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The stated reason for going to Mars is to create a backup population for humanity. If a major asteroid impacts earth (or any other Extinction Level Event) then
by jobu 13y ago
The stated reason for going to Mars is to create a backup population for humanity. If a major asteroid impacts earth (or any other Extinction Level Event) then potentially every human will be as dead as those killed by Polio.
- irishloop 13y agoIf. Polio is a real problem now. Asteroids are a theoretical problem.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoCan we not work on all the problems in parallel?
- _greim_ 13y agoNot actually. An impact is inevitable, given enough time.
- nerfhammer 13y agogiven the time scale of the duration in which a major impact event is likely humanity's technology will have advanced radically beyond which we could possibly imagine
- baddox 13y agoYes, and the way that will happen is that money will be invested into space technology companies like SpaceX.
- nerfhammer 13y agoor it will just happen anyway over the course of thousands of years
- dragonwriter 13y agoNo, actually, if everyone chooses "invest in other things" over "invest in technology", then it won't happen. If it will happen, it will be because of technology investment, not as magic that occurs independently of them.
- nerfhammer 13y agoIt's impossible to imagine how humanity would stop investing in technology or would only invest in technology that would not be related to space travel
- hvass 13y agoWhat do you mean a theoretical problem? It can happen - just because you can't imagine it happening or that it might happen years, decades or centuries from now, does not make it any less real.
- Einstalbert 13y agoI tend to agree. From my point of view, polio doesn't exist in this part of the world. It's as phantasmal as an asteroid.
- kiba 13y agoDeadly asteroid is not a theoretical problem. Just a matter of when.
- correctifier 13y agoNo matter what there will still be more than 7 billion people left on earth.
- ForHackernews 13y agoSurely developing the technology to deflect a killer asteroid is orders of magnitude cheaper than the technology to colonize Mars.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- matt_heimer 13y agoIf we go to Mars then for that population wouldn't lots of viruses be a theoretical problem?
- outside1234 13y agoI think what rubs me the wrong way about this is giving it to a for-profit enterprise. If Elon is willing to step down and run a non-profit to get to Mars, I'm all for it. But I suspect he isn't willing to do that. This is about profit - which isn't bad - but its not charity and therefore is very unlikely in the end to help the bottom 10%.
- crusso 13y agoThe profit motive and capitalism have given the Western world the best life for the "bottom 10%" in the history of mankind. Look at the Internet when it was "non profit". It sat there for years in universities and labs, availing the lower 10% not at all. When the profit-motive was allowed to explore the possibilities, the Internet exploded. Now the Internet is available fairly universally.
- jessaustin 13y agoNon-profit status doesn't mean anything about an organization except that dividends are not paid to shareholders. E.g. it doesn't mean that executives don't pull down giant salaries or that sweetheart deals never transfer resources to outside parties. There are wonderful and terrible non-profit and for-profit organizations. It's better to judge an organization by its accomplishments than by its non-profit status.
- oskarth 13y agoIf it was about money Musk would have retired already. Tesla and SpaceX are both hugely risky endeavours. It is not unlikely that them being for profit makes them more likely to succeed in the long term.
- skizm 13y agoNo one invests in a non-profit. Investors want ROI and going to mars is pretty capital intensive. EDIT: correct me if I am wrong, but YC doesn't expect to make a RIO with Watsi. They just want to make the world a better place. It is a donation not an investment. Most VCs are not that nice. EDIT: EDIT: Found it: "Since some people were confused when we funded Watsi, I'd better clarify that the money we're putting into the nonprofits will be a charitable donation, rather than an investment in the narrow sense. We won't have any financial interest in them." Link here: http://ycombinator.com/np.html http://ycombinator.com/np.html
- correctifier 13y agoAlmost everything about the plan to go to Mars, especially about creating a "backup population" is uncertain. Compare that to the current, immediate suffering and lost potential that is caused by poverty and disease.
- stingraycharles 13y agoThat's a bit of a negative way to look at it. I think in the end the goals don't have to be mutually exclusive. Elon Musk does what he does best, and Gates does his thing. They're both great goals and I'm glad we live in a time when going to mars is something we can propose as a serious point of discussion, instead of being an unrealistic dream.
- patrickaljord 13y agoSome people may have said this before Polio vaccine was discovered: "Almost everything about the plan to help Polio victims, especially about creating a "polio vaccine" is uncertain. Compare that to the current, immediate suffering and lost potential that is caused by poverty and disease." See how this works?
- hencq 13y agoPolio is a disease that that's causing immediate suffering and lost potential. And it was even more so before discovery of the vaccine, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.
