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Comment by joshuapants | Hacker News Reader

> Living on another planet doesn't make any sense for us

At some point in the future Earth will be uninhabitable for humans. At that point, it will make plenty of sense.

> sending a single tourist to the moon...

All this focus on tourists seems like a strawman. Yes, there are people who would probably want to go to the Moon or Mars for a space-cation. No, that is not a primary reason for the existence of space programs.

Manned Moon and hypothetical manned Mars missions are not the endgame. They're stepping stones that hopefully lead to our escape from the solar system.

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what about... if we dedicate at least half of the effort/cash to get people on effin' mars into making sure earth will be hospitable for next hundreds of years? I don't get this childish screaming how earth is doomed... if you travel a bit around the world, you'll see a very, very different picture, there is still amazing amount of unspoilt potential.

some random examples, applicable mostly to 3rd world countries - usage of crazy poisons for gold/other metals/minerals mining & processing. another thing is providing alternative fuel sources, so vast pieces of forests are not cut down. limits on fishing, and ban of "dragging nets on the floor and sweeping parts of ocean clean". and I could go on and on, i am sure everybody can come up with some useful stuff.

I am all for space exploration, being in open space is my lifetime dream, but let's stop being emotional for a bit and use our heads. focus on biggest problems, their causes, tackle that. even partial success will have massive impacts. and in parallel, let's explore in current ways, improving our technologies one step after another. Once we can send a manned ship on a budget that won't ruin an average country, let's go for it. Anyway, putting few people on our inhospitable neighbor ASAP won't save humanity from extinction...

Getting a manned mission to Mars using for example Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct plan costs about as much as two aircraft carriers. Compared to our other expenses, the space program is extremely cheap.

I simply cant believe that to be true. a mission to mars must be much more complex than one to moon for example. and much, much more costly- no linear but exponential correlation I would assume.

I checked the numbers. Expected cost of Mars Semi-Direct: 55 billion over 10 years. Cost of an Gerald Ford class aircraft carrier ~12 billion. So my memory was bad, it's a few more aircraft carriers, around five.

I highly doubt that. we have zero experience with space travel so far. you can't estimate the costs here as there is some serious research necessary to build something that justifies the investment with a high enough chance of success.

55billion for the ship alone might be feasible but you have to add the infrastructure and r&d costs too.

and for what? to doom your children to a life indoors, a morale hazard nowhere discussed so far!

edit: typo

we have zero experience with space travel so far.

This is patently false. You should probably stick with commenting about things you are qualified to do so on.

educate me please.

when did we do some serious space travel in the last decade(s)? and i don't think the hop to moon or living in a tiny space station comes anywhere near the experience we need for real missions.

"Real missions"? You shouldn't be so dismissive.

We've solved the "can people live in tiny quarters for long periods of time...in spaaaace?" problem with the ISS and numerous earth-based missions.

We've solved the "can we accurately and remotely steer a craft out to the edge of the solar system?" with numerous probes and robots, such as Voyager, the various Mars rovers, and others.

We've solved the "can we land on another body and then come back with the crew and samples" problem.

That's all the empirical proof that we need other than, you know, doing them all at the same time for like a Mars mission or something.

I think you imagine what Zubrin calls the "Battlestar Galactica" Mars mission, with a huge ship, assembled in orbit, that basically drops a whole base in one go. That kind of mission was also analyzed by NASA and found to be prohibitively expensive.

If you read the wiki page about Mars Direct, you'll see that this is a much more modest proposal that doesn't require that kind of technology. With mostly proven technology and multiple launches over a number of years you can have a semi permanent Mars base with a few people on it.

> At some point in the future Earth will be uninhabitable for humans. At that point, it will make plenty of sense

Are you suggesting humans will damage the planet that much?

I find it difficult to imagine we can damage the Earth to such a degree that is is easier to try and settle Mars than undo the damage on Earth.

I want manned outposts on Mars as the next person. I like to think that the challenge of doing it is enough justification to undertake such an endeavour.

Well, if "some point in the future" is taken liberally enough, then at "some point in the future" the Sun will be a red giant whose radius is greater than Earth's orbital radius. Earth is getting destroyed in about 5-6 billion years no matter what we do.

Of course, if that's what you're planning for, the much more sensible plan is to wait for about a billion years, and see if either A) Technology has made this cheaper or B) We've already died for some other reason.

> Are you suggesting humans will damage the planet that much?

Yes. Now that the nuclear genie is out of the bottle, I would imagine that total human annihilation will happen sooner rather than later. The only way to guarantee survival of the species is to take to the stars and spread out.

Unless humans really squander their inheritance of the Earth and its biosphere, the extinction of anatomically modern humans will occur long, long before Earth becomes uninhabitable.

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