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Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

JFK sold us on space because "we choose to do these things because they are hard." It was an aspirational exploratory message.

The reality is that we are in space because it is required for great power contests. I'm mired in space as a DoD executive, so I promise you space - at least inside the GEO orbits - is extremely practical. Starlink is honestly amazing.

Mars though? I've steel-manned that one and I don't see it as anything more than what JFK did. Tickling the never-ending exploration/expansion desires of humanity.

I say it frequently: Outside of the sun exploding or the moon crashing into earth, there is no future event that would make earth as uninhabitable as Mars is today.

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I agree, earth orbit is great for deploying tech that helps us on the surface. The moon may prove useful if there's something of sufficient value to bring back. Mars is pure 'human endeavour', putting it kindly. Some individuals with large egos and wallets are pursuing it just because they can. Any sense in which Mars could be 'colonised' is indeed fantasy unless we are talking over a hundreds-to-thousands-of-years timescale, and you can be sure that it wouldn't be some haven. For one thing, the military would be the first to occupy, and if that was the military of one country you can be sure that they'd be joined by another fairly soon, and then...

Given we seem to struggle with working out how humans will get on okay on earth in the coming decades, we should not be distracting resources (our own and our planet's) until we have solved some more pressing issues. Given most of the 'wealth' that we have today has been created by exploiting fossil fuels (or exists only within financial systems), we have a huge job ahead in transforming society into something more sustainable.

> there is no future event that would make earth as uninhabitable as Mars is today

As I heard someone say recently: while we think about terra-forming Mars, we are busy Mars-forming Earth.

> the military would be the first to occupy

What's your reasoning here? The purpose of the military is to defend valuables from others. Deploying military to Mars is as likely as deploying military to the Antarctic.

Scientists will be the first and probably last to occupy. Difficult to imagine it will ever expand much beyond research missions. The Antarctic environment is far less harsh than Mars and no-one maintains a permanent base there.

Not because of the lack of trying though: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_activity_in_the_Ant...

Text from that link:

As Antarctica has never been permanently settled by humans, there has historically been little military activity in the Antarctic. Because the Antarctic Treaty, which came into effect on June 23, 1961, bans military activity in Antarctica, military personnel and equipment may only be used for scientific research or any other peaceful purpose (such as delivering supplies) on the continent.

What about under it?

> Deploying military to Mars is as likely as deploying military to the Antarctic.

Nobody is suggesting we colonise the Antarctic, because there's nothing much (of current economic value) there. There are a handful of people there to study it and they need a constant supply of resources to sustain them. If that was the point of going to Mars, then you'd really have to question what can be achieved there that warrants such massive cost, especially if any part of that cost is government funded.

Now, if we contrast that with the Arctic, the first sign of a melting ice cap and there's military posturing over who is going to exploit the natural resources being exposed there.

> The Antarctic environment is far less harsh than Mars and no-one maintains a permanent base there.

That's completely incorrect. While a lot of the workers in the Antarctic program (I wintered over in 2016 as a station Network Engineer) go on to work at NASA, because of environmental similarities to space/Mars/etc, many countries maintain permanent research stations in Antarctica. The personnel switch out every season, but the bases are permanent.

> I don't see it as anything more than what JFK did. Tickling the never-ending exploration/expansion desires of humanity.

I would agree. This is what fuels SpaceX. Aspiration. He's generated excitement and interest in space that rivals what JFK did, it doesn't have to be more. People in my life with no previous interest in the subject now want to hear all about it.

> there is no future event that would make earth as uninhabitable as Mars is today.

Wouldn't that imply if we can make Mars habitable, then we'll be capable of dealing with whatever problems arise here on Earth? Think of it as a nice test run without the immediate fate of humanity's only biosphere at stake.

The costs involved in turning Mars into an experimental environment, call it a "twin", would likely eclipse the sum total of human activity to date (300k years worth) by several orders of magnitude.

That's fine, unless we have something better to do. If it takes 10,000 years or 100,000 years, it doesn't matter, unless the work being done is detracting from more important work. Many people, myself included, would struggle to think of more impactful goals for humanity to accomplish. Feeding, clothing, and housing everyone would be nice, but those things are still far more personal than any project that aims to prolong our very existence as a species.