- saraid216 13y agoThe only specific alleviation that colonizing Mars yields is that people who don't want to live on Earth don't have to live on Earth. There are some very good reasons to pursue the colonization of Mars, mostly in the form of advancing science. A backup population is not one of these good reasons.
- shurcooL 13y agoOne plan is long term, the other is short term. Both are needed.
- psbp 13y agoAnd it's not like Page isn't interested in health: https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage/posts/Lh8SKC6sED1 https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage/posts/Lh8SKC6sED1 In the context of this quote: "You’re working because you want to change the world and make it better; if the company you work for is worthy of your time, why not your money as well? We just don’t think about that. I’d like for us to help out more than we are." His philosophy could make sense.
- epipsychidion 13y agoIt's his money and he has every right to do as he wishes but I don't agree with this school of thought. >"if the company you work for is worthy of your time, why not your money as well?" Because you're being compensated for your time? Giving money to public companies is giving money to shareholders, not to a cause or an ideology. What's to stop a corporate raider from stirring up a revolt for disbursement of the cash/share buybacks? He can be philanthropic AND support Musk, false equivalence on his part. Set up a foundation for a specific cause that invests in Tesla stock and has a defined budget for every year based on stock performance, dividends etc. I'd like to read his full comments but on face value it seems like a very silly thing to say.
- goalieca 13y agoThe idea that our species is geopolitically stable enough to ever maintain two populations is laughable.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- sfrigon 13y agoAnd what if an asteroid hits Mars first?
- giarc 13y agoBetter make a back up of that back up. To the moon!
- giarc 13y agoHow will those people with polio feel when we are vaccinating the back up population on Mars but not those on Earth?
- mixmastamyk 13y agoIt would be much cheaper and easier to build a city underground or underwater than on Mars. Wouldn't protect against species 8472 or the Death Star, but still.
- angersock 13y agoHint: It's not the asteroids we should be worried about. Consider being the last enclave on Earth with clean water, reliable power, and happy people. How long until the unwashed masses claw your bunker open with their bare hands for a chance at bettering their lot? That's the reason we need to have colonies off-planet; in case the situation on Earth gets beyond saving.
- philwelch 13y agoWhy don't we just build a Stanford torus and use robots and guns to keep the Earth people out? I've seen this movie...
- mixmastamyk 13y agoI don't know, a bunker under a mountain doesn't get clawed open with bare hands. That said, sure a vacation home on Mars would be great. Just that it's not very viable ... the preparation would have to be immense. It would, however, prolong the species a while later than living on Earth, as the Sun turns into a red giant. Perhaps in a few centuries.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoIf 300,000 people are living on Mars and an asteroid hits Earth, that's still 7 billion people dead.
- unfunco 13y agoLikely a lot more than 7 billion if you were to look at the population projections between now and the time we could have 300,000 people settled on Mars. The point though, is that 300,000 people with knowledge acquired from the entirety of history is better than an empty solar system.
- TeMPOraL 13y agoThe point is that the human race survives.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoYeah, but I don't quite see why I should care about that aside from my default state of caring about the actual people.
- SomeoneWeird 13y agoYes, it is, but the human species won't die..
- bayesianhorse 13y agoIt would be cheaper and faster to build the technology to find and destroy/deflect these asteroids than to create even a small permanent colony on mars.
- ggreer 13y agoThat's what I initially thought, but asteroid deflection technology is dual-use. It can push asteroids into collision paths, potentially increasing existential risk. Colonies outside Earth guard against many other extinction risks such as plagues and nuclear war; even unlikely events like rogue comets and runaway nanotech. Practically speaking, both require similar improvements to today's technology: cheaper access to space, larger payloads, better shielding, etc.
- lisper 13y ago> If a major asteroid impacts earth A good reason to support the B612 Foundation (http://b612foundation.org http://b612foundation.org)
- knappe 13y agoNo, no it is not. Any asteroid that will be an Earth killer will have such a high velocity (due to its highly elliptical orbit) that it won't matter. Consider 2012 XE54 [0]. These objects are nigh undetectable as evidenced by the detection of 2012 XE54 two days before it passed half the distance between the Moon and the Earth. A close call by any account. Moving people off a single point of failure (Earth) is a much better use of resources. http://www.space.com/18854-newfound-asteroid-close-flyby-earth.html http://www.space.com/18854-newfound-asteroid-close-flyby-ear...
- lisper 13y agoThe reason 2012 XE54 was only detected two days before it passed the earth is because we currently are not flying the right instrumentation to detect such objects any earlier. Fixing that problem is the whole point of the B612 foundation's project. Also, an infrared telescope can be launched a hell of a lot sooner and cheaper than Mars can be colonized.
