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Comment by tinym | Hacker News Reader

By the time we've learned how to live on a planet as inhospitable as Mars, maybe we'll know how to make a home on Earth.

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I thought we already knew how to make a home on Earth. What is this in reference to?

That our current methods are unsustainable? There are plenty of ideas for solutions.

That the current state of human cooperation is below the necessary threshold to achieve a self-sustaining society on Mars? Maybe, but I'm optimistic that we'll find the inspirational leaders that are required.

I had a bramble of related ideas in mind, and instead of putting in effort to untangle them I lazily let them came out as a pithy aphorism. But:

- Even if all of Musk's enterprises were aimed at colonizing Mars (like gp suggested), they can be quite useful here.

- Turning Mars into a self-sufficient habitat is both an absurdly long-term (and laudable) goal and no guarantee of survival. We have to worry about the problems of surviving on Earth today and, in the very long run, how to live in many other places.

(upvoted your comment, because I agree with it)

Why the hell would you be optimistic about that.

Would pessimism help?

I think the key difference in Elon's approach is that he snatches the most viable pie out of the sky and figures out how to make it happen today.

In my opinion that's part of "knowing how" - knowing how to make something actually happen outside of theories. Hopefully we'll get there soon.

> I thought we already knew how to make a home on Earth.

It seems to me that this really isn't the case. Our attempt to make a home here is causing a mass extinction, extremely fast change in atmospheric makeup (compared to historical models), depletion of fresh water reserves (in some areas anyways), increased frequency of bad weather, earthquakes, etc. Under a 'business as usual' model I have trouble seeing our current ecosystem supporting us for long (e.g. another 100 years).

There are a billion or so people living sustainably, and probably 1% of those are doing it at a Western standard of living. We just haven't figured out how to democratize access to the culture of how to do that broadly in all climates.

By the time we've learned how to live on a planet as inhospitable as Mars, maybe we'll have figured out how to deal with LA traffic.

Self driving cars should fix things. At least a hive mind autonomously driving traffic should, in theory, reduce misery.

That kind of attitude gets you nowhere very quickly. Why do _anything_ better?

What makes you feel moving to Mars will solve issues inherent in humanity?

We know how to live on another planet like Mars. The issue is getting there, and getting there at scale.

I didn't downvote you, but I am genuinely curious where you got the idea that we know how to live on Mars already?

In theory, you just go there, plop down a habitat, and live in it.

In practice, it might be a little tougher than it sounds. :-)

Solar radiation? Probably why burrowing would be the way to go.

At least the low gravity makes a space elevator tenable with current materials -- that'd be a big aid. Getting to and from parking orbit from Earth is such a pain!

Living there at scale is an issue too; the experiments ran here for a year in the desert require lots of training, careful planning and in general lots of time and resources. If we want to go to mars and stay there indefinitely we'll need bigger communities, which means manufacturing in mars, making the transition more seamless for a wider range of people, and in general just making more from less.

PS: Don't think this comment is down vote worthy, just healthy discussion imo.

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