I argue we should be building a more capable and survivable successor to biological intelligence that can survive beyond traditional biological extinction periods (M of years).

It's a bit of a false dichotomy to suggest we have to choose between the two, but...

If we must choose, we should choose to colonize Mars. Statistically speaking, an asteroid impact is inevitable. Time is the relevant variable. The sooner humanity can be a multi-world species, the sooner we are more robust against that threat. The same will be true of our successors who will necessarily have less time than we to spread from Earth. If we manage to spread to other worlds and Earth is destroyed, we will still be around to develop our successors (and will also have a leg up on spreading to ever more worlds). If we manage to create our successors and the Earth is destroyed before we get to other worlds, it's game over.

You're just re-stating the original argument for colinization (an asteroid/event would make the earth less inhabitable than mars is currently) that I disagree with and originally addressed.

I don't think so. For most asteroid impacts, we wouldn't even need to build subterranean shelters for the species to survive. It isn't enough for the species to survive. Our civilization, particularly our very technological civilization, must survive as well. Without such a civilization, we'll be trapped here until the Earth itself dies. Our long term survival depends on the short term survival of our civilization.

The relative habitability of Earth and Mars may actually have a converse effect on the survival of a technological civilization. On Mars, such a civilization would be necessary for continued individual survival for what may be geological time scales. On a recovering Earth, humans may salvage civilization, devolve into a new and indefinite dark ages, or give up on civilization entirely and the species will still go on.

It's nearly impossible to define 'something better to do.' Solutions to Martian needs could have applicability to problems here on Earth. Feeding, clothing, and housing are definitely problems Martians would have. What lessons might be learned in their relatively small, closed ecosystem that we're completely blind to here with Earth's abundance?

In my personal opinion, if humanity has any purpose or meaning at all, it's to spread Earth life. For all the faux human exceptionalism people like to extol, the one thing we can do that no other life form can do at any scale, is spread Earth life. (Panspermia seems incredibly unlikely to me and probably requires a near-perfect match between initial conditions on the planet and the organism(s) that happen to find themselves there.)

why care about the long-term existence of our species? certainly we should strive to leave a better world for our children, their children, and their children's children, but past a certain point it seems very abstract to me. even 10,000 years is about three times as long as the totality of recorded history. in 100,000 years, our genome may have diverged enough that whatever humans live at that point in the future wouldn't be the same species anyway. why should I, a sentient sack of meat living in the year 2020 care about these things? more to the point: why should I sacrifice improving the lives of any currently living beings for the sake of ones that may live in future millennia?

You can tell that to the Biomaterial Processing Courts when they queue you up for utilization for the betterment of humanity. But for now I don't think anybody asks you to personally care about anything, much less do anything.

Or would you like to ask somebody else to work on things you do care about?

The sum total of human activity in the last 100 years also eclipses the sum total of all human activity prior (300k years worth). Humanity didn't do a lot for a long time.

But yes, Mars would be a mega project. Isaac Arthur does great stuff on Youtube which gives an idea of the magnitude of the works necessary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmFOBoy2MZ8

I guess that makes sense, and by most measures makes it seem "impossible".

But the flip side is, why not? What else do we have to do...

> The costs involved in turning Mars into an experimental environment

I think it would be more realistic to say, if we are able to live on Mars instead of making Mars livable. Being able to live on Mars won't require "the sum total of human activity to date (300k years worth)"

> Wouldn't that imply if we can make Mars habitable

We can't (excluding domes etc.). We won't be able to unless we acquire such powerful planetary engineering technology that we could much more easily build enormous orbital cities complete with functioning biospheres.

It may work to live in enclosed environments on Mars, but the scale of actually terraforming it puts it in the realm of fantasy.

I think he wants to be Emperor Elon the first of Mars. It would be convenient for tax purposes, and there's lots of real estate to sell. Mars at ground level may be an uninhabitable dump, but Mars orbit is very strategic. And of course, a rocket that gets you to Mars gets you a lot of places. Like mineral-rich asteroids. Who would probably trans-ship minerals via Mars orbit.

