How settling Mars could create a new human species | Hacker News Reader

How settling Mars could create a new human species

nautil.us

90 pointsrgun101 comments

Yes, but they will be closer to Earthers than the Belters will be, sa sa?

(The Expanse covers ideas like this; inner planets (Earth and Mars) are more like-now human, but those who grew up on space stations and asteroids, aka 'Belters', are physically different, taller, lankier)

Awesome to see this in the comments. The Expanse does a neat job of working through some socio-political thought experiments.

The idea of colonizing another planets is so surreal it makes me wish I would live another 100 years. Having mars as our launch pad, I wonder where we could go from there.

I'm sure there was someone in 1492 saying the same thing about America. The grass is always greener.

I mean, they were right. Quality of life improved for the European colonizing nations. Not so much for the natives, but presumably we're not going to run into anyone already on mars.

Living in North America is not that-that different from living in Europe.

There is no 'green grass' on Mars, literally or metaphorically. There isn't even any 'air'.

He was talking about his personal perception of the future not the technicalities of existence. Jesus the level of poindexter in even philosophical pleasantries is suffocating on HN.

Strictly speaking, it should be possible for humans to go interstellar using current technology. Practically speaking, it's not, due to the partial nuclear test ban treaty. Here's a good start to that Wikipedia hole: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propu...

Ah, Project Orion! My favorite example of revolutionary technology that got banned for political reasons.

What about when Mars declares independence from Earth and develops nuclear capability ?

Earth's politicians scapegoat the Martians for being the cause of all their problems, then strike first once they discover them working on nukes.

Most of that article deals with interplanetary travel. The only reference to interstellar travel is in the "Theoretical Applications" section. If you look at the chart in that section, you will note that the two theoretical spacecraft are using 300 thousand or 30 million bombs. This is a problem, since estimates of current worldwide nuclear weapon stockpiles range between 10 to 15 thousand.

I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion is a better article, since it talks about a variety of theoretical spacecraft. You'll note that almost every single application uses a unmanned craft in order to reduce mass and keep travel times down to about a century.

Charles Stross (cstross) has written on his blog about the difficulties of human interstellar travel multiple times:

- http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high...

- http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/the_myth...

He also has written about the difficulties of radiation shielding on interstellar travel: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/08/san-trom...

> "Anyway, the point I'd like you to take away from this is that while it's really hard to say "sending an interstellar probe is absolutely impossible", the smart money says that it's extremely difficult to do it using any technology currently existing or in development. We'd need a whole raft of breathroughs, including radiation shielding techniques to kick the interstellar medium out of the way of the probe as well as some sort of beam propulsion system and then some way of getting data back home across interstellar distances ... and that's for a flyby mission like New Horizons that would take not significantly less than a human lifetime to get there."

I know. That's why I said Project Orion was only the start of a Wikipedia hole.

My point is that you explicitly claimed that human interstellar travel is possible with current nuclear propulsion methods. Project Orion doesn't support this claim (since Dyson's models require a number of nuclear weapons several orders of magnitude larger that current stockpiles). Other similar projects don't support this claim either, since they use unmanned spacecraft. I referenced the Stross blog posts because finding a reasonable propulsion system is only one new technology that needs to be invented before human interstellar travel is possible.

If you have other sources (Wikipedia articles or otherwise) that suggest differently, please feel free to post them.

The problem with interstellar travel is that the distances are so huge that there is a high probability of having a catastrophic crash. Particularly at the speeds required.

Living on Mars = living inside a crapped space your entire life and never being able to breathe fresh air, or take a walk outside.

Maybe in 1000 years Mars will be nice.

I think until then - nice for a short visit.

Living in a box would get tiring very, very quickly.

> Maybe in 1000 years Mars will be nice.

Wouldn't terraforming take much, much longer than that? Assuming it were possible(which doesn't seem possible due to lack of a magnetic field, as another commenter pointed out)

Don't need to terraform the whole planet just to have nice spaces to go for a walk in 'the forest'. I'd imagine a football stadium sized space could fit that purpose pretty well, at least for starters.

Atmosphere stripping due to solar wind is a natural process that takes millions of years. Atmospheric production is a deliberate process limited only by available energy and raw materials. And, of course, the economics. But the point remains: you absolutely can densify Mars' atmosphere, and you won't have to worry much about it until you get to the point where you start running out of raw material to replace the very slow loss.

