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Comment by FollowingTheDao | Hacker News Reader

It’s either because they don’t want us to freak out that we’re not gonna be able to escape the climate change hell on earth to go to Mars or that there is some reality behind all these new UFO disclosures.

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We're not going to be able to escape climate change hell on earth by going to mars. You're not transferring 8 billion people to mars this century. The extremely optimistic scenario is that a small group of select rich people and explorers will be able to go to mars and live there self-sufficiently this century, but "we", as in 99.99% of humans, will have to deal with conditions on earth as they are.

You need a huge group of people to even vaguely approach self sufficiency, or multiple generational advances in manufacturing.

For example, if you are importing microchips, you are not self sufficient.

Oh I 100% agree. The very optimistic scenario is that a colony on mars is formed with a few people who depend on regular shipments from earth. The realistic scenario is that a colony on mars is not made this century.

The extremely, wildly, super-optimistic, not gonna happen style scenario is that a few thousand people live there self-sufficiently; and my point is that, however unlikely such a scenario is, even that is nowhere close to enough, because the vast, vast majority of people would still have to deal with climate change. Moving to mars is not, and has never been, "a solution" on foreseeable time horizons.

If I gave the impression that I thought we could go to Mars, I’m sorry, because I don’t think that realistic at all.

That is the impression I got, but upon re-reading your comment + context I see that I misjudged.

..However, what it looks like you said is that you think NASA wants the public to believe that going to mars is a solution to climate change? Am I reading that right? If so, what makes you say that? If this was SpaceX I might've agreed, but a lot of NASA's resources are spent monitoring the climate on earth to help us tackle climate change, and I can't recall any communication from NASA about how going to mars is a near-term solution to climate change.

If I'm misreading you again, I apologize.

Also, climate conditions on Mars are worse than on Earth. I hear it’s so bad you can’t even go outside!

How dare you!

Why would anyone want to go to Mars? Are people now so hysterical that they honestly believe Earth after climate change would be less habitable than Mars, a desert planet with no air?

I don't know. Certain people have this idea that we have mars as a "back-up planet" if things get too bad on earth. Musk has been saying that for example. I think Musk says it to generate hype for his ventures, but I think others believe it because it's comforting to believe that no matter how bad things get here, we have an alternative.

The reality is of course that, at least for the foreseeable future, certainly for the duration of the lives of everyone alive today, there is no back-up planet. And honestly, given how climate change is progressing, that's scary.

I think you are making a strawman of the position. Nobody thinks we will be able to just move to Mars in our lifetime.

Some people think it is important to spread the human race beyond earth. It isn't about climate change.

There is no singular "the position", there are multiple people with different positions. Some just want to see humanity become a multi-planetary species this millennium, which is a perfectly sensible goal. Others imagine going to mars as a solution to climate change.

> Others imagine going to mars as a solution to climate change.

Can you link to some people on this camp?

Unless you ship all the fuel you need to have on Mars while you are there and to get back (expensive), you'd need some technology to capture CO2 from the Martian atmosphere and combine it with hydrogen (from electrolysis) to make methane. But once you have that capture technology working there, it doesn't seem like there would be a problem with running that technology on Earth. If it were possible to capture CO2 directly from the air (DAC), you'd be cutting down the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere that is only there because we burn fossile fuels.

Yes.

https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/features/selling-mars-as-p...

There's lots of simpler explanations. Like maybe one of them had a "gastrointestinal event" during the landing, potentially exposing the others to something infectious.

You think people would freak out if NASA told them „you guys won’t be able to go to mars to escape earth“?

Elon Musk would. It's like his whole deal.

Yes, he talks about it all the time

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/27/elon-musk-mars-c....

This is delusional. Elon's "whole deal" is not that people will leave Earth en masse to escape climate change. That is a delusional interpretation of what he says

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