "nothing ever happens" outlooks I've ever heard articulated.
- Spivak 1y ago
  Eh, it's a reasonable prior. The timeline is "it will never happen" until the leap forward happens that makes it "within 2 years." Basically the same as air flight. You can't know when the leap will happen so it's basically picking a year that seems far enough off to be pretty darn sure.
  - Unit327 1y ago
    It doesn't require a leap forward, we could put boots on the ground with 1990s tech.
    - red-iron-pine 1y ago
      aye we could have. and they'd all be long dead on the surface of Mars by this point. getting them there isn't enough.
      - Unit327 1y ago
        Keeping them alive and returning them doesn't require "a leap" which is the central point of OP I am disagreeing with. We have all the technology, material science etc to do it. Sure, it requires some research, engineering and a crapload of investment, but it doesn't require anything that is currently "science fiction".
- paulryanrogers 1y ago
  Have you read about the natural conditions on Mars? I doubt there will be a permanent settlement in a thousand years.
  - 1y ago
DavidPiper 1y ago
> low-information escapism What a great way to describe it. It's like a good sci-fi or fantasy novel, but for people who don't read.
gsf_emergency 1y ago
>wants to get paid for the idea of the future today One response (also by an abundance crowd?) to a similar sentiment: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/serbia-limits-academics-research-time-to-just-one-hour-a-day/4021399.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/serbia-limits-academics-... "Serbia limits academics’ research time to just one hour a day"
Veedrac 1y ago
These articles which are little more than blind scarequotes peppered with ad hominems invite little more meaningful discussion than more ad hominems. What is the value of a comments section filled with little but "this is stupid and anyone who believes it is a snake oil salesman"?
stevage 1y ago
Why "of course" you support colonizing mars? What's your reasoning?
dominicrose 1y ago
Getting paid before delivery is clearly an Elon Musk strategy and in some cases it does mean that he (Tesla) will be able to deliver but he's clearly full of shit with crazy ideas like living on Mars because the Earth is doomrf or whatever. BS does also bring money or fame or whatever sometimes.
FL33TW00D 1y ago
Doubled or tripled NASA's budget? NASA has spent 32 BILLION on SLS with nothing to show for it. Each launch is expected to cost 2.5 BILLION https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System. Starship is just orders of magnitude less than this. NASA is a moribund jobs program.
- os2warpman 1y ago
  > Starship is just orders of magnitude less than this. Starship does not exist. Starship is the name given to a design for a fully reusable superheavy launch vehicle intended to take 100t to LEO. The things being launched by SpaceX are not Starship. They are impressive, but are not Starship. They are called Starship, but are not Starship. Let me be clear. I am not saying that Starship will not exist. What I am saying is that today, right now, Starship does not exist and SLS does. You implied that Starship does exist, and is cheaper. Nobody, not you, not me, not Lord Ketamine, can predict when it will exist or how much it will cost with any degree of accuracy. I genuinely, sincerely, and earnestly WANT Starship to exist, but as of today, April 24th, 2025 it does not.
  - FL33TW00D 1y ago
    We can argue technicalities all day long but to me, this exists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMGiNKcVSek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMGiNKcVSek
    - os2warpman 1y ago
      The payload on that flight was a single stuffed toy banana, for scale. On all test flights with a payload exceeding the mass (~300 grams) of a single stuffed toy banana (for scale), the flight has failed. Flight 7: 20,000 kg payload (starlink mass simulators) - engines fail after 7m39s Flight 8: 8,000 kg payload (starlink mass simulators) - engines fail after 8m04s Flight 9 is not currently planned to carry a payload. None of this is a technicality. It is technicreality.
      - 1y ago
sershe 1y ago
Climate change can near certainly be served with technology, if society didn't stand in the way. We could all switch to nuclear - France did it decades ago, technology is not a problem, society is - hence the subjects of these articles. Looks at solar in China or even Texas vs California. Everything is like that. Putting humans on Mars is purely a technological problem. Inequality is not a real problem.

margalabargala 1y ago

100 years optimistically? We developed and flew the Saturn V in less than a decade. We have plenty of rockets that can do one way trips to Mars that if we really, really needed to get a person there could do it with some modifications. It's mainly a question of will. If the will existed, we could do it in a decade with doubled or tripled funding. Not a century.

