5 ms·

I think this is a good long-term goal, but one thing that's missing from this analysis is the urgency of the thing. Right now, we've never even put one person o

by x1798DE 12y ago

I think this is a good long-term goal, but one thing that's missing from this analysis is the urgency of the thing. Right now, we've never even put one person on Mars, and keeping any significant Martian population alive would be a considerable expense. The cost in human labor and materials would certainly have to be diverted from other enterprises, as is the case with all economic actions. Given that we are on an exponential growth curve both in terms of technology and wealth, it seems likely to me that by the natural course of things 100 years from now maintaining an extraplanetary base on Mars would be much cheaper and easier, and would disrupt our growth rates much less, if at all. It may be that by acting now, it would take us 200 years to create a self-sustaining population on Mars, whereas if we wait 100 years, we'll be able to get something up and running in just an additional 50 years, thus better insulating us from disaster (consider that until the Mars colony is completely self-sufficient, it will likely be wiped out by any disaster on Earth, even disasters that aren't a real threat to our species, as long as we don't have enough surplus wealth to sustain an expensive Mars colony).

loceng 12y ago
I think the goal requires many technologies that aren't mass produced at the moment but which such technologies would be highly valuable and required to reaching a sustainable environment here on Earth.
- danielweber 12y ago
  Yep. Europe didn't wait for ocean-liners to start colonizing the rest of the world. The ocean-liners came about because of the colonization efforts.
tomp 12y ago
The opposing viewpoint is that since we're decelerating our technological progress and achieving new wealth by pursuing more and more trivial enterprises (come on, it's a messaging app!), a new kind of space race that inspires generations to come might exponentially accelerate our progress, just like the last space race did!
- damon_c 12y ago
  > decelerating our technological progress Deceleration from what velocity? That of the 1800s? the 1900s? It seems obvious to me this isn't the case.
  - tomp 12y ago
    That of the 1950/60/70s. The last space race and the cold war provided us with plenty technologies (transistor, computers, GPS, internet) that are still the main drivers of progress nowadays.
    - jl6 12y ago
      I think this point of view ignores all the boring, unsexy, non-headline-grabbing progress that has developed 1950s inventions into what we have today. Progress is the aggregate of millions of very small advances.
      - damon_c 12y ago
        Yes, and you could also argue that if our progress rate was sampled at a rate proportional to the total duration of human progress, the period from the 1950's to today is really one sample and the curve at this moment is just beginning to look like a hockey stick.
  - jchrisa 12y ago
    Here's a lengthy counter argument. https://libcom.org/library/flying-cars-declining-rate-profit-david-graeber https://libcom.org/library/flying-cars-declining-rate-profit...
- thenmar 12y ago
  Really? We're "decelerating our technological progress"? That's a bold enough claim that I think the onus is on you to provide evidence for it beyond, "someone made a dumb iPhone app instead of curing cancer".
lmm 12y ago
It seems like that argument's always going to apply though. The only way we're going to get better at sending people to Mars is to actually start doing it.
- x1798DE 12y ago
  That's not necessarily true at all. Imagine in 1900 I said, "We'll never get better at making digital music players until we start making them!", and then poured a bunch of money into single-purpose digital music players, at the expense of general purpose computing. Digital music players came around as a natural consequence of general purpose computing, not the other way around. Additionally, at one point along our exponential growth curve, it became inexpensive to dedicate enough research funding to the creation of a digital music player that we got the beginnings of modern MP3 players. I don't see any reason why going to Mars will be particularly different - it's not like there's no overlap between the technology we need to survive there and the technology we need to thrive here.
  - lmm 12y ago
    There was a positive feedback loop between music technology and computing technology. Without efforts at playback and recording of music, the mercury delay lines that were used to make some of the first computers would have been impossible. Without the massive popularity of transistor radios it would have taken much longer to develop the semiconductor technology used in more modern computers, and without the Walkman the stabilized tape recorders early hobbyist computers used for storage would probably have been impossible (when audio skips it's annoying, when data skips it breaks your program). Same story for CDs; if ARM is the way forward for general-purpose computing, it wouldn't've happened without portable music.
jerf 12y ago
"keeping any significant Martian population alive would be a considerable expense" Getting a population to Mars would be a considerable expense. Keeping them there would have to be free, or the whole thing isn't ready to go yet. Free, that is, in the sense that the whole population is capable of being self-sustaining. If they aren't then the whole "backup human race" idea fails, if Earth dies and then they inevitably die too. Also, there's no point in sitting back and just waiting for something to happen. It doesn't work to discourage all the specific people who want to invest in the tech from doing so because "someone" will get to it eventually.... "someone" won't if all the interested parties have been counseled to wait for "someone" else to do it.
- twoodfin 12y ago
  Getting a population to Mars would be a considerable expense. Keeping them there would have to be free, or the whole thing isn't ready to go yet. Putting aside the offsite-backup-for-humanity angle, if it becomes practical to send a significant population to Mars, wouldn't it consequently also be at least as practical to keep sending them stuff? I have always assumed that any Martian colony would be receiving regular supply dumps from Earth for decades or centuries before becoming self-sustaining.
  - lutusp 12y ago
    > Putting aside the offsite-backup-for-humanity angle, if it becomes practical to send a significant population to Mars, wouldn't it consequently also be at least as practical to keep sending them stuff? Not really, not with the expense that would entail. The only viable Mars colonization model assumes the creation of most needed commodities out of local resources. > I have always assumed that any Martian colony would be receiving regular supply dumps from Earth for decades or centuries before becoming self-sustaining. It such a colony required substantial supply dumps from Earth, and if this were anticipated in the planning stages, the colony wouldn't be funded in the first place. Transferring anything massive from Earth to Mars is extraordinarily expensive and will continue to be so.
    - dalke 12y ago

by x1798DE 12y ago

loceng 12y ago

I think the goal requires many technologies that aren't mass produced at the moment but which such technologies would be highly valuable and required to reaching a sustainable environment here on Earth.