My favorite idea to re-liquify the Martian core is to move Ceres into orbit around Mars. It'd take a very long time to do it, but you've got millions of years. But the point is, in the meantime, having a dense enough Martian atmosphere to walk around with just a gas mask is certainly attainable in a lifetime, so long as you have enough energy production to do it.

It might not take that long given the right tech. You'd need a legit fusion reactor, and enough material to build an long mass ejector and start shooting 0.01c ice pellets into the outer solar system, driving the rest of Ceres toward Mars. The same mass ejectors could be tuned to bombard Mars with ice at a much lower speed later, if needed for terraforming.

1000 years or a million - it's irrelevant I think.

After 1000 years of evolution and progress, we may have very different ideas about everything we understand.

We might possibly abandon Mars 'terraforming' for going to 'ready to go' planets that we can access further away.

Humans are not very good at planning at that horizon.

The only group that does that is the Catholic Church.

The big Cathedral in Cologne, Germany took 700 years to build. Imagine being born, raised, trained, and then working on a project that started 300 years ago and won't be done until 300 years after you are dead? Imagine being the guy in charge of that looking for investment 'for the next phase'? There are always more pressing costs.

It takes a commitment beyond that which our 'GDP' numbers capture.

Admittedly, 'space colonization' shares some of that impetus.

But the reality of it is, most people put their $ into Kardashian news.

Until then - my crazy but most actually realistic bet is that Wynne Hotels and Vegas-like entities, maybe Sandals resorts are the first people to make Mars accessible after NASA makes a few landings.

There will be a Casino on mars before most other things.

> The big Cathedral in Cologne, Germany took 700 years to build.

Yes, but: I doubt that they planned it that way.

Admittedly, you're right, it was not fully planned in that manner, but it would have taken a consistent vision over 100's of years, much like the colonization of another planet.

Sounds reasonable to me. Consider where we were in year 1016 vs now, and the rate of change is increasing. If current trends continue, 1000 years seems long if anything.

Even without terraforming, large enough domes would probably be good enough.

VR is going to help in this regard. Will VR be able to be a good replacement for a walk over the forest? I think it will. I didn't need VR to trade my outside activities for indoor, climatized comfy online ones. Although it's probably true that spending years inside a submarine isn't for everyone.

"Will VR be able to be a good replacement for a walk over the forest?"

Maybe in 200 years, when it's neurologically attached to our brains.

Until them, no :)

Replacement doesn't necessarily means it will be identical. It could be an inherently different but superior experience. Of course it would only work for people who isn't in denial. ^_^

Dunno, sure mountains, lakes, and the grand canyon are nice. But how often does the average person see something like that?

Seems like most people are inside at home, driving, inside at work, or occasionally inside a store/coffee shop.

With less gravity, and square feet free for the taking you could build large interior spaces well larger than people are used to on earth.

TV/displays are good enough you could build a large underground house and sprinkle around larger "windows" with a view of whatever you want.

Forget where I read it, gliders might be a popular recreation on Mars due to low gravity and low air traffic.

Assuming mars has the materials needed it could become quite the space hub. Seems hard near the absolute limit to build a space elevator on earth. But with less atmosphere, less gravity, and a smaller planet an elevator (and dramatically cheaper access to space) could be quite useful.

I highly recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. Great scifi books about a vaguely realistic Mars settlement, and the cultural/biological changes that occur.

And then read Aurora, also by Robinson, to promptly crush all your dreams of terraforming mars and settling other solar systems!

I never could get beyond the first dozens of pages, I was very annoyed by the way Robinson paints broad group of people as having homogeneous traits (the "arabs" living in a martian kasbah and depicted as backward people). Does it get past that?

Did you start with the first book? I wouldn't have thought it would start with that stuff, because Mars isn't colonised at the start of the series.

IMO it is better than that most of the time, in any case.

A different question altogether, but interesting none the less, let's say Russia or China get to colonize Mars first, then let's say they find a safe way to thrive there. could they then by extension manage new colonization of Mars the same way we colonized earth? That is the colonizer could regulate who might get to further colonize Mars --ie require a kind of interplanetary visa (if we allow many people from many places on Earth have the means to get there)? Are there treaties which require any colonizer to allow other people to set a foothold there? And what if the new Martians just declare independence? Do we cross our arms?

The colonization of Earth was accomplished with brute force, not visas.

Imagine deep sea exploration. Someone finds something very valuable and worth extracting despite the cost. There are treaties for this, of course. But would it work the same for Mars? Or, would we revert to force, as you say, if the Mars colony declares independence and says, no more Earthlings or only Earthlings from Country X who pay us handsomely.

When it comes to politics might is right.

