A Planetary Scientist: 'I Do Not Want to Live on Mars' | Hacker News Reader

A Planetary Scientist: 'I Do Not Want to Live on Mars'

npr.org

53 pointsjonah64 comments

This almost occurs to me as funny. Why does it need to be a confession? It didn’t seem like Planetary Scientists have claimed as a group that they “want” to live on Mars. The confession only makes sense if Planetary Scientists are all presumed to want to live on Mars in the first place. And even that is true, it’s not a particularly strong confession as the simple fact of not wanting to live on Mars doesn’t imply a betrayal.

most questions about titles can be answered with "for the click bait"

What’s really appalling is the complete silence of volcanologists.

If you peek at the <title> on the top of the page, rather than the title given in the page itself, you'll see: "Saturn's Moon Titan Is More Compelling Than Mars As A Long-Term Human Destination"

FWIW, the first book I read which proposed humans living on Titan was Clarke's "Imperial Earth" (1976).

Me neither, but I would love to live there for, I don't know, a year. If living in a foreign country for some time can have a profound impact on you, imagine living in a foreign planet.

Well, even given a degree of habitation, visiting Mars would likely be similar to visiting Antarctica in winter, which is certainly a novel experience but not necessarily culturally expanding in the fashion that a year in tremendously different cultural climate might be.

After about twenty years of habitation (and extremely bottlenecked social inheritance), I bet Mars would be a pretty interesting cultural climate itself. Could you even imagine what kind of self-parody our political groups could grow in to if their opposition just happened to not book a seat?

I think it would mostly be about fending off senseless boredom.

Living on a foreign planet would surely have a _much greater profound impact_ on you, but the profoundness isn't what is important. It's the type of a profound impact that matters.

As an example, let's say you grew up only in the U.S. Visiting a foreign European country might have a profound impact of the type that is very eye-opening due to seeing and interacting with another culture. In contrast, visiting an active war-zone like Syria will surely have a _greater profound impact_ on you, but the type will be one that is very sad.

The same would go for a foreign planet, where the type of a profound impact it would have on you would be one of loneliness, abandoned-ness, etc.

This is why, I, as an environmentalist hope humans will colonize Mars. I firmly believe that a Mars colony is the best bet we have at forcing humans to finally see how precious our trees and our green and blue earth is.

Has there been a single person ever who has determined how to grow anything on mars?

We have freaking rovers there for decades. Not a single seed planted, not a single tiny green house or terrarium delivered to the surface.

We have spent billions putting robots on mars and we have literally nothing to show for it. And by "something to show for it" that would mean an experiment to literally show that we can sustain life on mars.

Have we even had a single person with the qualifications to state so, commented on this?

Until then, mars is simply an expensive cemetery.

It is currently "illegal" to bring life to Mars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection

There is a good reading about greenhouses on Mars here by NASA[1], also this seems to (obviously) be an active area of research for them. There is talk of them trying to put a small greenhouse on Mars by 2021[2]

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/livingthings/25feb_greenho...

[2] https://www.space.com/25767-nasa-mars-greenhouse-rover-plant...

>We have spent billions putting robots on mars and we have literally nothing to show for it.

This kind of anti-intellectualism is really inexcusable. We've gained an enormous amount of knowledge from the rover expeditions to Mars over the years[1], and nobody should apologize that the previous expeditions didn't meet your specific science fiction fantasies. We can agree that we'd both love more funding for more missions to Mars, but your characterization of the earlier missions as useless is outrageous and uninformed.

[1] https://marsmobile.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/science/results/

I agree. When we sent the first rover we knew nothing, really. There might even have been life there. We need more funding, but the caution of early space explorers was actually rather wise.

I may have stated my point poorly. I agree that the caution is wise... but I guess I'm too hopeful that progress would be faster.

Look we went from not having the technology of flight to landing on the freaking moon within 60 years.

Why would we have stopped that rate of progress?

GP's comment is what people are calling anti-intellectualism these days?

Personally, I don't think that will really help. People care most about what directly affects them, and unless we're hoping Mars will have such a large colony that majority of people on earth are going back and forth between the two planets, then it won't affect most people.

As anecdotal evidence, there are plenty of places on earth where you can see the lack of trees and greenery which makes you clearly aware of how precious they are on all other places of earth -- but most people do not visit or live near those locations, and as such most people seem uninvolved.

I hope that if we have ~10k people go there and die horrible deaths from starvation or live Instagramified horrifyingly bleak lives, then perhaps people on earth will start to feel trapped on this earth and to start to respect it more. My wife and I go every year to a film festival called "One World" in Prague. Once, we went to a film called "The War Show"[1]. A shaky cellphone shot documentary about Syria's civil war, in which the real camera-woman dies. I always was glad I lived in stable democracies with human rights. But before I watched that film, I didn't have real respect for the fragility and preciousness of democratic institutions. But now I do. I cried for hours after watching that film.

I want everyone to have an experience like that, with regards to our precious earth and nature, before it is too late.

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5719108/

I don't think you're giving the human brain enough credit for its ability to take everything for granted.