- Flenser 13y agoWhy's it called B612? I couldn't find any mention on the site.
- lisper 13y agoIt's the asteroid the Little Prince lives on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Prince http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Prince
- melarina 13y ago> potentially every human will be as dead as those killed by Polio Everyone would be dead so there wouldn't be anyone left to care.
- glimcat 13y agoOkay, putting on my astronomer hat: The asteroid was the root cause of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. The direct cause was ecological collapse. To oversimplify things a bit, the impact event kicked up enough pollution to undercut the food chain by starving out anything that relied on photosynthesis, which starved out the herbivores, which starved out the carnivores and omnivores. Typical asteroids are not large enough to wipe out all human life in one go. A large impact could kill billions between direct fatalities and follow-on deaths via starvation and plagues, but your survivor population would still easily exceed anything we can sustainably place on Mars (or any other extraterrestrial location) within the next few hundred years. Even if it completely refactored modern civilization, you'd probably see some population capable of organizing and recovering a sustainable society. And that is with mass starvation, with plagues due to loss of sanitation infrastructure, with conventional farming being disrupted for years, and with the assumption that some idiot decides it's time for a preemptive nuclear war. Furthermore, any sustainable Martian colony you could produce could equally well be isolated in a hardened bunker on Earth, if surviving a large asteroid impact were the only concern. To wipe out all humanity with one impact, you would need to hit the Earth with something in a slightly larger class - say, the Moon.
- bjrnjs 13y ago"To wipe out all humanity with one impact, you would need to hit the Earth with something in a slightly larger class - say, the Moon" No, if an object as large as the moon hit the earth - the earth might even be destroyed (but probably not). To wipe out humanity a body of the size between 10-100 miles in diameter would probably suffice. Fortunately near-earth orbits with a body of that size is rare.
- samastur 13y agoWhat I would like to know is what kind of event do you imagine happening (beside practically completely obliterating Earth) that would make Mars more hospitable than post-apocalypse Earth? I'd imagine polluted water and air with still some flora and fauna would still be better than none of those things.
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- shasta 13y agoIf our universe is just one branch in a multiverse, then we already have plenty of backups.
- TeMPOraL 13y agoIf you truly believe in this line of reasoning, then make a deal with someone to pay you a million dollars per every round of russian roulette you survive. This way you'll make a version of you in one of Everett branch incredibly rich. And maybe even able to give money to that branch's version of Bill Gates.
- shasta 13y agoYeah, but I can't do that to my family in the other branches.
- leoc 13y agoThere is something very ... problematic about the suggestion that ensuring the survival of the race is of greater importance than, or even of comparable importance to, prolonging and improving the lives of individual human beings, is there not? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf9iTZ433zs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf9iTZ433zs
- JeremyNT 13y agoIf we ever reach a point where we are capable of establishing a permanent, self-sufficient colony on another planet, it's difficult to imagine that such a civilization would be unable to deal with any potential calamities on Earth itself. What event could possibly make Earth less hospitable than Mars? Even assuming nuclear Armageddon or an extinction-level asteroid impact, you're still left with an environment much closer to habitability than what you would find on Mars.
- chrismonsanto 13y ago> What event could possibly make Earth less hospitable than Mars? If we reach such a point, lack of room on Earth might be a serious issue
- CWuestefeld 13y agoTake the 7B people on Earth, and assume they're all families of 4. Put them each on 1/4 acre of land. Say that additional infrastructure like roads, schools, and retail will take an extra 50%. That gives us roughly 1 million sq miles to hold the entire population of the planet on a comfortably-sized lot. That's 1/10 the size of the USA, about the size of the land area of Alaska plus Texas. The people aren't going to be the problem with land usage.
- novalis78 13y agoIt's really not just about "one backup colony" but rather the beginning of unlocking the abundance of the Solar System to improve (and move!) life, foremost because you think that when it comes to civilization you believe that the best days are still ahead of us.
- chc 13y agoThe bizarre thing is, most extinction-level events (e.g. a large asteroid impact) would probably leave Earth still more hospitable than Mars to life as we know it. If we have the capability to survive in a climate so cold that there are CO2 avalanches, where there is practically no nitrogen or oxygen or readily available fuel and where the air is flooded with radiation equivalent to two chest X-rays every hour, what are we afraid of?
- username223 13y agoForget Mars. Elon's best move would be to go "Dr. Strangelove": build a bunker and hire a harem.
- drzaiusapelord 13y agoBackup for humanity? Look, it'll be nuclear war that ends us. And if we can launch people to Mars cheaply we can certainly deliver bombs there as well.
- LordHumungous 13y agoWouldn't it be a lot easier to invent something that will deflect an asteroid?