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Genuinely curious: Why do you consider a future Mars colony to be «awful stuff»?

by setopt 10mo ago

runarberg 10mo ago
Yes, I do. It is engineeringly possible, but societally a horror prescription. I maintain that even the moon landing was an engineering dead end, it resulted in no major breakthrough which we wouldn’t have reached otherwise (for much cheaper) and the humanity benefited nothing but bragging rights. It was then used to further nationalism and exceptionalism by one particular society which went on to conduct many horrible acts of atrocities in the decades that followed. The prospect of a Mars colony would be that except a million times worse. Humanity will never migrate to Mars, we will never live on Mars, we have nothing to gain by living there, and it may even be impossible for us to live a normal human life over there (e.g. we don‘t know if we can even give birth over there). The only thing it will give us are bragging rights to the powerful individuals which achives it first, who will likely use that as political capital to enact horrible policies on Earth, for their own personal benefits, at the cost of everybody else.
koakuma-chan 10mo ago
Why colonize Mars? Why not Moon?
- whiplash451 10mo ago
  The moon has no atmosphere. It is regularly hit by meteorites. Not sure it’s a very safe place to set up a colony. Not like Mars is an amazing trip either, but the Moon is simply unsafe long term.
  - dmix 10mo ago
    Plus Mars has a far more interesting history so the people living there can do more fun science than stare out at dusty grey rock.
- mwigdahl 10mo ago
  Mars has larger deposits of water and volatiles, which help with early space expansion. You can start with a single Moon base but generally it isn't worth the mission control investment once you start to build out Mars.
- glenstein 10mo ago
  As others have noted, the moon has significant limitations, in terms of resources and atmosphere. I do think it may have utility, not for anything we might consider settlements or habitats, but perhaps domed science outposts.
Supermancho 10mo ago
Saying "working toward a martian colony" is akin to saying "working toward a way to colonize the solar system". Mars is not very interesting once you have a methodology. The Moon is a much more practical place to start the process. Then aim at the asteroid belt.
- runarberg 10mo ago
  Mining asteroids is a goal that makes sense. I can picture a future where spacecrafts are regularly sent to the asteroid belt and come back to earth with some minerals. Living on the moon does not make sense. There is nothing to be gained from humans living in a future moon base. Not any more than cities built in Antarctica, or in orbit with a constellation of ISS like satellites. We won’t build a city on the Moon, nor Mars, nor any of Jupiter’s moons, nor anywhere outside of Earth, and we won‘t do this even if engineeringly possible, for the exact same reason we won’t build a bubble city inside the Mariana Trench.
  - TheOtherHobbes 10mo ago
    Mining asteroids makes no sense whatsoever with any currently imaginable practical tech, especially not economically. The numbers for even the most basic solutions just don't work, and anything cleverer - like adding thrusters to chunks of metal and firing them at the Earth - has one or two rather obvious issues. The Moon is interesting because it's there, it's fairly close, it's a test bed for off-world construction, manufacturing, and life support, and there are experiments you can do on the dark side that aren't possible elsewhere. Especially big telescopes. It has many of the same life support issues as Mars, and any Moon solutions are likely to work on Mars and the asteroids, more quickly and successfully than trying to do the same R&D far, far away. Will it pay for itself? Not for a long, long time. But frontier projects rarely do. The benefit comes from the investment, the R&D, the new science and engineering, and the jobs created. It's also handy if you need a remote off-site backup.
    - Supermancho 10mo ago
      > Mining asteroids makes no sense whatsoever with any currently imaginable practical tech, especially not economically. With current tech, it's practical enough to extract rocks from a rock. We've already done this on a comet, which I think is much harder to do. With current economics, not practical to fund such an endeavor, even if it was to haul back an asteroid made of solid gold. Regardless, we're discussing the far future, rather than current state. If raw materials (again, an unknown) continue to become more scarce, it's hard to say what economics might support extra-planetary resource collection. What's for sure, is mining Mars will be harder than mining asteroids for water or metals, et al.