> Mars colony declares independence

It worked out fine for the USA.

A Mars base declaring independence would be like the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station declaring independence.

If the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station ever achieved a self-sustaining system, maybe they would have declared independence.

edit: Meaning, it's more like saying 'The Columbus Expeditions declared independence'. Only once the colonies were, mostly, self-sufficient could they look seriously at independence.

I mean... if a Mars colony really pisses people off, I imagine you'd hear the phrase, "Nuke them from orbit" bandied about a lot.

This would probably go both ways. In fact, as Earth has so many satellites (GPS, communication, etc), you could simply "nuke" the orbit.

It could, but that assumes an incredibly advanced Mars which can produce interplanetary weapons and launch without detection. Earth would also have the benefit of being able to withstand the event without total destruction, while presumably life on Mars would be in a relatively small area. You could wipe out a city on Earth, but you you could wipe out life on Mars.

Eventually though? Hell yes. Same with asteroid belt colonies and mining, especially when you consider the tech to exploit asteroids and the tech to steer on at Earth would look pretty similar. Presumably the limiting factor on such aggression would be the long-term dependency on Earth for supplies that couldn't be fabricated offworld, foodstuffs, and so on. At first, for at least a couple of generations, you'd also have the strong connection to the homeworld, I assume.

There is the Outer Space Treaty [1]:

> The treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet.[3] Art. II of the Treaty states that "outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means". However, the State that launches a space object retains jurisdiction and control over that object.[4] The State is also liable for damages caused by their space object.[5]

I assume "other celestial bodies" would include other planets.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

Yes, and countries can, and do, remove themselves from treaties when they feel it is in their best interest. The most critical one in our time was the anti-ballistic missile treaty which the US withdrew from in 2001.

If a country felt they could control access to and maintain control over, a celestial body I could imagine them withdrawing from the treaty and claiming that body as their own.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/international/bush-pulls-o...

It's pretty hard to secure a border crossing in a country, let alone an entire planet.

Planets are noted for, among other things, being rather large.

Here they would not be defending other terrestrial intruders but rather space invaders from earth, so they'd be reasonably sure where to look out for coming troublemakers. On the other hand, they could be in a precarious position if their habitat isn't terraformed (not needing intensive energy to keep things habitable, thus a weak point in sustainability).

On the plus side, planetary distances are so large you know for a long time that someone is coming to your planet. So you have time to prepare a reception.

So, while no one can actually claim the land, if they land a bunch of habitat shaped 'space objects' on the surface, it is still under the jurisdiction of the country that launched them. Sounds like a loophole? "We don't claim this land, it's just covered with a city sized grouping of space objects that we do claim."

Or just unfold a big plastic sheet on mars, and claim sovereignty over that plastic sheet.

Dispatcher: Hello 911

Caller: Someone just broke into my space pod.

Dispatcher: Ok, I'll send someone right over, should be with you in 6 months or so.

Add several hours of delay between phrases.

That said, the definition of "space object" could make things tricky. Sure, China doesn't own this chunk of Mars, but they own the Mars base, and freely mine from the areas around the base, and decide who can open the door that they own...

This treaty only binds the governments that signed it, i.e. only the governments of Earth. If people colonize Mars, couldn't they create a new (local) government that would then be able to claim sovereignty of the planet?

It's no different than making your yard a sovereignty. Nobody else on Earth has to recognize it, and it's up to you to defend it from anyone willing to take it for themselves.

This treaty will be shred to pieces the moment anyone with power gets a serious economic and colonization interest in space. It's utterly worthless.

The treaty of Tordesillas regulated colonization, but it ended up falling by the wayside as countries not party to the treaty decided to just ignore it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas

Of course... that's one of the arguments for colonizing Mars sooner than later.

> And what if the new Martians just declare independence?

We just cut their supplies for 3 months ;)

Presumably they wouldn't do it without becoming self-sustaining first, just like the American colonies.

There is a historical precedent for a similar situation in North America, which was settled by the French and Indian War.

Given the success rate of holding on to local colonies nearby on earth, my guess is it won't last and Mars would become independent at some point.

This is absolutely correct from a perspective of bog-standard evolutionary biology. A "fork" of a species into two very different environments with limited gene flow between them is virtually guaranteed to eventually lead to speciation event.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. :)

Agreed. It would be interesting to see how genetic engineering might be used to "steer" the changes needed to adapt to life on Mars. I've been concerned about the gravity issue for some time. It's not at all clear that 0.38g is healthy for humans in the long term. And the radiation threat is a very serious issue, even just for the trip out there. The long term effects are hard to predict. It really is a pity that Venus is such a hell hole; 0.87g would be much nicer on the human body.

