8 ms·

"Colonize" isn't the right word. Living on another planet doesn't make any sense for us. Perhaps it makes sense to put a very small number of people on the moon

by shoo 11y ago

"Colonize" isn't the right word. Living on another planet doesn't make any sense for us. Perhaps it makes sense to put a very small number of people on the moon for purely scientific or commercial reasons - but it might make more commercial sense to instead use robots and sidestep the hassle of maintaining real live humans up there. Charles Stross wrote about this a few years ago [1]: > Whichever way you cut it, sending a single tourist to the moon is going to cost not less than $50,000 — and a more realistic figure, for a mature reusable, cheap, rocket-based lunar transport cycle is more like $1M. And that's before you factor in the price of bringing them back ... > The moon is about 1.3 light seconds away. If we want to go panning the (metaphorical) rivers for gold, we'd do better to send teleoperator-controlled robots; it's close enough that we can control them directly, and far enough away that the cost of transporting food and creature comforts for human explorers is astronomical. There probably are niches for human workers on a moon base, but only until our robot technologies are somewhat more mature than they are today; Mission Control would be a lot happier with a pair of hands and a high-def camera that doesn't talk back and doesn't need to go to the toilet or take naps. [...] > When we look at the rest of the solar system, the picture is even bleaker. Mars is ... well, the phrase "tourist resort" springs to mind, and is promptly filed in the same corner as "Gobi desert". As Bruce Sterling has puts it: "I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach." In other words, going there to explore is fine and dandy — our robots are all over it already. But as a desirable residential neighbourhood it has some shortcomings, starting with the slight lack of breathable air and the sub-Antarctic nighttime temperatures and the Mach 0.5 dust storms, and working down from there. [1] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high...