danielweber 12y ago
Yep. Europe didn't wait for ocean-liners to start colonizing the rest of the world. The ocean-liners came about because of the colonization efforts.

tomp 12y ago

The opposing viewpoint is that since we're decelerating our technological progress and achieving new wealth by pursuing more and more trivial enterprises (come on, it's a messaging app!), a new kind of space race that inspires generations to come might exponentially accelerate our progress, just like the last space race did!

damon_c 12y ago
> decelerating our technological progress Deceleration from what velocity? That of the 1800s? the 1900s? It seems obvious to me this isn't the case.
- tomp 12y ago
  That of the 1950/60/70s. The last space race and the cold war provided us with plenty technologies (transistor, computers, GPS, internet) that are still the main drivers of progress nowadays.
  - jl6 12y ago
    I think this point of view ignores all the boring, unsexy, non-headline-grabbing progress that has developed 1950s inventions into what we have today. Progress is the aggregate of millions of very small advances.
    - damon_c 12y ago
      Yes, and you could also argue that if our progress rate was sampled at a rate proportional to the total duration of human progress, the period from the 1950's to today is really one sample and the curve at this moment is just beginning to look like a hockey stick.
- jchrisa 12y ago
  Here's a lengthy counter argument. https://libcom.org/library/flying-cars-declining-rate-profit-david-graeber https://libcom.org/library/flying-cars-declining-rate-profit...
thenmar 12y ago
Really? We're "decelerating our technological progress"? That's a bold enough claim that I think the onus is on you to provide evidence for it beyond, "someone made a dumb iPhone app instead of curing cancer".

lmm 12y ago

It seems like that argument's always going to apply though. The only way we're going to get better at sending people to Mars is to actually start doing it.

x1798DE 12y ago
That's not necessarily true at all. Imagine in 1900 I said, "We'll never get better at making digital music players until we start making them!", and then poured a bunch of money into single-purpose digital music players, at the expense of general purpose computing. Digital music players came around as a natural consequence of general purpose computing, not the other way around. Additionally, at one point along our exponential growth curve, it became inexpensive to dedicate enough research funding to the creation of a digital music player that we got the beginnings of modern MP3 players. I don't see any reason why going to Mars will be particularly different - it's not like there's no overlap between the technology we need to survive there and the technology we need to thrive here.
- lmm 12y ago
  There was a positive feedback loop between music technology and computing technology. Without efforts at playback and recording of music, the mercury delay lines that were used to make some of the first computers would have been impossible. Without the massive popularity of transistor radios it would have taken much longer to develop the semiconductor technology used in more modern computers, and without the Walkman the stabilized tape recorders early hobbyist computers used for storage would probably have been impossible (when audio skips it's annoying, when data skips it breaks your program). Same story for CDs; if ARM is the way forward for general-purpose computing, it wouldn't've happened without portable music.

jerf 12y ago

"keeping any significant Martian population alive would be a considerable expense" Getting a population to Mars would be a considerable expense. Keeping them there would have to be free, or the whole thing isn't ready to go yet. Free, that is, in the sense that the whole population is capable of being self-sustaining. If they aren't then the whole "backup human race" idea fails, if Earth dies and then they inevitably die too. Also, there's no point in sitting back and just waiting for something to happen. It doesn't work to discourage all the specific people who want to invest in the tech from doing so because "someone" will get to it eventually.... "someone" won't if all the interested parties have been counseled to wait for "someone" else to do it.

twoodfin 12y ago
Getting a population to Mars would be a considerable expense. Keeping them there would have to be free, or the whole thing isn't ready to go yet. Putting aside the offsite-backup-for-humanity angle, if it becomes practical to send a significant population to Mars, wouldn't it consequently also be at least as practical to keep sending them stuff? I have always assumed that any Martian colony would be receiving regular supply dumps from Earth for decades or centuries before becoming self-sustaining.
- lutusp 12y ago
  > Putting aside the offsite-backup-for-humanity angle, if it becomes practical to send a significant population to Mars, wouldn't it consequently also be at least as practical to keep sending them stuff? Not really, not with the expense that would entail. The only viable Mars colonization model assumes the creation of most needed commodities out of local resources. > I have always assumed that any Martian colony would be receiving regular supply dumps from Earth for decades or centuries before becoming self-sustaining. It such a colony required substantial supply dumps from Earth, and if this were anticipated in the planning stages, the colony wouldn't be funded in the first place. Transferring anything massive from Earth to Mars is extraordinarily expensive and will continue to be so.
  - dalke 12y ago