For example, every smoker knows what it's doing to their own body. Some even have endured catastrophe like loved ones dying to smoking-related disease. But they still smoke. Even when they develop a chronic cough and barely have the lung fortitude to inflate a balloon.

I'm not sure how you can expect people to care about people dying 200 million kilometers away. Nor how something as abstract and distant as the survival of humanity is supposed to compel people into action when immediate threats right here on earth don't.

Well my philosophy is that it is likely that you are right. Indeed, there is a high chance that there is no hope for the human race and no point in trying to save it, given that it is evil and doesn't deserve to be saved anyways. However, given that we are the only life in the known universe, this leads to a nihilistic conclusion. The nice thing about nihilistic conclusions is that they are like wildcards. They say nothing about what one should and should not do. If there is no hope and no point, there is no reason not to try, because trying is no worse than not trying. There is no reason not to hope, because hoping is no worse than not hoping. Basically, nihilistic conclusions should have no effect on the reasoning of a rational person. So even if there is %99.99 chance that everything is hopeless and meaningless, we can disregard that %99.99 and focus on the %0.01 chance of hope.

That is why I am hopeful, that a mars colony could be an eye opener for us. Because hope is the only meaningful possibility.

Imagine that you find yourself paralyzed, unable to feel, and blind. You can hear nothing, feel nothing, and see nothing. And you see a randomly blinking light. You are quite sure that the blinking is random. Would you try to find sense in the pattern of blinking? You are %99.99 sure that it is random. But why should that certainly dissuade you from trying to find a pattern? Would any rational person not try?

What if you're a hermit trying to escape humanity and the earth keeps bombarding your new home planet of mars with tons of travelers that you either can't support nor escape.

All you want to do it be out and alone on this new planet and to be left alone.

As a nation of one person and one planet, it will be difficult to prevent all those illegal aliens coming in.

One word: "walls"

> A really fun (and potentially useful) thing is this: Thanks to the low gravity and thick atmosphere, people on Titan could easily fly under their own power if they strap wings to their arms!

I'm sold.

That is until you realize that Titan is basically at the triple point of methane which means you'd have to lug around a bunch of thermal-regulating equipment.

As someone who has always been fascinated by Space, reads a lot of SF and generally feels quite positive about Space exploration, I nonetheless think manned Space exploration and human colonisation of other planets is really not a good goal. I know it's dramatic. I know many people concern themselves with the long term viability of the human species (as something important).

Personally though it seems like robotic exploration is just much more sensible and useful. Humans are not going to thrive in any of these environments: they're absolutely horrific in every way. I mean maybe if we went down the "Man Plus" route (or the more fanciful bio-engineering of Clifford Simak's Desertion) then it would make some kind of sense. Also my feeling is that our interminable survival as a species is not necessarily that big a deal AND I don't really believe we have any viable strategy for keeping people out there...

What else I am missing? Why do we spend so much energy on putting people into space?

More available solar energy. More available minerals. Few pollution worries (sortofa problem just now on earth.) Supports a far larger population in time. Freeman Dyson's explanation (pre-Musk), that it gives us redundancy because humans make mistakes, is of course unappealing if you think that civilization and the earth's ecosystem is indestructible, but many don't think that anymore, and the number of ways we could put an end to ourselves or our civilization seems to be growing. There are whole books on this, of course.

One of my biggest concerns for habitation on other worlds is not what the author mentions, but rather interplanetary communication.

The mean distance between Earth and Mars is about 1338 light-seconds, or about 22 minutes. You wouldn't be able to have a meaningful phone call with your friends or relatives at Earth -- you'd be stuck with writing long e-mails or voice messages. That would suck.

Building a CDN between Earth and Mars would also be a technical nightmare. Especially for whatever data-hungry VR and other content we'll have at that time.

Everything else about making Mars habitable -- climate control, resources, food, water, medical, cultural, job opportunities, transportation, recreation, entertainment -- seems approachable to me in the next few thousand years of technological development.

The speed of light will suck. Unless Einstein is wrong in some way we don't yet understand.

You assume people who want to move to Mars in the first place would want to have meaningful contacts with friends or relatives in Earth.

I believe a selection effect (the desire to go to Mars in the first place) may prove your assumption wrong.

Keep in mind every (four?) years it gets close enough to earth to Snapchat.

Care to explain?

I believe he is referring to the elliptical orbits aligning in some manner which would reduce the distance enough to have near real time communication

Okay.. I thought there might be more to his point given who contextual "close enough to ... Snapchat" is.

Yeah Elon Musk said it: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/76e79c/i_am_elon_mus...

Isn't 22 minutes the maximum?

I mean if 1AU=150e6 km, and Mars-Sun is 230e6 km, and assuming circular orbits, we get a distance between mars and earth of between

    230e6km - 150e6km = 80e6km

and

    230e6km + 150e6km = 380e6km

Giving a range of 4.4-19.4 minutes. (EDIT: I guess 22 min is the back-and-forth time)

Anyway, this will surely suck, but I often chat with people while they're doing stuff, and they often only get back to me every 10 minutes or so. You just need to multi-task while doing conversation.

