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It’s completely ridiculous to think that humans could live on Mars

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Re: It’s completely ridiculous to think that humans could live on Mars

#61

Post by mitchtbaum »

carapat_virulat wrote: post #57
ChuckMcM wrote: post #49

Wow, that was a sad read. I general tone was "My god, our planet is on fire and you want to spend time and resources going somewhere else?" Which I understand, after all we're spoon fed that message every day, but if you think critically about it you realize that the species as a whole will have to figure out how to live on Mars or its doomed anyway. I get the emotional angst, many people will remember that point whe…

The thing is following a feasible set of milestones to actually achieve the goal of reaching Mars and surviving there. The current romantic view of stuffing a few people on a spaceship with vegetables and sending them there doesn't seem to be anywhere in our current reach, seeing that we aren't able to keep people alive in orbit or in the Moon without re-supplying them all the time. A better solution are robots, robo…

When some humans claim that we need to send our species to colonize Mars and beyond to preserve (Life?) mankind, while at the same time that we should be overwhelmed with fear over General AI, I find that a self-contradictory worldview. Self-replicating, self-aware robots fit this work environment best, for sure. (Life's newest friends, possibly.)

And funny enough, I find that this view overlaps with those who want to live out their dreams, like The Martian, to jump into a rocket ship... Yet, human sperm and eggs can survive a long journey in cryostasis, needing far less resources (this is a bit of a guess since I have yet to do any study on this, but intuitively it fits)... So, I highly doubt any humans with names will board any of our first few ships off this place we call Home.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryo_space_colonization

Re: It’s completely ridiculous to think that humans could live on Mars

#62

Post by mannykannot »

michaelmrose wrote: post #46
stefantalpalaru wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We already have people living in space year round without any local resources. You're joking, right? The ISS gets everything from Earth, even its water, and they're so bad at self-sustainability that they are not able to wash their own dirty clothes (I shit you not). Oh, and they throw away their feces and only recently were able to grow some lettuce on board. That's the state of the art right now.

You realize that although LEO is cheaper to resupply it is actually more inhospitable right? There is by definition no resources available save sunlight.

> You realize that although [the thing that makes all the difference]...

Re: It’s completely ridiculous to think that humans could live on Mars

#63

Post by AnimalMuppet »

yongjik wrote: post #38
NickM wrote: post #24

The author's main argument seems to be that nobody will want to do it. But historically, there have been numerous cases of colonists giving up a safe, easy life to go live somewhere inhospitable and dangerous. When I think about the first settlers that sailed across the Atlantic to colonize America, it seems amazing to me that people were willing to give up so much and endure such risks and hardships, but there have…

No, settlers weren't willing to give up so much , those people went on to colonize America precisely because they had so little to lose. They were already enduring poverty, hardship, and (in many cases) discrimination to such a degree that crossing the ocean and starting a new life in an unknown land inhabited with hostile indigenous tribes seemed a good enough deal in comparison. In other words, imagine a developer…

There's a bunch of people right now who are willing to risk death at sea to try to get from Syria to Europe. A fair number of them would probably accept a one-way ticket to Mars, even with the risk it involves.

Re: It’s completely ridiculous to think that humans could live on Mars

#64

Post by BinaryIdiot »

vectorpush wrote: post #19
adrianN wrote: post #11

Yeah, let's just sit here on our planet, posting cats on the internet and wait for the next extinction event.

If your concern is the possible extinction of humanity, I don't see how an arduous journey to a barren and inhospitable wasteland is of any use to the cause. If we can manage to survive on Mars, certainly we can manage to survive on the most life-friendly planet known to man.

> If your concern is the possible extinction of humanity, I don't see how an arduous journey to a barren and inhospitable wasteland is of any use to the cause.

I'm perplexed by this statement as the journey would be the exact opposite of what you purport. Are you saying that, unless we can travel to someplace that is very hospitable to life, that we shouldn't bother? How are we ever going to develop the technology to go to such a theoretical place if we're not working on the technology already and constantly iterating on it?

Let's say we're going to be hit with an asteroid that will kill all / most life on Earth. There is no way we can stop it. Having colonies on other planets and moons within our solar system means all of those people, in their self sustaining habitats, will live through the extinction event. Humans would not go extinct.