aeturnum 1y ago
I really think you are under estimating things here. The trip to mars is ~145x longer (at minimum!) than the trip to the moon. Let's say it only takes us twice the time to develop a rocket & ship that can do that (and come back ofc) - so that's 20 years (for 145x the distance). Then you gotta develop structures and building techniques, some of which you can look at with robots, but some of which will need human feedback. The trip itself takes 7~10 months, adding extra time. If all of humanity devoted ourselves to setting up a mars base it would take less than 100 years! My timeline was based on NASA with 2-4x the budget, which I think is very reasonable. I think you are being foolish.
- kurthr 1y ago
  Yes, the quote "a million earthlings will be living on Mars in 20 years", is hilarious. It would require us to start launching hundreds of SpaceX Starship rockets a day every day, now. It's just dumb. I know that there can be an amazing level of self confidence and denial of current reality required to build a new company from scratch, but this stretches all bounds of credulity. I just don't believe that they believe what they're saying. It's so far beyond marketing hype and "self driving" being available in 2018. At some point, this moves from encouraging hype to pure cult level deceit.
  - hnbad 1y ago
    Remember that the quote is coming from the same guy who has been promising FSD for years and hasn't come any closer to delivering it because it turns out that the devil is in the details. Elon Musk allegedly has a photographic memory that allows him to commit entire science books to memory but he apparently fails to appreciate real-world complexity. Even if you would want to give him credit for being a hype man, ideas guy, visionary, whatever, it's pretty obvious that he doesn't concern himself with the nitty gritty of every step of the way and he also doesn't seem to actually conceptualize them. It's very much like the reasoning problem many of us software developers face: because we're used to working in extremely complex business domains without having actual real-world domain expertise, we overestimate our understanding of those domains and thus underestimate the complexity of various domains in general. We look at problems, recognize patterns we're familiar with and think the problem is trivial to solve. Hence "second system syndrome" and all that - even when looking at software we underestimate the complexity because we see the general structure and mistake the complexity for cruft.
- margalabargala 1y ago
  The goal was "get a few humans on Mars". Not the insane goal of "a million in 20 years". Firstly, there's no reason the trip can't be one-way, or at least, temporarily one-way. Secondly, there's not a huge need to develop a new rocket. We've delivered lots of one-way cargo to Mars using the Atlas V; something like the SLS could deliver much more, plenty for a couple humans to get there and not die. We've already launched SLS uncrewed around the moon, there's no reason to think it would take decades of dedication to launch one again 1-way to Mars.
skybrian 1y ago
Rockets are the easy part. More: The Shape of a Mars Mission: https://idlewords.com/2025/02/the_shape_of_a_mars_mission.htm https://idlewords.com/2025/02/the_shape_of_a_mars_mission.ht... Why Not Mars: https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm
moomin 1y ago
We haven't created a self-sustaining human population in earth orbit yet. We need to constantly supply the space station and even when we do, the health impact of staying there is really serious. That's table stakes for a Mars mission and no improvements in rocketry will compensate for the fact we simply can't keep someone alive for that long outside of earth atmosphere. Honestly, the number of people who think they know the ins and outs of living on Mars because they saw a Matt Damon movie is bizarre.

xnx 1y ago

> Yes, of course I support space travel and settling on mars. I expect that, "of course"? Why? Putting people in space, on the moon, or on Mars seems like a huge waste of resources. We could have (conservatively) 100 JWST or 1000 Pathfinders for the price of a human mission to Mars.

aeturnum 1y ago
I agree that missions to colonize exoplanets should be low on the priority list per marginal dollar - and also I think we should fund such research because its popular and interesting. We should fund it on the lowest practical level, which probably means establishing a 'starter' base on the moon and a base on mars in the coming centuries.

paulpauper 1y ago

There is no pleasing the NYTs or other tech critics like Wired, Axios, or Arts Technica. Either tech is too profit-focused, too focused on mundane or minutia, violates user privacy, or its proposals are too far-fetched or unworkable. What would be the perfect tech or the perfect tech company? One that makes minimal profits , works on products that are not too outlandish, does not make big promises yet is able to secure large investments with modest proposals.

foobiekr 1y ago
Most of the criticism on display here is the outrageous, implausible lies that the tech industry leaders are telling to stupid people who believe it for propaganda purposes to avoid regulation and scrutiny. None of the bullshit coming out of Musk, for example, is real, it’s not even plausible, it’s just lies for dumb people.
- cheevly 1y ago
  No you
sashank_1509 1y ago
Well said, I can’t imagine what the perfect tech company to the NyT journalist is, I assume it is something run by committee that uses 100’s of their journalists opinions to make every simple decision.

shipp02 1y ago

>actually think this kind of low-information escapism about the future I think this is called techno-utopianism. The "leaders" in technology have been doing this ever since the industrial revolution. People sold the idea that street lights would fix "public morals" and eliminate crime. Also see the progress trap and professor Simon Penny's work and what he calls the end of the anthropocene.