Am not American, am not old. That entire speech at Rice University gives me goosebumps everytime, it's historic and set in motion events that changed the world forever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ateh7hnEnik

I agree with your views. I think there's far more to gain, at many levels, from going to the moon and getting good at it. NASA's Artemis project is a bold and interesting proposal for our return to the moon (full disclosure, I might soon be neck-deep in a project connected to Artemis).

One thing people who are not exposed to the realities of aerospace don't understand is just how difficult and improbable this stuff can be.

As complex as it is, going to the ISS is child's play when compared to the moon and beyond. For one thing, the earth's magnetic field and atmosphere provide valuable protection in near space. Once you leave that protective blanket, as I like to say, everything out there is trying to kill you and drill holes into you at the speed of light.

I think we can, with effort and investment, achieve regular missions to the moon and slowly build-up our knowledge as well as a solid base of operations. In, perhaps, 25 years or more, we could consider launching into deeper space from the moon.

I just don't see the value of risking so much just to set foot on Mars. People are far more likely to die a horrible death due to our hubris than anything else. The risk would reduce substantially if we could prove we are capable of reliable and safe missions to the moon. There is no way I would want to send people to mars without first demonstrating exceptional capabilities and safety on the moon.

Is that true of nuclear winter or a major impact event?

Wouldn't either of those render the Earth temporarily uninhabitable?

Is the argument that it would be easy enough to build on Earth places to survive such events rather than going to Mars?

A massive, underground biodome would be cheaper and easier.

Can't fall behind on the mineshaft gap.

> Is the argument that it would be easy enough to build on Earth places to survive such events rather than going to Mars?

I'd say the argument is that Mars is currently a (much) less hospitable place for life as we know it than the Earth in any nuclear winter scenario that I know of.

Nuclear winter is probably quite survivable. Its mechanisms are the same as volcanic winters, with the caveat that it requires the assumption that nuclear weapons will result in uncontrollably large fires in cities that are as effective stratospheric soot pumps as volcanoes. And the worst volcanic winter in recorded history was in 1816, and the fact that you probably never learned anything about it in your history class should give you some indication of how close it was to a humanity extinction event.

No, the Earth after nuclear winter or just about any disaster is still more hospitable than Mars. I still would like to live to see Mars colonized.

Yes it includes all those examples. Humans could endeavor to build many vast underground or undersea habitats (mineshaft gap!) that serve as a protective function for, I dunno 1 millionth(?) the cost of sending a terraform crew Mars with probably a million X more capacity to support humanity, plus the ability to use it and iterate on it right now.

Doesn't sound very sexy though right? Kind of like all the data engineering, infrastructure plumbing I do to help our data scientists and ML folks do the sexy inference work.

I'll do a little pre-buttal here about what kind of science we're "losing out on" by not pursuing more space: Building for underground or undersea habitats has significantly less research put into it than space habitation, so you'd see an equivalent boom in research/technology development that has dual use as we did in the 1950s likely.

Mars has a built-in advantage of distance from the hordes of desperate people who would destroy a too-small or half-done habitat if it helps them survive next week (if disaster strikes before you are ready for example). Nobody can blame them, yet it is a valid and expected hazard.

> I'll do a little pre-buttal here about what kind of science we're "losing out on" by not pursuing more space: Building for underground or undersea habitats has significantly less research put into it than space habitation, so you'd see an equivalent boom in research/technology development that has dual use as we did in the 1950s likely.

This is so absurd. You aren't losing anything by pursuing more space. What's up with all the binary stuff in theses discussions? Why every time someone talks about no doing something, the argument are that binary?

You know you can do both right? It's not space or water. We don't have a thresold where we have to choose between one or the other. Research into underground and undersea habitats doesn't happen because we are unable to make them happen, not because we love space.

Our society is interested into space, just like you said, it's "sexy". It's also filled with potential, space mining for example is worth trillions. It's also filled with unknown, there's reasons why stars are so much filled with legends, stories and mythology. That's what make space something that sell, unlike underground or undersea.

So the alternative isn't underground or undersea research, it's no research at all.

