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I'm trying to keep this engaging/holistic and avoiding writing a rambling wall of text, but I also don't want to just cherry pick stuff. So if you think I'm ign

I'm trying to keep this engaging/holistic and avoiding writing a rambling wall of text, but I also don't want to just cherry pick stuff. So if you think I'm ignoring something or whatever, please do feel free to point to it. I can certainly elaborate on just about anything on this topic. I find all of it quite fascinating and enjoyable to discuss (or debate)! --- Let me start with your water issue. It varies by area - the 2% came from Curiosity's region bearing in mind it moves at an aggregate rate of about about 1.5 miles per year. The up to 5% came from measurements from other devices on different parts of the planet. And in this goofy digital world we've created I think we're falling increasingly out of touch with the real world, and what we're capable of. You are implying generating 800C of heat is some technological issue yet a typical medieval style open forge and bellows can easily reach temperatures upwards of 1200C. Suffice to say there's a bit more refined methods developed in the past millennia! The reason radiation levels matter is because radiation can do one of two things. If you have low enough radiation, then the worst you're looking at is something like a reduced life expectancy owing to increased rates of cancer. But high radiation can give you radiation poisoning and kill you in hours. Mars is much more of the former than the latter. For instance there's even one really interesting area on Earth - Ramsar, Iran. [1] It's a small town of a couple of thousand that has significant ambient radiation levels, with some smaller areas within it even experiencing higher than typical levels on Mars. You'd naturally expect that to, at the minimum, lead to increased rates of cancer but it based on limited data not only does this not seem to be the case, but there may already be radio-adaptive effects in play. It's phenomenally interesting! The thing I'd make of this (and the water on Mars) issue is that it's impossible to know what you don't know. And right now we know basically nothing about colonizing other planets and ultimately I think the only way we're really going to find out more is by actually doing it. So for instance obviously fertility will be crucial, but all the experiments you do on Earth or the ISS aren't ever going to give you a definitive answer. You're only going to find out on Mars by actually doing it. And I think this applies to many of the issues you're mentioning. The idea of trying to just work out everything at home, and then have everything go perfectly is what I would call the meme. It just doesn't work in the real world. This is precisely how SpaceX was able to go from a relatively broke startup to dominating the entire space industry. They worked towards the goal and tried their best along the way, but didn't let the possibility of failure get in the way of achieving success. And they ended up with not only the most efficient rockets in the world, but also have the best safety record as well. Kind of paradoxical in a way, but I think it also makes sense. In poker the best way to ensure you lose money is to try to avoid losing money. When fear of failure dominates your thought processes you, at some point, become incapable of making the best decisions. I think some of the issues you bring up (as well as in the book you mentioned) are issues brought up just to have issues to bring up. So for instance, what happens if somebody goes crazy? To me this question is banal, because I just don't see there being any real discussion to be had. Obviously they'd immediately be locked up to ensure the safety of everybody else, and they'd be deported back to Earth at the first opportunity. Maybe there's some interesting nuance or whatever in these issues, but I'm not seeing it? [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Iran#Radioactivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Iran#Radioactivity