Or we could try to exploit the 78%+ of this planet we don't use... the oceans. Easier than space, that's for damned sure.

We are exploiting the oceans to large degree: fishing, oil pumping, waste dumping, trade routes, even possibly some of the CO2 accumulation.

I was thinking more in terms of places to live actually... since that's the only benefit Mars has for us. Asteroid mining is an easy thing to see the benefit of, but colonizing another gravity well without fully exploiting our own? Not so much.

But what advantages does settling the ocean have compared to say, settling Wyoming (which with 6 people per square mile is much, much closer to the average population density of the ocean than the average population density of land)?

With settling Mars we mitigate a number of potential extinction events, and fulfill some science fiction dreams. Living in the ocean also helps with both goals, but to a much lesser degree.

Wyoming is closer to the Yellowstone Caldera.

If that puppy blows, any colony on Mars would almost certainly die off, unless they had become totally self-sufficient. I can't imagine that an Earth struggling with that level of natural disaster would bother with such a far-flung enterprise.

Living on Mars only obviates the risk of extinction when it has a biosphere capable of supporting life, or is sufficiently advanced to survive without regular shipments from Earth. We're not even remotely close to that, even in the planning or dreaming stages. That said, Wyoming makes more sense than Mars too.

Not necessarily, deep water is a shit ton of pressure.

Still easier than vacuum, hard radiation, and total isolation from a functional biosphere. You don't have to colonize the Marianas Trench after all.

Perhaps, the sea poses its own set of challenges. Given sufficient funds, anyone can buy a boat but deriving useful benefit from seafaring is another story. If you were to explore the 'unused' or currently unexploited aspects of the ocean it would require similar investments in research, life support, materials, construction, and a host of other areas that also need to be tackled for space colonisation and exploration.

Say you wanted to create a city sized operation/colony. If we start by comparing to vessels and platforms already in operation we see that the price tag for such can vary between $250 million and >$1 billion for both cruise ships and oil platforms. Those costs are for established technologies with existing production infrastructure and with the assumption of constant resupply and a market for the goods and services they produce. If you were to break ground on a completely new area the costs would be much, much higher.

There's also the question of what special benefit we gain from moving an operation to the ocean when compared to doing something similar on land. Both are still on Earth with all its pros and cons but the ocean simply multiplies the engineering challenges. You could ask the same question of space but the difference is that a space based facility has several major advantages that go hand in hand with the challenges it presents. Namely, greatly reduced gravity, vast amounts of 'rare' elements, the potential to move large quantities of material with a comparatively small vehicle/engine, and the prestige that comes with a new frontier.

Finally, doing one does not necessarily mean we neglect the other. There are many areas where advances in one could benefit the other and there are proposals for systems that would see a great deal of overlap between the two, such as the Sea Dragon.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_(rocket)

I would agree that on land makes a lot of sense in terms of living space, but in terms of trade and all of the other factors which have traditionally driven humans to the coasts, not so much. By contrast Mars offers nothing that isn't more readily obtained from asteroids, and still offers a gravity well to be stuck in. If you want zero G, vacuum industries, that kind of thing... moons or large asteroids make much more sense than Mars.

A terraformed Mars makes sense, but it's not exactly impending. If you just think about it terms of colonies on Earth, colonies existed because they had something to offer the "mainland". Sugar, rum, slaves, spices... something. Colonies without that benefit didn't stay colonies for long, and what's the point of creating... I don't know... SpaceHaiti2000?

And let's not forget the Sahara, the Gobi Desert, etc...

Cleaning the atmosphere and terraforming those deserts is probably much easier than terraforming Mars.

Where does the selection pressure come from though?

I have enough faith in our race that even if we have someone who is genetically less fit for mars we won't just let him die before he reaches a reproductive age.

So will it be by their potential partners? It would be pretty funny if they end up developing martian dating apps that requires putting their DNA sequences online just like how height and race is currently required.

> martian dating apps that requires putting their DNA sequences online

Hmm, as long as the separate species are still physically compatible *cough, I don't see why that would be necessary, at least in the context of dating/hookups.

For breeding? Sure.

> martian dating apps that requires putting their DNA sequences online

This isn't how selection pressure works. And while you're correct that we won't let a human die, potential partners already do a sort of DNA analysis. While it's not as ruthless as in the wild, potential partners definitely evaluate each other based on criteria like fitness, appearance, and intelligence, which have genetic components.