Genuinely curious: Why do you consider a future Mars colony to be «awful stuff»?

by setopt 10mo ago

Genuinely curious: Why do you consider a future Mars colony to be «awful stuff»?

Yes, I do. It is engineeringly possible, but societally a horror prescription. I maintain that even the moon landing was an engineering dead end, it resulted in no major breakthrough which we wouldn’t have reached otherwise (for much cheaper) and the humanity benefited nothing but bragging rights. It was then used to further nationalism and exceptionalism by one particular society which went on to conduct many horrible acts of atrocities in the decades that followed. The prospect of a Mars colony would be that except a million times worse. Humanity will never migrate to Mars, we will never live on Mars, we have nothing to gain by living there, and it may even be impossible for us to live a normal human life over there (e.g. we don‘t know if we can even give birth over there). The only thing it will give us are bragging rights to the powerful individuals which achives it first, who will likely use that as political capital to enact horrible policies on Earth, for their own personal benefits, at the cost of everybody else.

koakuma-chan 10mo ago

Why colonize Mars? Why not Moon?

whiplash451 10mo ago
The moon has no atmosphere. It is regularly hit by meteorites. Not sure it’s a very safe place to set up a colony. Not like Mars is an amazing trip either, but the Moon is simply unsafe long term.
- dmix 10mo ago
  Plus Mars has a far more interesting history so the people living there can do more fun science than stare out at dusty grey rock.
mwigdahl 10mo ago
Mars has larger deposits of water and volatiles, which help with early space expansion. You can start with a single Moon base but generally it isn't worth the mission control investment once you start to build out Mars.
glenstein 10mo ago
As others have noted, the moon has significant limitations, in terms of resources and atmosphere. I do think it may have utility, not for anything we might consider settlements or habitats, but perhaps domed science outposts.

Supermancho 10mo ago

Saying "working toward a martian colony" is akin to saying "working toward a way to colonize the solar system". Mars is not very interesting once you have a methodology. The Moon is a much more practical place to start the process. Then aim at the asteroid belt.

runarberg 10mo ago
Mining asteroids is a goal that makes sense. I can picture a future where spacecrafts are regularly sent to the asteroid belt and come back to earth with some minerals. Living on the moon does not make sense. There is nothing to be gained from humans living in a future moon base. Not any more than cities built in Antarctica, or in orbit with a constellation of ISS like satellites. We won’t build a city on the Moon, nor Mars, nor any of Jupiter’s moons, nor anywhere outside of Earth, and we won‘t do this even if engineeringly possible, for the exact same reason we won’t build a bubble city inside the Mariana Trench.
- TheOtherHobbes 10mo ago
  Mining asteroids makes no sense whatsoever with any currently imaginable practical tech, especially not economically. The numbers for even the most basic solutions just don't work, and anything cleverer - like adding thrusters to chunks of metal and firing them at the Earth - has one or two rather obvious issues. The Moon is interesting because it's there, it's fairly close, it's a test bed for off-world construction, manufacturing, and life support, and there are experiments you can do on the dark side that aren't possible elsewhere. Especially big telescopes. It has many of the same life support issues as Mars, and any Moon solutions are likely to work on Mars and the asteroids, more quickly and successfully than trying to do the same R&D far, far away. Will it pay for itself? Not for a long, long time. But frontier projects rarely do. The benefit comes from the investment, the R&D, the new science and engineering, and the jobs created. It's also handy if you need a remote off-site backup.
  - Supermancho 10mo ago
    > Mining asteroids makes no sense whatsoever with any currently imaginable practical tech, especially not economically. With current tech, it's practical enough to extract rocks from a rock. We've already done this on a comet, which I think is much harder to do. With current economics, not practical to fund such an endeavor, even if it was to haul back an asteroid made of solid gold. Regardless, we're discussing the far future, rather than current state. If raw materials (again, an unknown) continue to become more scarce, it's hard to say what economics might support extra-planetary resource collection. What's for sure, is mining Mars will be harder than mining asteroids for water or metals, et al.