teachrdan 9d ago
I'm going to keep this conversation going because it's interesting to me, if no one else here. As to reaching 800+ Celsius: This is a solved problem on Earth because we have an effectively unlimited supply of oxygen and fuel. Neither of these conditions is true on Mars, unless you count the (very toxic to humans!) perchlorate in the soil. Extracting potable water from Martian soil would be a non-trivial task just in terms of energy needs, much less the task of making the water safe to drink. The radiation issue is a bigger deal than you let on. I did not know about Ramsar. It's interesting! But this is a town of only 2000 with people who may have adapted to its higher levels of background radiation over generations. Our hypothetical Mars colonists will not have that luxury. And Ramsar has, on average, "only" 10x more radiation than we have on Earth -- still only 1/5th what we'd have on the surface of Mars. I'd also point out that you seem pretty blase about the long-term risks of radiation. If we're talking about real colonization, we have to consider the risks of literal, multiple lifetimes of radiation -- not just how it might affect an average person over the course of a few years or decades. > The idea of trying to just work out everything at home, and then have everything go perfectly is what I would call the meme I apologize if it seems like I'm saying we need everything worked out. That is a miscommunication on my part. But we need some working prototype of what could work -- which we don't. We've never even succeeded in building a self-sustaining closed system on Earth! Where it should be easy! Because it's actually really really hard! And the craziest part is, literally no one is even trying! If we can't make a self-sustaining closed system work here there is no reason to believe we could do it on another planet. I know SpaceX is everyone's favorite model of "go fast and break stuff", but there's many reasons why that does not apply to space colonization. The obvious first reason is that blowing up a rocket is not as serious as accidentally killing a space colony. Another is the (imo mistaken) belief that rocked design is analogous to space colonization. I'd hazard that space colonization is maybe 1000x more difficult than designing a real big rocket -- which is admittedly very hard! But there are a bunch of extremely important and difficult questions that advocates for space travel -- maybe even you -- seem totally uninterested in solving and hand-wave away. Resources will be scarce on a space colony, at least for the foreseeable future. What if a baby is born with a pathology that makes their care too expensive? Will they be left to die? Or will they have a right to live indefinitely? Will their parents be forced to get sterilized -- or have future fetuses aborted -- if they are at risk of producing more children with the same pathology? Who decides who gets sent home? It's simple if someone has an extreme psychic break with reality. But what if it's someone with severe depression? Or borderline personality disorder? Will the colony get to vote people off the island like the ancient Greeks sent people into exile? And what if a trip home might kill the person in question -- a particular risk for people who are born on Mars and never experienced gravity on Earth? Do future colonists have the right to give people an effective death sentence for being mentally ill? These are obviously problems that exists here on Earth! But the consequences are entirely less dire here. A person with severe schizophrenia can live on the streets here in the US and pretty much no one gives a shit. But if this happens on Mars, and that person is using resources that are already in short supply (think of a world where there's only enough water to shower for a few minutes a week, or to subsist on only a bare minimum number of calories), people are going to care a lot. What happens next?

teachrdan 9d ago

I'm going to keep this conversation going because it's interesting to me, if no one else here. As to reaching 800+ Celsius: This is a solved problem on Earth because we have an effectively unlimited supply of oxygen and fuel. Neither of these conditions is true on Mars, unless you count the (very toxic to humans!) perchlorate in the soil. Extracting potable water from Martian soil would be a non-trivial task just in terms of energy needs, much less the task of making the water safe to drink. The radiation issue is a bigger deal than you let on. I did not know about Ramsar. It's interesting! But this is a town of only 2000 with people who may have adapted to its higher levels of background radiation over generations. Our hypothetical Mars colonists will not have that luxury. And Ramsar has, on average, "only" 10x more radiation than we have on Earth -- still only 1/5th what we'd have on the surface of Mars. I'd also point out that you seem pretty blase about the long-term risks of radiation. If we're talking about real colonization, we have to consider the risks of literal, multiple lifetimes of radiation -- not just how it might affect an average person over the course of a few years or decades. > The idea of trying to just work out everything at home, and then have everything go perfectly is what I would call the meme I apologize if it seems like I'm saying we need everything worked out. That is a miscommunication on my part. But we need some working prototype of what could work -- which we don't. We've never even succeeded in building a self-sustaining closed system on Earth! Where it should be easy! Because it's actually really really hard! And the craziest part is, literally no one is even trying! If we can't make a self-sustaining closed system work here there is no reason to believe we could do it on another planet. I know SpaceX is everyone's favorite model of "go fast and break stuff", but there's many reasons why that does not apply to space colonization. The obvious first reason is that blowing up a rocket is not as serious as accidentally killing a space colony. Another is the (imo mistaken) belief that rocked design is analogous to space colonization. I'd hazard that space colonization is maybe 1000x more difficult than designing a real big rocket -- which is admittedly very hard! But there are a bunch of extremely important and difficult questions that advocates for space travel -- maybe even you -- seem totally uninterested in solving and hand-wave away. Resources will be scarce on a space colony, at least for the foreseeable future. What if a baby is born with a pathology that makes their care too expensive? Will they be left to die? Or will they have a right to live indefinitely? Will their parents be forced to get sterilized -- or have future fetuses aborted -- if they are at risk of producing more children with the same pathology? Who decides who gets sent home? It's simple if someone has an extreme psychic break with reality. But what if it's someone with severe depression? Or borderline personality disorder? Will the colony get to vote people off the island like the ancient Greeks sent people into exile? And what if a trip home might kill the person in question -- a particular risk for people who are born on Mars and never experienced gravity on Earth? Do future colonists have the right to give people an effective death sentence for being mentally ill? These are obviously problems that exists here on Earth! But the consequences are entirely less dire here. A person with severe schizophrenia can live on the streets here in the US and pretty much no one gives a shit. But if this happens on Mars, and that person is using resources that are already in short supply (think of a world where there's only enough water to shower for a few minutes a week, or to subsist on only a bare minimum number of calories), people are going to care a lot. What happens next?