adrianN 11y ago
Living on another planet makes sense for us if we ever plan to survive an extinction level event on Earth. Keeping humanity alive if Earth is FUBAR is something robots can't do until they merge with us.
- verinus 11y ago
  no it does not. if we fubar earth, we certainly cant survive on a sufficient level on another planet.
  - adrianN 11y ago
    And we won't ever if we don't start developing the necessary technology by experimenting with bases on other planets. Humankind can't stay on Earth forever and expect to survive.
    - verinus 11y ago
      just the next 4 billion years- seriously currently there is no sensible motive to pump vast amounts of cash into space colonialization as we have much more urgent matters at hand.
nkoren 11y ago
Every time I see that Bruce Sterling quote, I feel obliged to point out that the Gobi Desert has been settled for many thousands of years, and is currently inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people.
- jotm 11y ago
  And the answer to the question "Why would anyone want to settle there"" is "Because all the other places were taken" :-)
  - hyperbovine 11y ago
    Thus, Mars.
joshuapants 11y ago
> Living on another planet doesn't make any sense for us At some point in the future Earth will be uninhabitable for humans. At that point, it will make plenty of sense. > sending a single tourist to the moon... All this focus on tourists seems like a strawman. Yes, there are people who would probably want to go to the Moon or Mars for a space-cation. No, that is not a primary reason for the existence of space programs. Manned Moon and hypothetical manned Mars missions are not the endgame. They're stepping stones that hopefully lead to our escape from the solar system.
- saiya-jin 11y ago
  what about... if we dedicate at least half of the effort/cash to get people on effin' mars into making sure earth will be hospitable for next hundreds of years? I don't get this childish screaming how earth is doomed... if you travel a bit around the world, you'll see a very, very different picture, there is still amazing amount of unspoilt potential. some random examples, applicable mostly to 3rd world countries - usage of crazy poisons for gold/other metals/minerals mining & processing. another thing is providing alternative fuel sources, so vast pieces of forests are not cut down. limits on fishing, and ban of "dragging nets on the floor and sweeping parts of ocean clean". and I could go on and on, i am sure everybody can come up with some useful stuff. I am all for space exploration, being in open space is my lifetime dream, but let's stop being emotional for a bit and use our heads. focus on biggest problems, their causes, tackle that. even partial success will have massive impacts. and in parallel, let's explore in current ways, improving our technologies one step after another. Once we can send a manned ship on a budget that won't ruin an average country, let's go for it. Anyway, putting few people on our inhospitable neighbor ASAP won't save humanity from extinction...
  - adrianN 11y ago
    Getting a manned mission to Mars using for example Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct plan costs about as much as two aircraft carriers. Compared to our other expenses, the space program is extremely cheap.
    - 11y ago
danieltillett 11y ago
>"Colonize" isn't the right word. Living on another planet doesn't make any sense for us. It does if you want to have an insurance policy against a planet wide catastrophe.
- verinus 11y ago
  even a planet wide catastrophe would leave earth more hospitable than mars. there is just no sane argument for living on mars. a nice fantasy? definitely- I love scifi but from a rational point of view its just not desirable.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    Imagine earth is struck by a 10km asteroid. This may well kill everyone on the planet. Having a self-supporting colony on mars or the moon would avoid humanities extinction.
    - Symmetry 11y ago
      Even after a dinosaur killer class 10km asteroid impact Earth would be way easier to live on than Mars. Despite the particulates in the air the surface would be warmer, the air would be breathable, and even with the reduction from dust the surface sunlight would be comparable.
      - verinus 11y ago
        exactly my thoughts. i think the effort and money would be better invested in earth itself: affordable renewable enery sources pose one of the greatest challenges of our time. in my opinion all money poured into mars missions is a waste and should be used to make progress in other fields. as for asteroids: a) the mars is as likely to be struck by an asteroid as earth and b) its imho a better idea to build defenses to prevent that.
        danieltillett 11y ago
random_number 11y ago
"As Bruce Sterling has puts it: "I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach." Misses a fairly big point - it's about backup for the species. The same reason people put backup tapes in another building when a walk down to the basement is a pain in the butt already. Backups in the basement don't help when the building burns down.
- ryandvm 11y ago
  The problem with that line of thinking is that it's a fool's gamble either way. For the people living on Mars, you'll have a quality of life far below that of a prisoner in a second world country. Forever. And for the people staying behind, you get to pay exorbitant sums of money so that people other than you get to survive an asteroid impact in the next few million years. (Unless of course it's Mars that is struck, then you just lit 80 trillion dollars on fire.) Sorry, colonizing Mars just doesn't make sense and it probably never will. At least not until we have progressed to the point that we have the resources to terraform planets at will. And even then, it will probably make more sense to just live in space. Actually, there is one very specific scenario in which colonizing Mars is a great idea: if you're in the business of selling space travel to governments.
  - richmarr 11y ago
    From the sounds of it you've made up your mind and post-rationalised some of this. a quality of life far below that of a prisoner in a second world country Quality of life isn't just about food & accomodation. for the people staying behind, you get to pay exorbitant sums of money so that people other than you get to survive an asteroid impact Sure, Homo Economicus might not want to pay for that space mission, but Homo Economicus (a) doesn't exist, and (b) if he existed would be a douche. ...make more sense to just live in space Maybe, maybe not. We don't know that much about the long term effect of living in space, or on Mars, or the Moon. What happens when more people than expected get pregnant in your space colony? At least on a planet you have the opportunity to use mined resources to expand. Or maybe someone will invent a self-printing orbital colony ship. We're stone-agers trying to predict the iron age here. What's the crux of your disagreement? If you dropped all the other arguments, which one would you hold onto?
valarauca1 11y ago
Amusingly people frequently argued why anyone would wish to live in the Americas? Barely populated, next to no trade, savages who may kill you before you see them, constant proxy wars from empires half a world away? But they came, why? Money. We will need more rare earth metals then earth can supply, its just matter of time.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  That's why I'm cheering Planetary Resources and their plan to mine near-Earth asteroids for rare earth metals.
Symmetry 11y ago
There are a lot of interesting things that can be built in microgravity that can't be built on Earth. But getting raw materials up to orbit is really expensive. If you're willing to wait for Holman transfers then it can be much cheaper to bring raw materials to Earth (or lunar) orbit from elsewhere in the solar system than from the Earth's surface. So in the medium term I expect human settlement of the solar system in much the same way you've got human settlement of the Gulf of Mexico or North Sea due to all people living on the drilling platforms. And in the long term I wouldn't be surprised if technology makes living on other planets much easier or non-human people end up settling outside of Earth.
panglott 11y ago
> "Colonize" isn't the right word. ...Perhaps it makes sense to put a very small number of people on the moon for purely scientific or commercial reasons A small number of people residing there for scientific and commercial reasons is exactly what a colony is.

