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James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

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Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#141

Post by jacquesm »

londons_explore wrote: post #87
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JFK sold us on space because "we choose to do these things because they are hard." It was an aspirational exploratory message. The reality is that we are in space because it is required for great power contests. I'm mired in space as a DoD executive, so I promise you space - at least inside the GEO orbits - is extremely practical. Starlink is honestly amazing. Mars though? I've steel-manned that one and I don't see i…

There could be strategic military advantages to having people on Mars. Nuclear mutual assured destruction doesn't work if one side has a base on mars, where it would take 6+ months for any fired nuke to arrive. Having people in spacecraft could be a good place for high-importance leaders - nearly no bunker is nuke-proof, but a spacecraft far away is far harder to hit.

This is a completely surreal comment. "One side"? When we're on Mars you'd hope that there would be two sides: Earth and Mars, from the perspective of someone on Mars their buddies next door are a lot more important than any kind of allegiance to Earth based bits such as nations.

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#142

Post by 34679 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #131
34679 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no future event that would make earth as uninhabitable as Mars is today. Wouldn't that imply if we can make Mars habitable, then we'll be capable of dealing with whatever problems arise here on Earth? Think of it as a nice test run without the immediate fate of humanity's only biosphere at stake.

The costs involved in turning Mars into an experimental environment, call it a "twin", would likely eclipse the sum total of human activity to date (300k years worth) by several orders of magnitude.

That's fine, unless we have something better to do. If it takes 10,000 years or 100,000 years, it doesn't matter, unless the work being done is detracting from more important work. Many people, myself included, would struggle to think of more impactful goals for humanity to accomplish. Feeding, clothing, and housing everyone would be nice, but those things are still far more personal than any project that aims to prolong our very existence as a species.

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#143

Post by AndrewKemendo »

wrsh07 wrote: post #80
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JFK sold us on space because "we choose to do these things because they are hard." It was an aspirational exploratory message. The reality is that we are in space because it is required for great power contests. I'm mired in space as a DoD executive, so I promise you space - at least inside the GEO orbits - is extremely practical. Starlink is honestly amazing. Mars though? I've steel-manned that one and I don't see i…

Is that true of nuclear winter or a major impact event? Wouldn't either of those render the Earth temporarily uninhabitable? Is the argument that it would be easy enough to build on Earth places to survive such events rather than going to Mars?

Yes it includes all those examples. Humans could endeavor to build many vast underground or undersea habitats (mineshaft gap!) that serve as a protective function for, I dunno 1 millionth(?) the cost of sending a terraform crew Mars with probably a million X more capacity to support humanity, plus the ability to use it and iterate on it right now.

Doesn't sound very sexy though right? Kind of like all the data engineering, infrastructure plumbing I do to help our data scientists and ML folks do the sexy inference work.

I'll do a little pre-buttal here about what kind of science we're "losing out on" by not pursuing more space: Building for underground or undersea habitats has significantly less research put into it than space habitation, so you'd see an equivalent boom in research/technology development that has dual use as we did in the 1950s likely.

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#144

Post by keanzu »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #131
34679 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no future event that would make earth as uninhabitable as Mars is today. Wouldn't that imply if we can make Mars habitable, then we'll be capable of dealing with whatever problems arise here on Earth? Think of it as a nice test run without the immediate fate of humanity's only biosphere at stake.

The costs involved in turning Mars into an experimental environment, call it a "twin", would likely eclipse the sum total of human activity to date (300k years worth) by several orders of magnitude.

The sum total of human activity in the last 100 years also eclipses the sum total of all human activity prior (300k years worth). Humanity didn't do a lot for a long time.

But yes, Mars would be a mega project. Isaac Arthur does great stuff on Youtube which gives an idea of the magnitude of the works necessary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmFOBoy2MZ8

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#145

Post by jacquesm »

rgblambda wrote: post #119
est31 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US federal government owns roughly a quarter of the US territory and most of it can't really be utilized for something. Technology to terraform it into arable land would unlock tremendous value.

At the risk of reducing the reflectiveness of said land from the rays of the sun and causing an increase in global temperatures.

You could of course increase it instead.

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#146

Post by jkqwzsoo »

jcranmer wrote: post #43
Dotnaught wrote: post #15

His response to cancer as a possible outcome of radiation exposure following from a nuclear accident is troubling: "I mean, nowadays, I think middle class and fairly wealthy people don't die of cancer."

He almost made the point that the nuclear accident killed far less people than the tsunami that caused it, but instead went down the route that cancer isn't a big deal. The tsunami killed over 15,000 people. The nuclear disaster is estimated to eventually kill 100-ish people due to excess cancer cases from radioactive releases.

> Lovelock: The tsunami in Japan in 2011 killed 20,000 people or thereabouts, but there wasn’t anybody much hurt by the Fukushima nuclear power plant itself, that’s the extraordinary thing.

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#147

Post by Seenso »

keanzu wrote: post #55

Perhaps it might have been possible in some long distant past to underestimate Elon Musk and write him off as a crazy person. That time is gone. If Musk appears to be doing something crazy you've not understood it. > It’s crazy, completely crazy. Elon Musk has read too much science fiction. He got carried away with it. If I were in his position, I would not waste my fortune on colonizing Mars. And all they would lear…

> If Musk appears to be doing something crazy you've not understood it.

That's a pretty ridiculous attitude. You're literally talking about Musk like he's a god or something. He's a regular guy, not some kind of superman: he makes mistakes, has limited understanding, and is often wrong.

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#148

Post by rsync »

nixarn wrote: post #8
shadowgovt wrote: post #2

Honestly, the moon is a much better goal.

How so? Mars has an atmosphere unlike the moon, it has water in some form and quantity and has approximately the same length of the day as Earth, plus it has gravity much closer to Earth than what the moon has.

"plus it has gravity much closer to Earth than what the moon has ..."

But still, I believe, only 1/3 of the gravity that the Earth has.

This is the insurmountable problem with human habitation of Mars - we would need to become, in many ways, a different species in order to withstand the very greatly reduced gravity - and humans, as we know them, would succumb to all manner of disease and physical maladies until that transition (millenia ?) took place.

Any discussion of colonizing Mars that does not discuss gravity, front and center, is just silly.

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#149

Post by hfourm »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #131
34679 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no future event that would make earth as uninhabitable as Mars is today. Wouldn't that imply if we can make Mars habitable, then we'll be capable of dealing with whatever problems arise here on Earth? Think of it as a nice test run without the immediate fate of humanity's only biosphere at stake.

The costs involved in turning Mars into an experimental environment, call it a "twin", would likely eclipse the sum total of human activity to date (300k years worth) by several orders of magnitude.

I guess that makes sense, and by most measures makes it seem "impossible".

But the flip side is, why not? What else do we have to do...

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