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Comment by germinalphrase | Hacker News Reader

“ All things considered I think Mars colonization will probably be far easier than the guys who were engaging in civilization building in the past.”

Those explorers of eras past were going places that not only sustained ample plant and animal resources (in quantities that would surprise modern people) but entire human populations. There is almost nothing on Mars that will sustain us.

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Not entirely. I'd look up things like the 'Starving Time' at Jamestown. [1] Jamestown lost 90% of its population in a single winter, and was left resorting to cannibalism and other such things. In the past you were constantly preparing for winter. And if something went wrong, either with your crops, water, surprise weather, or whatever else - you died. And that's if disease, natives, weather, or a million other issues didn't get you.

And that's after you got there. Crossing the sea meant you were completely subject to the whims of the weather, often sailing into the literal unknown, all the while your rations were slowly dwindling and your crew was starting to rot from the inside out dying rather unpleasant deaths - scurvy wouldn't be entirely resolved until the 20th century! With Mars we won't really have to deal with any of this, because the issues and variables will be mostly known ahead of time, and the supplies per settler will also be dramatically higher meaning a far greater window of time to reach self sustainability.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starving_Time

Jamestown is notable because of the deprivation, not because every settlement was a Jamestown. Certainly, we understand the variables and an identical journey on earth would be dramatically safer (though still not without peril).

Even still, these explorers were able to harvest resources during their journey as well as immediately upon arrival at the destination.

With Mars, there’s nothing there. No fertile soil. No potable water. No known life. It’s an actively hostile environment. Colonizers to Mars will be exceptionally reliant on carrying the totality of their survival resources. Sure - if we spend the next centuries terraforming Mars robotically (or some other scheme), we could change the math on this - but I have a hard time swallowing the argument that crossing to, and colonizing, Mars is anything but orders of difficulty harder than the feats of those explorers. I’m a nerd and want to believe, but it’s fanatical thinking for… a long time.

Consider it this way - I would say that scaling Mt. Everest now a days is relative easier than it was for early adventurers and explorers to scale far lesser mountains, in the past. Of course Everest is far more difficult, yet modern supplies, knowledge, sherpas/guides, and more have enabled even 80+ year olds to scale it. It's still a huge achievement nonetheless, but modern competencies have really enabled us to minimize the dangers. Though of course there's still substantial danger - many people find their final resting place there.

And I think it will be similar on Mars. What is being done is, itself, far more difficult than what was done in the past. Yet in this case we have a far better idea of what we need to do, what we will be facing, and so on. There will be unknown unknowns, and those will get people killed, but I think the frequency of such unknowns will probably be quite a bit lower, which I would claim makes it overall "easier."

In the past even "just" doing a transatlantic crossing was basically accepting that a good chunk of your crew weren't going to make it. In the early Age of Sail, you'd be lucky if you were left with half your crew. The grand explorers like Magellan fared even worse. For his circumnavigation, he left with 5 ships and 270 men. "He" returned with one ship and 18 men, a 93% death rate. "He" in quotes as he was not one of those 18.

I was commenting on a colonization effort, not merely exploration. I’ll happily concede that exploring Mars is perilous but also realistic.

As was I. The analog was more about the overall shifting in risk profile where something that is, in objective terms, more difficult than something else can, over time, become relatively easier than the easier thing was in the past.

Dust on Mars is quite problematic. Perhaps worse than lunar dust. Even exploring Mars and returning --without a dust hazard--is unlikely to succeed in this century.

I think they found the soil actually has quite a bit of water.

This is why people argue for fixing the earth. We already have a planet we're perfectly adapt to. We just need to keep it habitable.

My favorite fact about Mars is the soil fucks with our hormones. Children born on Mars won't be able to survive because the dust will literally destroy their ability to develop. Shit is haaaard.

I don't know what you're talking about re: hormones, but in general I think the best idea is to do both things, though I don't think the risk to humanity comes from damaging Earth, so much as damaging each other. Over the past 2 years I think we came far closer to nuclear apocalypse than most people realize. Certainly far closer than anytime besides the Cold War. And over the 2-3 years before that a global disease spread and seems to have infected basically 100% of humanity. And this disease was most likely created by humanity, and released by accident. We're only fortunate that it was relatively harmless compared to what it could have been.

Now that's happened all over just the past 4 years. What do you think of our chances 20, 50, 100, and more years in the future hold hold? It's pretty easy to see plenty of timelines where we do eventually manage to kill ourselves, and so expanding beyond Earth is critical. Of course that doesn't mean we should neglect Earth in any way, shape or fashion. But with 8 billion people on this planet, we can manage to do more than one thing at a time to quite a high degree of competence.

Just one of the fun ones https://slate.com/technology/2015/04/perchlorate-in-martian-...

Wiki has other details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_soil

In any case, point is: We need to stop being a threat to ourselves, and hoping that another planet, for which we're not evolved to survive on, is a better choice feels like the wrong path. Humans are amazing at surviving... on earth. Because we evolved to survive here.

Having a "plan B" is not a bad choice, because a lot can happen that we cannot prevent. However we can't resettle everyone. Most will die. Plan B is to continue the species, but not necessarily to actually save us.

Interesting article. Thanks. And yeah I strongly agree that there are a lot of questions about how childbirth outside of Earth will work. Another simple issue is would people born on Mars even be able to ever return to Earth (assuming they're otherwise healthy)? How the body will evolve and adapt when all you've known is 1/3rd g is an interesting and open question that we're only going to be able to completely answer by doing.

I also completely agree with everything re: Earth. But one thing I'd add there is that I think humanity actually starting to settle Mars will dramatically shift the mindset of both people and countries. Imagine China was engaging in mass transit to populate and build up New Beijing. It's not like the US would simply stand by. And today I think many people are not so interested in these ideas, because they think it's simply impossible. I'm thinking more like New World parallels rather than Space Race.

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