by shoo 11y ago

adrianN 11y ago

Living on another planet makes sense for us if we ever plan to survive an extinction level event on Earth. Keeping humanity alive if Earth is FUBAR is something robots can't do until they merge with us.

verinus 11y ago
no it does not. if we fubar earth, we certainly cant survive on a sufficient level on another planet.
- adrianN 11y ago
  And we won't ever if we don't start developing the necessary technology by experimenting with bases on other planets. Humankind can't stay on Earth forever and expect to survive.
  - verinus 11y ago
    just the next 4 billion years- seriously currently there is no sensible motive to pump vast amounts of cash into space colonialization as we have much more urgent matters at hand.

nkoren 11y ago

Every time I see that Bruce Sterling quote, I feel obliged to point out that the Gobi Desert has been settled for many thousands of years, and is currently inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people.

jotm 11y ago
And the answer to the question "Why would anyone want to settle there"" is "Because all the other places were taken" :-)
- hyperbovine 11y ago
  Thus, Mars.

joshuapants 11y ago

> Living on another planet doesn't make any sense for us At some point in the future Earth will be uninhabitable for humans. At that point, it will make plenty of sense. > sending a single tourist to the moon... All this focus on tourists seems like a strawman. Yes, there are people who would probably want to go to the Moon or Mars for a space-cation. No, that is not a primary reason for the existence of space programs. Manned Moon and hypothetical manned Mars missions are not the endgame. They're stepping stones that hopefully lead to our escape from the solar system.

saiya-jin 11y ago
what about... if we dedicate at least half of the effort/cash to get people on effin' mars into making sure earth will be hospitable for next hundreds of years? I don't get this childish screaming how earth is doomed... if you travel a bit around the world, you'll see a very, very different picture, there is still amazing amount of unspoilt potential. some random examples, applicable mostly to 3rd world countries - usage of crazy poisons for gold/other metals/minerals mining & processing. another thing is providing alternative fuel sources, so vast pieces of forests are not cut down. limits on fishing, and ban of "dragging nets on the floor and sweeping parts of ocean clean". and I could go on and on, i am sure everybody can come up with some useful stuff. I am all for space exploration, being in open space is my lifetime dream, but let's stop being emotional for a bit and use our heads. focus on biggest problems, their causes, tackle that. even partial success will have massive impacts. and in parallel, let's explore in current ways, improving our technologies one step after another. Once we can send a manned ship on a budget that won't ruin an average country, let's go for it. Anyway, putting few people on our inhospitable neighbor ASAP won't save humanity from extinction...
- adrianN 11y ago
  Getting a manned mission to Mars using for example Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct plan costs about as much as two aircraft carriers. Compared to our other expenses, the space program is extremely cheap.
  - 11y ago

danieltillett 11y ago

>"Colonize" isn't the right word. Living on another planet doesn't make any sense for us. It does if you want to have an insurance policy against a planet wide catastrophe.