You can make undeground or undersea research sexy. Go for it! I'll be the first one to support your cause, more research is always better. Please stop arguing for less research....

The only thing that I can think of to make Mars a better option than Earth is if Earth is struck by some truly gigantic asteroid. But it would have to be big enough to seriously damage a 1,000 trillion metric ton ball (we'll take it as given that the Earth isn't flat) of iron. Merely stripping the atmosphere wouldn't be enough - you need to fundamentally compromise the structural integrity of the planet to make it as unlivable as Mars.

There could be strategic military advantages to having people on Mars.

Nuclear mutual assured destruction doesn't work if one side has a base on mars, where it would take 6+ months for any fired nuke to arrive.

Having people in spacecraft could be a good place for high-importance leaders - nearly no bunker is nuke-proof, but a spacecraft far away is far harder to hit.

Could you please spell out how would nuclear MAD stop working?

The way I see it, the Mars base could be ignored for MAD purposes unless it's self sufficient and large enough to be considered civilizational survival. By the point it can no longer be ignored, the other side will just aim a couple nukes at it - what will the colonists do, move the base in months?

(Also, tangentially, I don't think the whole transit time would apply to something expected to blow up on arrival. It doesn't need to slow down enough to land, just enough to survive plowing trough Mars' thin atmosphere before slamming extra hard on the ground. Heh, for a small enough base the attacker might skip the actual nuclear warhead altogether.)

> what will the colonists do, move the base in months?

Yes. If you knew that your city would be destroyed in 6 months, you'd build a new one elsewhere.

People on earth don't have that privilege due to not having 6 months notice.

The 6 months travel time are with current technology, and in a few decades we might be able to have better propulsion systems. It's like saying that keeping the MAD threat alive is expensive because you have to refuel those bombers that circle over the arctic... eventually you find better tech.

Also, once the nuke rocket is near mars, it takes only a signal at light speed to re-direct it at whatever settlement you want to target.

How long do you think it takes to build a city?

Not sure why you got down voted (feels like some people treat this as reddit), but I think hitting a spacecraft with a missile would probably be easier than reach people in a very deep bunker.

The disadvantage of that would be that high-importance leaders who are in a spacecraft far away won't be high-importance leaders for very long.

This is a completely surreal comment. "One side"? When we're on Mars you'd hope that there would be two sides: Earth and Mars, from the perspective of someone on Mars their buddies next door are a lot more important than any kind of allegiance to Earth based bits such as nations.

I wonder why this argument doesn't work on earth itself already.

Like when some one is sent from one country to another very far country to fight people. You'd wonder why don't use this logic, we are here, why fight for people thousands of miles away.

That's because throughout human existence, things like Identity, and an expectation of something in return eventually from the home country/society always exists.

The fact that Mars is far doesn't mean anything here, what matters relative time and periods of time people are willing to wait.

I feel that JFK could give such a rousing speech that touched our spirits because he already had the Soviet threat with which to touch our pocketbooks. I imagine the closest Musk has is the threat of climate disaster?

JFK had to justify huge public expenditure to the American public. Musk only needs to sell it to the board.

The US federal government owns roughly a quarter of the US territory and most of it can't really be utilized for something. Technology to terraform it into arable land would unlock tremendous value.

At the risk of reducing the reflectiveness of said land from the rays of the sun and causing an increase in global temperatures.

You could of course increase it instead.

Biomatter (plants) also captures carbon. What if you used half of the biomatter output generated this way to sequester CO2?

It's kind of sad that you consider land being left in it's natural state as a waste. We have more then enough land for crops and everything else, we can just let some of it exist.

Not all of the federal lands are national parks. I'm not advocating for their dissolval. Only talking about the parts that are literally barren. You could e.g. put solar farms there that generate H2 or methane and fix the renewable energy problem. If you check the satellite photographs, so many parts of earth are yellow. I want them to be green and teeming with life, just like the other parts.

Nothing is literally barren though. They still have life of some kind there, even the desert does. Nature isn't just the stuff that is green and teeming with life.

Not disparaging your idea, but we should always consider the law of unintended consequences.

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