so, to answer your HUGE essay: "the earth doesn’t need us" - well duh… of course it doesn’t.
What I care about is: myself and family, my community, my country, humanity, life on earth, earth itself, the universe. In that order!!!
Notice where “earth” is… Earth is critical for sustaining the ones ahead of it in the list - which is why I think its so important to consider. Saving earth without life - I leave that to the blindly religious and their imaginary friend.
Everybody likes stating how hard space is as if they discovered some new revelation. Anyone serious about space knows all the difficulties you mentioned by heart. But they also know many potential solutions. And more importantly, they know that most problems are solvable with enough motivation, effort and time.
As for the benefits of colonising Mars: there are many, but you just don’t understand them (try reading about it with an open mind). Blindly preaching the environment is no better than blindly ignoring the environment - they are both equally blind and equally ineffective.
More to the point. The malevolent AIs are more likely to be used first on missions in space, where humans will have fewer options for dealing with them.
Nice assumption. In fact I totally get why some people are excited about the idea of colonizing Mars. My opinion – just my opinion – is that the excitement is misplaced and you are advocating a colossal waste of scarce resources. A big idea is not ipso facto a good idea. You are welcome to have a different opinion, of course, but please don’t assume that your opinion is made entirely of facts and mine is just misguided bafflement.
If we are truly worried about potential extinction-level events, what makes more sense?
Investing billions or even trillions in comet/meteor/asteroid detection and diversion and secure emergency habitats here on Earth. As has been pointed out elsewhere (I’m too busy to pinpoint the post), even if a comet hits the Earth, this planet would still be a fitter habitat than Mars. So why not focus on protection against such events right here on a planet that’s ideally suited to our species?
Investing trillions in establishing a colony on a planet that cannot be feasibly made livable for terrestrial life aside from hermetically sealed habitats, most likely underground. For the foreseeable future, and likely forever, it will be a cold rock with a thin, unbreathable atmosphere, no magnetic field, and low gravity and its ill-understood (but generally not thought to be salutary) effects on human and other terrestrial biology.
And what if an extinction-level event happens on Earth? On Mars, our backup is a tiny handful of species and a tiny fraction of the human race, living in a terrarium on a planet they can never realistically hope to occupy to the fullest. Meanwhile on Earth, you probably have many more surviving humans and other species, barring complete destruction of the biosphere, which has yet to happen in several mass-extinctions caused by impacts. Their lives would of course be hard or hellish, but there would be an end in sight and with proper planning they could live more or less like their Martian counterparts, with the difference being that in due course they could live on the surface again.
You might argue that these two options are not mutually exclusive, and if people want to spend trillions to colonize Mars, just let 'em. Well, OK, obviously I can’t stop dreamers from having and acting on their dreams.
I will of course watch with fascination as Musk and others take their next steps, and I will wish everyone well. I may think it’s a terrible idea to go beyond exploration and into colonization, but I don’t want anyone to suffer for following through on it either.
And I applaud his work in those areas, but all his good ideas don’t immunize him from having bad ideas.
As for grand ambitions being necessary to convince people to go along? I have to disagree. Even that hoax project had people lining up for a one-way trip to Mars. I suspect if Musk said “we want to send 50 people on a journey to Mars, and this will be the only trip we make, ever” that there would be millions of applications to sift through.
Fair enough. It was mainly directed to the comments on this thread about how we should focus on the problems on Earth rather than trying to colonize Mars.
True, but Musk is asking for people to pay $200,000 US each to help fund it. Originally he was going to ask for $500,000 each, but he thinks with advances SpaceX has made that, the ticket price can be reduced to $200,000. Still at that price tag that greatly reduces the number of people who can afford to go. Musk even included a nice little graphic of it in his recent SpaceX presentation:
Once again, I don’t think the problem would be with the first 100. However, if he goes on with his plan and they manage to send up the 4th or 5th group of 100 people, I think it’s going to be hard to convince people without a larger master plan. Especially at that point when we will be able to see the initial fatality rate of travelling to and trying to survive on Mars.
Ah, I misread a key part of your previous post. I thought people would be receiving $200k to go, not paying that much for the privilege. Obviously that narrows the candidate pool massively. The misreading was no doubt my own bias affecting my eye – who in their right mind would pay to do such a hard, hazardous job?
As an aside, I would think the chart could use a third circle: those who are physically and mentally fit to go.
Espresso, I take your opinion with a grain of salt, when you don’t bother to read responses and just repeat your mantra. When I see that, then yes, I make assumptions about your use of facts - I stand behind the validity of those assumptions.
How much did I stress the “extinction level event” in the post you responded to? Did you read it?
I’m a huge Musk fan. I believe in ridiculously similar things to him (and did before I heard of him). There is one mistake I think he is making, and that is stressing the “extinction event” as the main reason to colonise Mars. Oh, I don’t think the reason is wrong, I just don’t think its the main reason, or that can be accepted by most of the public. Its too far away, too theoretical and too depressing. It is also too long to go into its details and hypotheticals. I could answer your “extinction” arguments, but it would be too tedious, and I don’t think its the main reason for colonising Mars - its for improving life on this planet, and that is what I said in my response to you, which you conveniently ignored, in favour of repeating your favourite argument.
I wish Elon Musk all of the best. I’m glad he is interested in giving it a shot. I feel the same way about people with what seem to me to be even less likely near-term ideas, like Ray Kurzweil. Try and fail, try and find a few things out while failing, or maybe try and amazingly succeed. It’s all so much more amazing than buying buildings to put your name up in gold on them while grabbing pussies. Nothing is easier than predicting something audacious will fail. If you like being right, it is a safe bet. Still, people are passionate for the individual things they are passionate for and I wish them the best, even if it is not my personal dream.
