It’s completely ridiculous to think that humans could live on Mars
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qz.com
I get the emotional angst, many people will remember that point where they realized "Hey my parents aren't going to be here forever, if I don't get job and stuff I'm dooooooomed." It's a scary thing because it involves doing something you may have never done before or may have tried to do and failed a couple of times. But once you internalize the fact that your parents are mortal and of finite resources and you can't change that, you put that fear aside and start figuring out life "for real."
The same thing is true with this planet. Our ability to monitor it and study it has reached a point where we realize the environment we currently live in is going to change, and change harshly. While we're currently the proximate cause of that change we know there are many things that can cause that change and have in the past. Perhaps not in the living memory of our species but we've certainly seen the humans frozen in glaciers right? So at the end of the day, it doesn't matter why the climate changes, we must evolve our thinking so that we can live on an airless moon, or a chilly planet far from oceans and abundant greenery.
And getting serious about it means picking a problem to solve and solving it. If we can create a self sustaining colony on Mars for example I have no trouble believing we can create cities on earth that survive what ever changes come in the climate. And if we have self sustaining cities on Mars and Earth then if one gets blasted by an asteroid (known to happen) the other one can help out instead of everyone just dying.
Its the difference between moving forward into the future knowing what you have to over come, and hiding in the past hoping to somehow prevent the future you fear.
A better solution are robots, robots are way better at surviving in space than we are, they have survived in Mars for years without any supply. So a more feasible set of milestones could be:
- Engineer self-replicant robots in Earth. We are still far from doing something like that but it seems something that we should be able to achieve at some point. Seeing that we humans are able to extract energy and resources from Earth, and build robots, there's nothing indicating that robots shouldn't be able to follow the same steps once they are advanced enough.
- Modify those robots to be able to self-replicate in Mars. Seeing that current robots are already able to survive in there, they have a much better chance than we have to build a sustainable environment for themselves.
- Once robots have a self-sustainable environment for themselves, put them to burn resources to pave our way there so that once people get there they are able to survive comfortably.
Yes, people made great discoveries by sea, but people had been surviving for long periods of time on the sea, and they were great at it. The same can't be said for space in current times.
And funny enough, I find that this view overlaps with those who want to live out their dreams, like The Martian, to jump into a rocket ship... Yet, human sperm and eggs can survive a long journey in cryostasis, needing far less resources (this is a bit of a guess since I have yet to do any study on this, but intuitively it fits)... So, I highly doubt any humans with names will board any of our first few ships off this place we call Home.
It is no where near the limits of our reach. We already have people living in space year round without any local resources. What we do seem to lack however is any faith in ourselves.
If you want to re-supply people on Mars you would have to escape Earth's gravity well completely, which is crazy expensive.
>Estimates of the return on investment in the spaaace program range from $7 for every $1 spent on the Apollo Program to $40 for every $1 spent on spaaace development today. [1]
That money is generally spent in the US, on good, high-paying jobs.[2] The products NASA has created are EVERYWHERE[3] — The general rule of thumb is if it's wireless, fireproof, or small, it's using technology based off NASA work.
1: http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceresvol4/newspace3.ht... 2: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lauren-lyons/misconceptions-na... 3: http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0812/the-roi-of-s...
And not have any dividends at all in terms of sustainable environmental cycles....
But those don't have much to do with creating sustainable ecosystems (farming, direct atmospheric management, etc). They help, to be sure! But most of the innovations in robotics, batteries and solar panels aren't coming out of the space program these days, AFAIK.
The technology involved in going to mars will significantly advance (and cheapen) several areas that would otherwise be ignored. Currently we see SpaceX developing cost-saving technology such as landing rocket boosters and ramping up mass production.
In order to live on mars we would need specialized farming equipment, chemistry equipment, robots, interstellar transportation and communication, knowledge on how to terraform at a massive scale and so on. It would be a boon to numerous commercial interests and likely pay for itself and then some.
You're joking, right? The ISS gets everything from Earth, even its water, and they're so bad at self-sustainability that they are not able to wash their own dirty clothes (I shit you not). Oh, and they throw away their feces and only recently were able to grow some lettuce on board. That's the state of the art right now.
Kid has a good head on her shoulders. She sounds like an engineer.
I grew up dreaming about humanity exploring space. I majored in aerospace engineering in college. It was incredibly educational--it taught me we're not going to Mars. Not in my lifetime, probably not in the lifetime of any of my descendants who still remember my name. It would be fantastically expensive and there would be no point. There are no resources out there that would justify the kind of economic investment necessary. Committing that money here on Earth would be transformative far beyond what it could be if spent on Mars.
Moreover, the technology has plateaued, leaving us with wildly unfavorable physical realities. You know how progress in CPUs has stalled? How the last several generations of Intel processors hasn't really gotten faster, and all the focus is on making them cheaper and more power efficient? That happened to aerospace technology around 1970. Now we spend billions of dollars to eke out 0.5% gains in efficiency.