kaonwarb 1y ago
There is some evidence that street lights reduce crime! E.g. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10940-020-09490-6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10940-020-09490-6
- pdimitar 1y ago
  Reduce, yes, absolutely. Eliminate -- no.
  - Ukv 1y ago
    Were there any serious claims that street lights would entirely eliminate crime? A "sizable reductions in nighttime outdoor index crimes" sounds like a pretty positive result.
    - pdimitar 1y ago
      I can't claim anything objectively because I never truly looked at it scientifically. I simply come from bad neighborhoods and the amount of times I heard "shhh, don't go there, people will see you" from guys who clearly were looking to start for trouble, was substantial in its own right. Anecdotal evidence, sure, but from a psychological point of view the people who want to steal or harm others feel much safer doing so in the darkness, I have found.

aoeusnth1 1y ago

100 years optimistically!? That's an incredibly pessimistic timeline, maybe one of the most hardline "nothing ever happens" outlooks I've ever heard articulated.

Spivak 1y ago
Eh, it's a reasonable prior. The timeline is "it will never happen" until the leap forward happens that makes it "within 2 years." Basically the same as air flight. You can't know when the leap will happen so it's basically picking a year that seems far enough off to be pretty darn sure.
- Unit327 1y ago
  It doesn't require a leap forward, we could put boots on the ground with 1990s tech.
  - red-iron-pine 1y ago
    aye we could have. and they'd all be long dead on the surface of Mars by this point. getting them there isn't enough.
    - Unit327 1y ago
      Keeping them alive and returning them doesn't require "a leap" which is the central point of OP I am disagreeing with. We have all the technology, material science etc to do it. Sure, it requires some research, engineering and a crapload of investment, but it doesn't require anything that is currently "science fiction".
paulryanrogers 1y ago
Have you read about the natural conditions on Mars? I doubt there will be a permanent settlement in a thousand years.
- 1y ago

DavidPiper 1y ago

> low-information escapism What a great way to describe it. It's like a good sci-fi or fantasy novel, but for people who don't read.

gsf_emergency 1y ago

>wants to get paid for the idea of the future today One response (also by an abundance crowd?) to a similar sentiment: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/serbia-limits-academics-research-time-to-just-one-hour-a-day/4021399.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/serbia-limits-academics-... "Serbia limits academics’ research time to just one hour a day"

Veedrac 1y ago

These articles which are little more than blind scarequotes peppered with ad hominems invite little more meaningful discussion than more ad hominems. What is the value of a comments section filled with little but "this is stupid and anyone who believes it is a snake oil salesman"?

stevage 1y ago

Why "of course" you support colonizing mars? What's your reasoning?

dominicrose 1y ago

Getting paid before delivery is clearly an Elon Musk strategy and in some cases it does mean that he (Tesla) will be able to deliver but he's clearly full of shit with crazy ideas like living on Mars because the Earth is doomrf or whatever. BS does also bring money or fame or whatever sometimes.

FL33TW00D 1y ago

Doubled or tripled NASA's budget? NASA has spent 32 BILLION on SLS with nothing to show for it. Each launch is expected to cost 2.5 BILLION https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System. Starship is just orders of magnitude less than this. NASA is a moribund jobs program.

os2warpman 1y ago
> Starship is just orders of magnitude less than this. Starship does not exist. Starship is the name given to a design for a fully reusable superheavy launch vehicle intended to take 100t to LEO. The things being launched by SpaceX are not Starship. They are impressive, but are not Starship. They are called Starship, but are not Starship. Let me be clear. I am not saying that Starship will not exist. What I am saying is that today, right now, Starship does not exist and SLS does. You implied that Starship does exist, and is cheaper. Nobody, not you, not me, not Lord Ketamine, can predict when it will exist or how much it will cost with any degree of accuracy. I genuinely, sincerely, and earnestly WANT Starship to exist, but as of today, April 24th, 2025 it does not.
- FL33TW00D 1y ago
  We can argue technicalities all day long but to me, this exists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMGiNKcVSek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMGiNKcVSek
  - os2warpman 1y ago
    The payload on that flight was a single stuffed toy banana, for scale. On all test flights with a payload exceeding the mass (~300 grams) of a single stuffed toy banana (for scale), the flight has failed. Flight 7: 20,000 kg payload (starlink mass simulators) - engines fail after 7m39s Flight 8: 8,000 kg payload (starlink mass simulators) - engines fail after 8m04s Flight 9 is not currently planned to carry a payload. None of this is a technicality. It is technicreality.
    - 1y ago

sershe 1y ago

Climate change can near certainly be served with technology, if society didn't stand in the way. We could all switch to nuclear - France did it decades ago, technology is not a problem, society is - hence the subjects of these articles. Looks at solar in China or even Texas vs California. Everything is like that. Putting humans on Mars is purely a technological problem. Inequality is not a real problem.