51–60 of 217 posts
Things I know about Mars: >No oceans >No plants >No phytoplankton >Massive planetwide dust storms lasting several months >Average surface temperatures at or below freezing >Space suit required Things I know about Earth: >Drinking water falls from the sky >Food grows on trees >Breathable atmosphere >Clothing optional in most areas >I can feel actual sunlight on my face every day
Things I know about Mars: >No oceans >No plants >No phytoplankton >Massive planetwide dust storms lasting several months >Average surface temperatures at or below freezing >Space suit required Things I know about Earth: >Drinking water falls from the sky >Food grows on trees >Breathable atmosphere >Clothing optional in most areas >I can feel actual sunlight on my face every day
The radiation on the way and while on Mars is a pretty big obstacle https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/real-martians-how-to-pr...
Things I know about Mars: >No oceans >No plants >No phytoplankton >Massive planetwide dust storms lasting several months >Average surface temperatures at or below freezing >Space suit required Things I know about Earth: >Drinking water falls from the sky >Food grows on trees >Breathable atmosphere >Clothing optional in most areas >I can feel actual sunlight on my face every day
Things I know about Mars: No established legal or social framework. Things I know about Earth: Probability of finding a place to be left alone with a small group of like minded people. 0 A certain type of person is interested in living a life where they have a large amount of control over the political and social systems they live with. The American frontier was an ideal place for such people to move to. Many took ad…
Not saying that we should colonize all Earth, but IMO it'll happen way before any significant Mars population due to costs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But, why fixate on turning one planet into “habitable” while we do the opposite to the one we are already on? I’d like to see us address those issues of society first before we spread our influence across the literal galaxy.
We have to start somewhere that isn’t earth. Interstellar travel over the next 100-1000 years will be a requirement for the next 5000-10000 years if humans expect to survive that long. Starting development now to understand terraforming and building out the primitives that allow for it in the future is something we owe to generations to come.
Who cares?
If no one is around to care, then who will care?
Suppose we do discover ABC and achieve XYZ, if at some point things end then no one will be around anymore to care. So what was ultimately the point of doing any of it, I mean long term?
Eventually everything will end in the physical universe. What’s the point of escaping the sun’s growth and keeping things going for a billion years versus 10 million years?
Humans will be very different. Will they even be considered human? In a few generations, cyborgs may start to replace humans and computer data can be cheaply replicated and thus the idea of self-preservation and “the self” may change. In that case, what is the goal of a hive mind?
But I would ask the question about even the next generation. Why do you care what happens when you’re not around? Maybe you care out of empathy. But I don’t see how you extend that to 50,000 years in the future.
Things I know about Mars: >No oceans >No plants >No phytoplankton >Massive planetwide dust storms lasting several months >Average surface temperatures at or below freezing >Space suit required Things I know about Earth: >Drinking water falls from the sky >Food grows on trees >Breathable atmosphere >Clothing optional in most areas >I can feel actual sunlight on my face every day
Things I know about Mars: No established legal or social framework. Things I know about Earth: Probability of finding a place to be left alone with a small group of like minded people. 0 A certain type of person is interested in living a life where they have a large amount of control over the political and social systems they live with. The American frontier was an ideal place for such people to move to. Many took ad…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference I think comes down to a few things. - One is that it is a hell of a lot harder to cheat on Mars than it is in the remotes of Earth. Once you establish the outpost, its not like you can just call in a maintenance team and have assistance at your door within a few days. This forces teams to find ways to make it work. This also makes it much harder for changes in leadership to cancel the mission. - The ot…
To echo the previous post, why Mars? Why not the moon? Why not the Lagrange points? Why not the upper atmosphere of Venus? I'm not saying no to Mars, but there's plenty of other frontiers we should be looking into, some of which are better candidates in terms of proximity or more similar gravity.
- Near identical day/night cycles to Earth, and it even has seasons.
- Extremely calm weather. One thing some may not know is that the 'sand storm' used to create the precipitating disaster in 'The Martian' was intentionally faked. Mars minimal atmospheric density means a hurricane would feel like a slight breeze. That a hard sci-fi book had to turn to complete fiction to create a disaster scenario speaks for itself.
- Extensive mineral and elemental resources. Another issue 'The Martian' got wrong was accidental. One of the big problems that was solved in the movie was finding water. This was before Curiosity discovered there's water everywhere. You can get about a liter of water from a single cubic foot of Martian soil. And of course the atmosphere is loaded with CO2. That's not only what plants crave, but you've also got great potential there for something like the Sabatier reaction which combines CO2 and hydrogen to produce methane (which can be used, among other things, as rocket fuel) with water as a byproduct. Of course you can even just split the CO2 into carbon monoxide and oxygen -- this will be one of the critical experiments on MOXIE, part of NASA's Mars 2020 rover. We haven't been able to discern the exact mineral resources, but there's no doubt they're there - and vast.
- It's big. The surface area of Mars is oddly enough near identical to the land area of Earth above sea level.
- Comparable temperatures. The moon ranges from -260 to +280 degrees fahrenheit. By contrast Mars ranges from -195 to 70 degrees. And there are seasons. That -195 on Mars is during winter on the poles, granted that 70 degrees is on the equator during summer. But in general there are many places on Mars where the temperature would regularly be quite reasonable at many times.
There are many other reasons as well. These are mostly just off the cuff, though it's obviously a topic I'm invested and interested in. By contrast when you look at places like the Moon, really it's only benefit is that its close to Earth. But in terms of potential and environment, the Moon is to Mars, as Mars is to Earth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The upper atmosphere of Venus is actually the closest to Earth conditions we have in the solar system. Just float around in an airtight habitat. Gravity is the same as on Earth, pressure is the same, temperature is 25C. You literally only need to be airtight to keep the noxious atmosphere at bay.
But where do you get additional resources?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But surely terraforming a barren wasteland is going to be easier than terraforming a (relative) oasis of life! But in all seriousness, the point of colonizing Mars is not to be a replacement for Earth (although redundancy is quite motivating). It's because colonization and population growth has been our MO for the last 200,000 years.
>> But surely terraforming a barren wasteland is going to be easier than terraforming a (relative) oasis of life! Actually, terraforming a barren wasteland might indeed be easier than preventing the oasis we have from being turned into a barren wasteland.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But, why fixate on turning one planet into “habitable” while we do the opposite to the one we are already on? I’d like to see us address those issues of society first before we spread our influence across the literal galaxy.
There is a school of thought that it is only a matter of time until an asteroid or or supervolcano causes another extinction event and unless humanity develops mass spacefaring and colonization capabilities, it won't matter how well we cared for our planet. I think both efforts are absolutely necessary for the survival of our species.
2) I would argue that putting too much money in vanity space projects is actually more harmful. We would same more lives if we spent that money here to help educate people out of poverty so that they'd survive a calamity.
A Mars settlement is basically rich idiots (read Musk) trying to have a legacy while fear mongering common people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Settling on the Moon first would certainly be the more logical and cost effective starting point. Once all the techs have matured on the Moon then Mars is just a longer trip.
Robert Zubrin argues that Mars is a much better target than the Moon. A summary of the argument is in the second paragraph of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_for_Mars#Risks_confro... The full details here: https://www.amazon.com/Case-Mars-Plan-Settle-Planet/dp/14516...
He writes "It is ultimately much easier to journey to Mars from low Earth orbit than from the moon".
His argument is completely different and unrelated and not the point at all. No-one is arguing about where to start a journey to Mars from. The point is that settling on the Moon is an obvious first step.