When I think about the first settlers that sailed across the Atlantic to colonize America, it seems amazing to me that people were willing to give up so much and endure such risks and hardships, but there have always been people that will go to great lengths to conquer new frontiers. I expect the first Martians will be no different in this respect.
So we aren't able to keep people alive in a lake at 100m from the shore without resupplying them every week, which means that sending somebody to the center of the ocean and expecting them to survive without any help for years is nowhere near our reach.
Looking at the past we can think that all achievements just took brave people that tried, but actually those achievements took place on a confluence of many favorable material and social conditions.
In other words, imagine a developer in India who wants to move to SV but can't get a visa. Can he instead apply for a ship bound to Mars, and agree to work as an IT technician in lieu of paying for the trip (and all the food, water, and oxygen he will need in Mars)?
Until that is economically feasible, colonization of Mars will not happen, at least not in the same way colonization of America happened.
Other than economic ventures such as the Spanish stuff (pillaging) in south America and Jamestown (where the wasn't actually any gold, but "hey, tobacco grows pretty well") early colonization of the new world was basically driven by persecution. The inquisition or some local form thereof was present in pretty much all of western Europe at the time. England and other protestant areas were equally tolerant of anyone that didn't pray the way they did. Pooling your money to buy a one way ticket far as hell away and enough food to hopefully last the winter was a pretty good option. Possibly starving because you aren't a good farmer doesn't seem all that bad when a change of regime could mean that everyone in your community was at risk of imprisonment/death. At least you can kind of control whether or not you starve.
How romantic.
And incorrect.
Folks explored the new world for a very obvious reasons: Money. Land. Resources.
Think spices. Gold. Slave labour.
That's it.
There's none of that on Mars.
By all accounts, the first colonists to the New World lived short, miserable, brutish lives and it was only well after sufficient infrastructure was established and European style civilization was properly bootstrapped could the average American expect to live as long as the average European.
Several early American colonies failed to last even a handful of years!
Good thing for us all that it isn't an either/or.
Fortunately some people can work on the good and needed. And some people can work on the hard, maybe even the too hard to see at first that it's even possible.
The "why?" for Mars is "What happens if Earth is fucked Completely, royally, and absolutely fucked."
What happens when a catastrophic event wipes out all life on Earth? Colonizing Antarctica or the Sahara does nothing to ensure human survival in that case. But putting people on Mars and creating a self-sufficient colony? As long as Mars isn't fucked too - humans might live on. There are plenty of people who are interested in human survival.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lake+Abert,+Oregon+97630/@...
We are not making the Earth less inhabitable. More people live on the planet now than ever before. In fact, many really smart people over the years have told us that the planet would never be able to support the current population.
There's an undercurrent in this article that's extremely dour, depressing, and bleak. I take issue with that, but we can save that conversation for another day.
People will visit Mars. In fact, for many decades it looks like tourism will be the prominent industry.
Mars has water. Mars has CO2. We can make a breathable atmosphere and support ourselves, although it looks like living mostly underground is our best option for the foreseeable future. In my mind, what we need is cheap/free energy.
Nuclear batteries look like the best option, at least initially. Also a modular, standardized deployment system where things plug into each other. It'd be good if for a while we equip every piece of gear going to Mars with power and an O2/water generator.
No matter how it plays out it'll be interesting to watch. Too bad it will probably take a long time before we see a sizable population there.
[1] Tourism in Antarctica. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Antarctica
I'm perplexed by this statement as the journey would be the exact opposite of what you purport. Are you saying that, unless we can travel to someplace that is very hospitable to life, that we shouldn't bother? How are we ever going to develop the technology to go to such a theoretical place if we're not working on the technology already and constantly iterating on it?
Let's say we're going to be hit with an asteroid that will kill all / most life on Earth. There is no way we can stop it. Having colonies on other planets and moons within our solar system means all of those people, in their self sustaining habitats, will live through the extinction event. Humans would not go extinct.
> If we can manage to survive on Mars, certainly we can manage to survive on the most life-friendly planet known to man.
Are you saying there is no such thing as an extinct level event for humans simply because we can live on Mars? I'm not sure what the point is that you're trying to convey here.
If we can build a sealed habitat on mars capable of recycling water and growing its own food, we can do the same here on earth. Just give it a dedicated fission reactor to keep the greenhouses running, distribute half a dozen of them around the world so that they can't all die to direct impacts, and fortify them heavily to keep the starving masses out.
It is thought that Chicxulub may have produced global firestorms, before a period of global cooling. The point still stands: it's not hard to build structures that can survive fire. Building out of concrete, with thick walls, a self-contained air supply, and away from any vegetation (or simply underground) should suffice, and will still be much easier than colonizing Mars.
