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Comment by LinuxBender | Hacker News Reader

Serious question. Why do we spend so much time on Mars?

Are we planning for evacuation of Earth? I think it is clear that Mars is not suitable for mass migration.

Are we looking for evidence that Mars was Earth Version 1 and that we evacuated and came here?

Are we expecting to find minerals that we could ship to earth that do not exist here?

Is it just so we can say we did it? I am curious because we have barely explored Earth and many parts of our planet are still challenging to study. Is it cheaper to explore Mars?

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> Is it just so we can say we did it? I am curious because we have barely explored Earth and many parts of our planet are still challenging to study. Is it cheaper to explore Mars?

There is a small[0] group of people interested in studying Mars. There's also a small group of people interested in studying oceans, another small one interested in studying forests, etc. You happen to be reading a comment thread for the article that comes from that first group. The article is about on Mars because it's literally published by the few people interested in Mars. Find a marine biology article, and it'll be focusing on the oceans.

As for why are there more Mars articles than marine biology ones on HN, or even in mass media? There are many reasons, primary of which is probably science fiction, which likes to focus on space[1]. There were also spectacular achievements made recently, many of whom driven by a company with express purpose of enabling colonization of Mars. All those are pretty interesting for the nerdy types that frequent HN.

[0] - Compared to the general population.

[1] -- Tangent: there was this one sci-fi series about oceans back in the 90s, seaQuest DSV. I miss it a lot and really wish someone would make something similar again. The first season was mostly about geopolitics and accurate-ish marine science. If there are any bored sci-fi authors here (looking at you, 'cstross), I implore you to write something like The Expanse, but underwater. I spent some time yesterday looking for subsurface sci-fi books, and there aren't many of them.

To quote Sam Seaborn,

"Because it's next"

Firstly, I'm disappointed in HN for the downvotes on this. It's a fair question even if it doesn't agree with your dreams of going to Mars. I feel the downvoters are no reflective of the intellectually curious that made this forum so popular.A mindlessly offensive comment or joke, I'm with the downvote brigade, but this is a different POV only. Shame.

...back to the question.

At the risk of annoying people with more Elon, he said it well with "“I think there is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multi-planetary, in order to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen"

So for survivability alone, this is a good move for humans. Kind of like putting your investments in several categories to reduce risk. We have weapons capable of destroying the earth + what nature can do, it makes sense to have safety systems for humanity's existence not earth based.

Also historically with great exploration into the unknown there is an aspect of 'we dont know what the benefit is' but history has taught us there is usually a benefit in finding out, whether that be knowledge gained in the process or what we find at the journey's end. We'd all still be in some part of Africa (more likely extinct really) if people had not wondered what was over the next hill or ocean. We can debate maybe that hasn't been a good thing for the world or some societies, but it has been for the population and knowledge curve of humans.

And your comment 'I think it is clear that Mars is not suitable for mass migration.' Really? Why is that? Id debate this will be like people heading to my home of Australia some 200+ years ago. The first settlers had a hell of a time, many died or eked out limited quality of life. But over time humans have the habit of building on the previous generations progress. So today there is not a great place for mass migration on Mars. But I have no reason to believe we can't change that in 50 or 100 years.

Guys, why are you spending so much time studying lightning? That's never going to be useful - people in 1850.

Mars is very similar to the Earth and was even more similar to it in the past, when it used to have running water on its surface. We can learn a lot about the Earth by studying Mars.

Why can't we do both?

Sure, but why do we do Mars?

We're also exploring Titan, Venus, the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn... the list kind of goes on.

Mars is the easiest place to get to and stay on, aside from the Moon, and is much more interesting than the Moon - thus, more interest. (Venus is harder, the gas giants and their moons are further and thus more expensive.)

(edit: I removed "Venus", because I don't think we have anything actively orbiting it, nor any specific plans to launch anything.)

(edit 2: wait, JAXA has something! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akatsuki_(spacecraft) )

Mars is close, it's not got hellish Venusian weather, it's got a clear atmosphere that's easy to look through, you can roll rovers around on the surface pretty easily. If you want to generalize your ideas about what geology does, then Mars is a nice place to observe that isn't Earth. And if we are very lucky, we will be able to generalize our ideas about life by finding some there. It also has interesting chemistry, weather, etc. It's like Earth, but different. You can test theories about how planets form against it.

It's easier to image the entirety of Mars than it is to image, say, the Pacific. It's easier to send a rover to Mars that will survive for years on Mars than it would be to send one to the depths of the Pacific, too.

> hellish Venusian weather

In Mars' wonderful weather, pressure is so low, at 0.006 atm, that IIRC water boils in the ambient environment, and gravity is 0.376 G.

Around 50 km above Venus, pressure is about equal to Earth, gravity is equal to Earth, and temperatures are a very friendly (relative to all locations in the universe outside Earth) 30-80 deg C. (Also, breathable air is lighter than Venusian atmosphere, so a floating base is a bit easier; and Venus is closer to Earth than Mars.)

There are drawbacks to living in a Venusian airship, or so I'm told, but weather-wise it's pretty good.

Sure, there's engineering issues on Mars, but the longest-lasting device anyone's put on the surface of Venus lasted only a couple hours.

Neither are exactly prime vacation spots, but if you want a target for robotic exploration, Mars is so much easier.

GP has a good point, though. Venus is hostile on the surface, but higher up in the atmosphere the conditions are much nicer, and you could hang dirigibles there. Not interesting if you want to study geology, but very interesting for climate science, and I hear that you could extract enough useful stuff from lower parts of the atmosphere that it could actually be a viable colony spot.

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