Also, some reddits only allow you to post once every 5 minutes or so; that's not that different from having a 5 minute delay (note how old posts are that you're responding to).

For many people, most communication is already delayed.

What you're describing is what moving to another continent was like until a few decades ago. Or moving to another city was like until 1-2 centuries ago.

Plenty of people moved anyway.

Sure. But it's very hard for humans to go back to that once they are used to being able to have real-time communication as we have today.

You'd have all the recorded entertainment you could possibly want. My grandparents liked electric stoves and telephones well enough, but also griped that thoughtful letters and coal stoves had advantages they missed, too. I don't think they would have batted an eye if they were told things were going back to the old ways. It would be like living in a small town, mostly, and many prefer that; to be part of a tight group, not lonely in an endless mass of very loosely connected people.

They moved for opportunity. Dunno if Mars is much of an opportunity, especially after 150 days of weightlessness stuck in a small RV.

Being one of the first Martians makes you solar system famous and a historical figure.

Surely the fame and fortune from that will cause plenty of opportunity.

First and probably last. You will have fame surely but then no groupies. And I don't think that fortune will get you much of anything when you're 33.9 million miles away from Walmart on a good day.

You're not imaginative enough :)

You may not be able to spend your money at Walmart but you could invest in startups, fund charities, buy property you'll never see etc.

After a point, that's what rich people do anyway. There's only so much enjoyment to have from physically shopping for bread.

Hell, you could even have a second remote job if you got that bored.

People managed for a long time not being able to communicate between distant settlements faster than months or years, either having to go in person or send something on paper -- I think we'll be able to manage 20 minutes delay on them receiving video chat.

Colonists in the new world dealt with worse just fine for hundreds of years. You make a new life and send letters.

Unless this VR content is real time it's not a roundtrip problem but a bandwidth problem. Even without a high bandwidth uplink a few tons of storage sent to Mars on a rocket with some regularity goes a long way. Maybe Martians will play GTA 10 a bit after the rest of us, no big deal.

That's because the "new world" was already livable by the people who, um, were native.

Things that we take for granted on earth (and which allow a simple tribal existence):

- air with enough oxygen

- most radiation is shielded, allowing one to subsist with minimal clothing

- vegetation that grows food

- roaming animals that can also be food

- water for basic necessities (hydration, hygiene).

Picture setting up camp in Death Valley. That's luxury compared to Mars.

The GP is postulating problems colonists will still have on Mars in the year 4000.

Your comment is entirely irrelevant to that discussion. By that time Mars could have been fully terraformed, but the speed of light won't have changed, nor presumably will planetary orbits.

The first sentence is false in very large part BTW - before the eventual introduction of earthworms to the New World, most common agriculture was impossible.

Just move Mars

A Mars mission — even if you ignore the radiation danger has a massive engineering hurdles.

How does one land — decelerate to a safe landing. The amount of fuel required to fire a mars retro rocket is many times that on earth. Then you need to lift off.

Getting to mars is not the issue — landing and taking off is the major challenge.

I think you have that backwards? Taking off from Mars is significantly easier than earth because of lower gravity and a less-dense atmosphere.

How do you fuel the rocket on Mars?

All you need is oxygen and hydrogen. Both of those are actually plentiful on Mars.

And the machinery to gather them etcetera etcetera... Just because the raw material is there doesn't rocket fuel make. And I'd be hard pressed to say that oxygen is plentiful on Mars. There is some oxygen.

"And the machinery to gather them"

That machinery can be sent gradually and ahead-of-time.

"Just because the raw material is there doesn't rocket fuel make"

No, but it means that such fuel is at least possible.

"I'd be hard pressed to say that oxygen is plentiful on Mars"

The current understanding is that there's millions of cubic meters of water ice on or near the Martian surface (with even more suspected further beneath the surface). Sounds pretty plentiful to me.

Neither of those are plentiful on Mars.

Mars has lots of water ice, which is made (almost) exclusively of - you guessed it - hydrogen and oxygen.

So yes, both of those things are plentiful on Mars. Maybe not to Earth standards (or the standards of, say, Ceres or Enceladus), but certainly abundant compared to our own moon (at least as far as current information tells us).

It's all relative. If you already have enough energy to crack water, fueling a rocket is not a worry.

If you just think about it in terms of real estate values, Earth has all these great amenities that Mars doesn't (and won't for a long time, if ever).

* Breathable atmosphere

* Full gravity

* Low radiation

* Decent temperatures

In a world of "location, location, location," Mars is going to be cheap beyond imagination. Perhaps it will be where all the poor people end up, after they're gentrified off Earth.

Title seems like it was written for clickbait

As someone else pointed out, the <title> element for the post is "Saturn's Moon Titan Is More Compelling Than Mars As A Long-Term Human Destination"

> since the gravity is 14 percent of Earth's gravity, just a little less than at the moon

Isn't this a non-starter? Low gravity can be harmful to humans over long time periods, due to it's effect on your bones and muscles.

Time for a Titan rover.

Rover, flyer, and submersible.

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