verinus 11y ago
even a planet wide catastrophe would leave earth more hospitable than mars. there is just no sane argument for living on mars. a nice fantasy? definitely- I love scifi but from a rational point of view its just not desirable.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  Imagine earth is struck by a 10km asteroid. This may well kill everyone on the planet. Having a self-supporting colony on mars or the moon would avoid humanities extinction.
  - Symmetry 11y ago
    Even after a dinosaur killer class 10km asteroid impact Earth would be way easier to live on than Mars. Despite the particulates in the air the surface would be warmer, the air would be breathable, and even with the reduction from dust the surface sunlight would be comparable.
    - verinus 11y ago
      exactly my thoughts. i think the effort and money would be better invested in earth itself: affordable renewable enery sources pose one of the greatest challenges of our time. in my opinion all money poured into mars missions is a waste and should be used to make progress in other fields. as for asteroids: a) the mars is as likely to be struck by an asteroid as earth and b) its imho a better idea to build defenses to prevent that.
      - danieltillett 11y ago

random_number 11y ago

"As Bruce Sterling has puts it: "I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach." Misses a fairly big point - it's about backup for the species. The same reason people put backup tapes in another building when a walk down to the basement is a pain in the butt already. Backups in the basement don't help when the building burns down.

ryandvm 11y ago
The problem with that line of thinking is that it's a fool's gamble either way. For the people living on Mars, you'll have a quality of life far below that of a prisoner in a second world country. Forever. And for the people staying behind, you get to pay exorbitant sums of money so that people other than you get to survive an asteroid impact in the next few million years. (Unless of course it's Mars that is struck, then you just lit 80 trillion dollars on fire.) Sorry, colonizing Mars just doesn't make sense and it probably never will. At least not until we have progressed to the point that we have the resources to terraform planets at will. And even then, it will probably make more sense to just live in space. Actually, there is one very specific scenario in which colonizing Mars is a great idea: if you're in the business of selling space travel to governments.
- richmarr 11y ago
  From the sounds of it you've made up your mind and post-rationalised some of this. a quality of life far below that of a prisoner in a second world country Quality of life isn't just about food & accomodation. for the people staying behind, you get to pay exorbitant sums of money so that people other than you get to survive an asteroid impact Sure, Homo Economicus might not want to pay for that space mission, but Homo Economicus (a) doesn't exist, and (b) if he existed would be a douche. ...make more sense to just live in space Maybe, maybe not. We don't know that much about the long term effect of living in space, or on Mars, or the Moon. What happens when more people than expected get pregnant in your space colony? At least on a planet you have the opportunity to use mined resources to expand. Or maybe someone will invent a self-printing orbital colony ship. We're stone-agers trying to predict the iron age here. What's the crux of your disagreement? If you dropped all the other arguments, which one would you hold onto?

valarauca1 11y ago

Amusingly people frequently argued why anyone would wish to live in the Americas? Barely populated, next to no trade, savages who may kill you before you see them, constant proxy wars from empires half a world away? But they came, why? Money. We will need more rare earth metals then earth can supply, its just matter of time.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
That's why I'm cheering Planetary Resources and their plan to mine near-Earth asteroids for rare earth metals.

Symmetry 11y ago

There are a lot of interesting things that can be built in microgravity that can't be built on Earth. But getting raw materials up to orbit is really expensive. If you're willing to wait for Holman transfers then it can be much cheaper to bring raw materials to Earth (or lunar) orbit from elsewhere in the solar system than from the Earth's surface. So in the medium term I expect human settlement of the solar system in much the same way you've got human settlement of the Gulf of Mexico or North Sea due to all people living on the drilling platforms. And in the long term I wouldn't be surprised if technology makes living on other planets much easier or non-human people end up settling outside of Earth.

panglott 11y ago

> "Colonize" isn't the right word. ...Perhaps it makes sense to put a very small number of people on the moon for purely scientific or commercial reasons A small number of people residing there for scientific and commercial reasons is exactly what a colony is.