Consider that the Martian environment might make individuals who are genetically more susceptible to skin cancer likely to have facial scarring before reproductive age, or make lanky individuals more graceful in the low gravity, or make short people able to move through small hab units with less awkwardness. Or consider the potential effects of claustrophobia or a proclivity for motion sickness on life in space, or the demands on intelligence and resulting careers.

These effects would cause some genotypes to be more attractive than others in a different way than they are on Earth where, for example, height is often considered attractive and is not penalized by short space hab ceilings. It's not that those lacking these traits would be prohibited from reproducing, but that they would have a bit of a challenge finding partners, while those possessing the traits would find it slightly easier. As a result of a few on the margin failing or succeeding in finding partners, those with the traits might have 2.55 children on average, and those without might have 2.53 children. Eventually, this pressure could shift the gene pool in a different direction than Earth.

> potential partners definitely evaluate each other based on criteria like fitness, appearance, and intelligence, which have genetic components

To have sex, yes, but I'm not sure it translates in any meaningful in the number of surviving offsprings we have, therefore eliminating selection pressure at the human scale. We have removed a good chunk of selection pressure, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Selection pressure, however, is still a very real phenomenon for the micro-biology inhabiting and interacting with our bodies.

We wont be colonizing Mars in a future where we can't email and print a genome.

Could Mars ever be terraformed to the point a human, or human derivative, could operate comfortably in the open atmosphere? It seems pretty cold, air pressure is low, and there's little-to-no protection from solar radiation.

Likely no. Because Mars lacks a magnetic field to protect fragile meatbags from cosmic radiation. [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars

Yes this is true, but there are pockets of very strong magnetic fields which could presumably "help" protect small stations and camps of us squishy little carbon bags of water.

http://mgs-mager.gsfc.nasa.gov/images.html

We'd likely be able to colonize the atmosphere of Venus before we'd be able to terraform Mars.

Giving Mars an atmosphere is pretty much out of the question. Even digging a 20km deep hole in Hellas Planitia to achieve a pressure above the Armstrong limit is more plausible.

It looks like we have to overcome the technological hurdles of creating gravity and some kind of shielding (invisible) that can protect humans from radiation. Steady power would be required. Curious if wind power could be used. If Musk could send a rocket to Mars that was basically a huge wind turbine that would anchor itself and unfold its blades, couldn't it create enough power to provide for a small contingent of people? Add some solar and there could be an abundance of power. With a good source of plentiful and steady power it would certainly make this endeavor more possible.

> creating gravity

As an aside, I can't help but feel that harnessing gravity would open up far more exciting possibilities than colonizing/inhabiting Mars.

Artificial gravity can be created with a centrifuge, and pretty much anything with mass will shield you from radiation. Currently making a centrifugal spacecraft lined with radiation shielding would be too costly. The cost efficiency of rapidly reusable spacecraft could make such solutions to these problems affordable.

Use an asteroid?

I suspect the truth is that we wont' be truly settling Mars for any length of time, and if we do it will be with automation rather than humans, or humans who have been extensively modified, maybe even bred for the role. The alternative is a series of technological breakthroughs which are nowhere apparent on the horizon.

Insects, algae, lichens, bacteria etc. are might be stronger contenders than inorganic self-replicating machinery. They're pretty good at surviving harsh environments already, evolve pretty quickly, and often have life cycles adapted to multiple types of environment and timescales of activity, much like multi-stage spacecraft.

The problem there is that however we engineer them, we'll be competing with evolution in situ, and at a great distance. Machines break, but they also do just what you design them to do.

Reminds me of The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov. The third part of the book takes place on the moon where there is a divergent human species / society. Great book, and there are some really interesting thoughts on how two divergent human species would chafe against one another in that part of it.

I'm surprised at how little criticism I hear about the colonization of Mars. Interfering with the evolutionary development of an entire planet should be a huge consideration. But it's colonialism as usual.

> The harsh conditions on Mars might make such unlikely events more probable if the outcome—say, bright orange skin—was very beneficial.

Make Mars Great Again.

This is pretty backwards. We will genetically engineer humans to live on Mars. This is the only way it can work. Any genetic drift would be optimized and changed by the same biotechnology, so there's no chance that a new species would be created in less than a millenia.

Genetically engineering someone to live on Mars could itself create enough of a difference that a new species could be created

If the engineering is done correctly, the new models remain backward-compatible with the old.

Yes, but that wasn't covered by the article. The title references post-speciation.

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