> If we can manage to survive on Mars, certainly we can manage to survive on the most life-friendly planet known to man.

Are you saying there is no such thing as an extinct level event for humans simply because we can live on Mars? I'm not sure what the point is that you're trying to convey here.

Re: It’s completely ridiculous to think that humans could live on Mars

#65

Post by jacquesm »

GeorgeOrr wrote: post #4

Think of all the great innovations that have come from people who realized that doing hard stuff is hard so don't try.

Think of all the great innovations that came from people who didn't realize that stuff was hard so they tried anyway.

Re: It’s completely ridiculous to think that humans could live on Mars

#66

Post by TrevorJ »

transfire wrote: post #7

> But a colony on Mars would need to be a nearly perfectly self-contained, resource neutral system that harvests energy from the sun and is rarely or never re-supplied. That is currently beyond the reach of science and human ingenuity. It is no where near the limits of our reach. We already have people living in space year round without any local resources. What we do seem to lack however is any faith in ourselves.

The space station is definitely not anywhere close to being self-sustainable nor does it pretend to be.

Re: It’s completely ridiculous to think that humans could live on Mars

#67

Post by Pinckney »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #64
vectorpush wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your concern is the possible extinction of humanity, I don't see how an arduous journey to a barren and inhospitable wasteland is of any use to the cause. If we can manage to survive on Mars, certainly we can manage to survive on the most life-friendly planet known to man.

> If your concern is the possible extinction of humanity, I don't see how an arduous journey to a barren and inhospitable wasteland is of any use to the cause. I'm perplexed by this statement as the journey would be the exact opposite of what you purport. Are you saying that, unless we can travel to someplace that is very hospitable to life, that we shouldn't bother? How are we ever going to develop the technology to…

The threat from asteroids is that years of perpetual winter shut down our agriculture for years or even decades. But even in the case of a really massive, Chicxulub sized impact, earth will remain more hospitable than mars. The temperatures will be milder, sunlight at the surface will still be stronger, the air will still be breathable.

If we can build a sealed habitat on mars capable of recycling water and growing its own food, we can do the same here on earth. Just give it a dedicated fission reactor to keep the greenhouses running, distribute half a dozen of them around the world so that they can't all die to direct impacts, and fortify them heavily to keep the starving masses out.

Re: It’s completely ridiculous to think that humans could live on Mars

#68

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Pinckney wrote: post #67
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your concern is the possible extinction of humanity, I don't see how an arduous journey to a barren and inhospitable wasteland is of any use to the cause. I'm perplexed by this statement as the journey would be the exact opposite of what you purport. Are you saying that, unless we can travel to someplace that is very hospitable to life, that we shouldn't bother? How are we ever going to develop the technology to…

The threat from asteroids is that years of perpetual winter shut down our agriculture for years or even decades. But even in the case of a really massive, Chicxulub sized impact, earth will remain more hospitable than mars. The temperatures will be milder, sunlight at the surface will still be stronger, the air will still be breathable. If we can build a sealed habitat on mars capable of recycling water and growing i…

If that is the asteroid I think it was, Earth surface temperatures reached ~600F for weeks. Not really hospitable.

Re: It’s completely ridiculous to think that humans could live on Mars

#70

Post by Pinckney »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #68
Pinckney wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The threat from asteroids is that years of perpetual winter shut down our agriculture for years or even decades. But even in the case of a really massive, Chicxulub sized impact, earth will remain more hospitable than mars. The temperatures will be milder, sunlight at the surface will still be stronger, the air will still be breathable. If we can build a sealed habitat on mars capable of recycling water and growing i…

If that is the asteroid I think it was, Earth surface temperatures reached ~600F for weeks. Not really hospitable.

You'll need to cite sources for Chicxulub or any other impact producing temperatures like that globally.

It is thought that Chicxulub may have produced global firestorms, before a period of global cooling. The point still stands: it's not hard to build structures that can survive fire. Building out of concrete, with thick walls, a self-contained air supply, and away from any vegetation (or simply underground) should suffice, and will still be much easier than colonizing Mars.

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