No. I'm saying that if the threat of human extinction is the GP's concern, a mission to Mars is very low on the list of solutions that will effectively mitigate that threat.
> How are we ever going to develop the technology to go to such a theoretical place if we're not working on the technology already and constantly iterating on it?
I never said or implied that we shouldn't work on such technology, what I'm saying is that there are more immediate problems to deal with if one's primary concern is the continued existence of the human race. Colonizing Mars does not scale as a defense against an extinction event, and human colonization outside the solar system will remain impractical for the foreseeable future, and possibly forever.
>Let's say we're going to be hit with an asteroid that will kill all / most life on Earth.
I'd take my chances on a post-apocalyptic Earth before attempting to tough it out on Mars or the moon which are even more susceptible to celestial collisions considering their atmospheres.
> Are you saying there is no such thing as an extinct level event for humans simply because we can live on Mars? I'm not sure what the point is that you're trying to convey here.
No. I'm saying that Mars as an environment is already an existential threat to humanity in its natural state, and any problems we might face on Earth will certainly be present on Mars, except Mars is also hostile to life.
Why is that low on the list? What threat are you referring to? Extinction level events can't be generalized because there are a huge amount of them many of which could leave the planet uninhabitable so I'm not sure why you're not only generalizing them but making it sound as if it's an unlikely solution against an unknown list of problems.
> Colonizing Mars does not scale as a defense against an extinction event
Care to explain why? Considering there are a large list of known (and probably a larger list of unknown) possible extinction events, many of which could wipe out the entire human race almost instantly, off world makes the most sense as part of a system designed to ensure the human race can stay around forever (or at least past an extinction level event).
> any problems we might face on Earth will certainly be present on Mars
False depending on what this extinction level event is. There are a great many things that could make Earth less habitable than Mars (though most of them most likely temporary).
[1]: http://antarcticconnection.com/information/storms-and-blizza...
These are decades or centuries long efforts which are solely for the purpose of catering to the current, Earth-optimized human form. If you want to head out into the universe, develop a new form. Adapt humanity to the place you want to colonize, rather than the place to humanity.
"There is nothing wrong with being excited about exploring space. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming about setting up colonies in space either. But a colony on Mars would need to be a nearly perfectly self-contained, resource neutral system that harvests energy from the sun and is rarely or never re-supplied. That is currently beyond the reach of science and human ingenuity."
It's completely within our reach if we prioritize it over other things, namely the financial cost.
There's also the "things sometimes don't make sense" aspect of space exploration. Do we NEED a space station doing space research? No. Did we need to go to the moon? Some would say yes, but if you look at the economic incentives, the answer is no. Not everything can be boiled down to cash in versus cash out.
I think space travel is worthwhile to invest in right now. To everyone squabbling that the money could be used to help people here on earth: no, it could not, because money does not flow around in the earth in a utilitarian fashion, it flows based off of where people think they can make more money or do something cool. The people investing their time and money in spaceflight are not going to be buying rice for the hungry no matter how much of a "moonshot" space projects are.
So the problem with sending people to Mars is that it is not just a huge one time money sink. It is a permanent money sink, that would have to be constantly re-supplied.
People didn't just get in a boat one day and suddenly discovered America. They had been able to survive in a boat for months or years for a long time before they even got there. Nobody is saying that we should never get to Mars, just that there are previous technological goals that we are nowhere near solving yet.
Solve those goals one by one, and at some point you'll be able to get to Mars. But don't expect to stuff some people in a ship with a few lettuces and some water and send them to Mars without having worked out first all the boring little details of what such a travel would actually entail.
Triumph of the city/network effect argument: Networking and connectedness into other people and increasingly into computer services around the world provide more intellectual satisfaction than surviving in the desert does. Mass of humanity produces more variety when it clumps together physically. Urbanization on the earth is driven by productivity growth from cities. Immigration to distant colonies could be justified with farmland and resources in pre-industrial society and industrial society. If post-industrial society with deceasing population builds distant colonies, it wastes resources.
After the thrill of interplanetary space travel wears off, Mars may have small outpost for geologists, geochemists etc. I think colonizing moon will be far more likely when technology allows it. You can have access to Earth and communication lag is acceptable. Moon colony may be economically profitable.
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imho, to assure a good future for what we already have (and hope to have), to make sure we will even have a launchpad so to speak, we need to preserve our treasure here and set it on a good path beforehand.
Everything I've said is much better summed up in this article. http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-coloni...
Beyond that, I won't try to predict what will and won't make sense 500 years from now, 1000 years from now. Mars may not have a lot of resources, but it does have one thing that could be useful to a much larger and much more space-capable human population in the future: room. There's a lot of room there for people. We can argue all day whether that's realistic or not, but we should never assume that it will never make sense in the future based solely on the resources and problems of today.
Now we can talk about Alphabet's (formerly Google's) Google's Youtube's Youtube Red.
Ref: History of Humanity.