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Mars will never be settled any more than Antarctica is settled. Mars is vastly more difficult to get to and provides an even more severe environment. It's goi

by bdamm 12y ago

Mars will never be settled any more than Antarctica is settled. Mars is vastly more difficult to get to and provides an even more severe environment. It's going to be just like the moon - once we're there, we'll wonder why we ever bothered to go to this miserable rock. Leave the private industry to go there and do as they wish. After sending a small band of rovers there we haven't found any compelling reason to go, have we? Other than exogeology? NASA should be dreaming much bigger. How about manned missions to Jupiter? Maybe after failing at the impossible for a while we'll at least get a better concept of how far away the rest of pretty much anywhere in space is, and stop thinking about planetary exploration as a lifeboat for our species.

deleted 12y ago
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Animats 12y ago
Mars will never be settled any more than Antarctica is settled. NASA should be dreaming much bigger. There just isn't any good real estate off-Earth in this solar system. Relativity limits us to the solar system. Deal with it.
api 12y ago
"Mars will never be settled any more than Antarctica is settled." This is a broken analogy in two ways. One is that there's a huge qualitative difference between going elsewhere on Earth and settling another planet, and I don't think you can hand-wave that away. You might have no interest in settling another planet, which is fine. There are seven billion plus people on Earth, and all we need is about 10,000 over, say, a century or two who do have that interest. I think you'd have so many applicants for a serious mission you'd have to be very picky. Secondly, it's illegal to settle Antarctica. It's all "claimed" and tied up in various treaties and conservation laws. What would happen if you opened Antarctica to settlement and allowed squatters' rights or land claim rights? I think a whole bunch of people who are interested in trying new political ideas, etc., would jump at it. It'd be significantly easier and cheaper than seasteading. There'd also be natural resources to be found, so you'd probably have a gold rush.
beeworker 12y ago
What's your lifeboat for our species?
- bdamm 12y ago
  If making a lifeboat is the real goal, then let's colonize the moon. It's much closer, and about equally inhospitable. The best option is not screwing up our planet. If asteroid strikes is the concern, then funding a planetwide network of residents living in underground bunkers with supplies to last decades is probably cheaper and more effective than going to Mars.
  - blhack 12y ago
    >The best option is not screwing up our planet. That isn't even close to the best option. That's like saying: "don't make backups, just don't screw up." edit: to be more specific, "make makeups, but also try not to screw up"
    - csallen 12y ago
      Makes sense if you are a very short-term thinker.
    - crpatino 12y ago
      > That's like saying: "don't make backups, just don't screw up." That does not even belong in the same category. Data backups in computer systems are cheap, and people/organizations not doing them even cheaper! On the other hand, doctors don't make backups of the gravely ill[1] before a dangerous surgery. That is beyond our current capabilities, so "do not screw up" is as good as it gets. Yet another example, civil engineers do not make backups of skyscrapers[2] before doing maintenance work, even major maintenance work. While technically feasible, the economic cost would be prohibitive. My gut feeling is that a "backup planet" would fall somewhere in between cases [1] and [2].
  - grondilu 12y ago
    > The best option is not screwing up our planet. It's very hard to imagine what we could do to Earth so that it becomes even less hospitable than mars.

by bdamm 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Animats 12y ago

Mars will never be settled any more than Antarctica is settled. NASA should be dreaming much bigger. There just isn't any good real estate off-Earth in this solar system. Relativity limits us to the solar system. Deal with it.

api 12y ago

"Mars will never be settled any more than Antarctica is settled." This is a broken analogy in two ways. One is that there's a huge qualitative difference between going elsewhere on Earth and settling another planet, and I don't think you can hand-wave that away. You might have no interest in settling another planet, which is fine. There are seven billion plus people on Earth, and all we need is about 10,000 over, say, a century or two who do have that interest. I think you'd have so many applicants for a serious mission you'd have to be very picky. Secondly, it's illegal to settle Antarctica. It's all "claimed" and tied up in various treaties and conservation laws. What would happen if you opened Antarctica to settlement and allowed squatters' rights or land claim rights? I think a whole bunch of people who are interested in trying new political ideas, etc., would jump at it. It'd be significantly easier and cheaper than seasteading. There'd also be natural resources to be found, so you'd probably have a gold rush.

beeworker 12y ago

What's your lifeboat for our species?

bdamm 12y ago
If making a lifeboat is the real goal, then let's colonize the moon. It's much closer, and about equally inhospitable. The best option is not screwing up our planet. If asteroid strikes is the concern, then funding a planetwide network of residents living in underground bunkers with supplies to last decades is probably cheaper and more effective than going to Mars.
- blhack 12y ago
  >The best option is not screwing up our planet. That isn't even close to the best option. That's like saying: "don't make backups, just don't screw up." edit: to be more specific, "make makeups, but also try not to screw up"
  - csallen 12y ago
    Makes sense if you are a very short-term thinker.
  - crpatino 12y ago
    > That's like saying: "don't make backups, just don't screw up." That does not even belong in the same category. Data backups in computer systems are cheap, and people/organizations not doing them even cheaper! On the other hand, doctors don't make backups of the gravely ill[1] before a dangerous surgery. That is beyond our current capabilities, so "do not screw up" is as good as it gets. Yet another example, civil engineers do not make backups of skyscrapers[2] before doing maintenance work, even major maintenance work. While technically feasible, the economic cost would be prohibitive. My gut feeling is that a "backup planet" would fall somewhere in between cases [1] and [2].
- grondilu 12y ago
  > The best option is not screwing up our planet. It's very hard to imagine what we could do to Earth so that it becomes even less hospitable than mars.