Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mars Is No Earth

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 106 posts

Re: Mars Is No Earth

#21

Post by netsec_burn »

iab wrote: post #8
netsec_burn wrote: post #4

Yet? It seems the writer is debating a view that Elon doesn't have. His goal is to begin the process of making Mars habitable, I'm not aware of anyone with the position that Mars is currently as nice as Earth. Terraforming Mars is a long term vision and not one we'll see in our lifetimes. If we don't take steps towards achieving that goal then of course it will always seem lofty. Martian greenhouses may sooner emulat…

I take your point; I think maybe this line of discourse is to prevent the "savior" line of thinking, whereby all manner of ills will be addressed by technological advancement, and the day-to-day drudgery of improving our current situation is lessened. The aspirational nature of it is - of course - grand, but maybe a more inward, introspective, look at our current situation would be better in the long-term.

We'll take important steps to ensure the continuity of our species by making it multi-planetary. The risks are diverse and well known such as climate change, thermonuclear war, geomagnetic reversal, asteroid impacts, etc. Some of these are within our power to change, but others -- such as the asteroid impact -- are more easily mitigated by colonizing two worlds (than overcoming not just the politics but the physics problem here on Earth).

Re: Mars Is No Earth

#22

Post by bwestergard »

fourseventy wrote: post #2

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the de…

This is fantastic rhetoric in the service of a fundamentally anti-intellectual point.

Note first that it proves too much. Richard Nixon referenced this speech as he was resigning the presidency after Watergate. Was Nixon the "man in the arena" who deserved praise for "striving valiantly"? He thought so.

Not also that it assumes what it is trying to prove: that the critic does not have practical experience, that the cause of the criticized is "worthy", and that "daring greatly" is more important than daring correctly. But perhaps most importantly, it assumes that critique is epiphenomenal, that it will not have any effect on the course of events. But we know this isn't true.

In this case, many of those critiquing the project of manned planetary exploration are experts in the field. They are in the arena as much as those being critiqued.

Re: Mars Is No Earth

#23

Post by bcatanzaro »

I am really sad that so much of our elite media institutions are deeply Luddite. They wear their anti-technology, anti-progress biases like badges of honor.

It’s likely a signaling mechanism. The elite doesn’t need technology because they don’t need change. So opposing change signals that things are good for you already.

I don’t love Elon Musk but at least he dreams big and has a change-positive attitude. Because I think things do need to change.

Re: Mars Is No Earth

#24

Post by qayxc »

elsonrodriguez wrote: post #10

> Someone in his position could do so many things on our little blue dot itself to help those in need. The entire article boils down to this one tired old argument. And in the case of Musk, while Teslas don't help people in need directly, the adoption of electric cars and other electric transportation will help the entire world population by reducing air pollution and climate change. So, whynotboth.jpg.

> the adoption of electric cars and other electric transportation will help the entire world population by reducing air pollution and climate change.

This one tired old argument again. While reducing air pollution is a plus (at least in city centres), electric cars are nothing but green washing. If you really are concerned about climate change and pollution, reduce the need for cars and own no car. Abandon Euclidian- and single-use zoning (i.e. reverse urban sprawl and make cities liveable again), improve public transport, make cities walkable, improve bike infrastructure, etc. etc.

In other words, put in the actual work instead of shifting the problem around and creating even more intrusive infrastructure that needs to be built and maintained ("tunnels", "hyperloops", blah).

Re: Mars Is No Earth

#25

Post by bryanlarsen »

> Someone in his position could do so many things on our little blue dot itself to help those in need.

She's talking about the man who accelerated our transition to electric cars by years, who is significantly lowering the cost and acceptability of solar power, is enabling the transition of the grid to renewables through the Tesla Megapacks, is pouring billions into battery R&D which will be critical to a green transition, is sponsoring a $100 million prize into carbon capture and is researching the production of fossil fuel replacements from carbon dioxide.

Who has done more?

Re: Mars Is No Earth

#26

Post by wizzwizz4 »

staticman2 wrote: post #13
nickthemagicman wrote: post #9

If you think on a large scale, humanity has a limited number of years left until the heat death of the sun... so this planet..and us..arent going to be here forever. And that's if we don't nuke each other first. Humans are very minimally removed from violent monkeys evolutionarily. It's not far-fetched to imagine a nuclear war being started simply by an insult to a mentally unstable world leader. It took humans 100,0…

Your genes might compel you to try to leave the planet and keep mating after our sun dies, but our species will inevitably be dead once entropy kicks in at the heat death of the universe. Ultimately we are going to go extinct and there is no point to the colonization scheme other than delusions of grandeur.

By this logic, there's no point to anything.

Re: Mars Is No Earth

#27

Post by c22 »

iab wrote: post #5
Tiktaalik wrote: post #3

The myth of a wonderful terraformed Mars must be pushed as part of capitalist technosaviourism. If we recklessly consume Earth into dust that's actually ok because technology can save us as we simply load into rocket ships for a new life on the offworld colonies. If we accept the notion that actually there's only one Earth, that we already live on a paradise planet and that we must protect what we have then going han…

Extra-planetary colonization is so far-fetched given our impending climate crisis. We will struggle to adapt to the oncoming environmental changes in a planet that we have completely adapted do. The thought that leaving this custom bubble for one that is actively hostile, and thriving there, is a grand delusion. I admire the explorative & scientific nature of space missions, but I am also pro-reality.

I suspect the life-support technologies developed in the pursuit of Mars colonization will be extremely useful tools in the earthbound struggle for survival whether or not such colonies are actually successful.

Re: Mars Is No Earth

#28

Post by dehrmann »

andrewfromx wrote: post #18

just look at https://i.ytimg.com/vi/p5fdbowk7X8/maxresdefault.jpg yucatan peninsula crater photo and try and picture the Dinosaurs and that big boom, cloud of dust and it's like c'mon, no brainer. We need N planets not just 1 planet.

It might be easier to survive on earth engulfed in a dust cloud than Mars.

Re: Mars Is No Earth

#29

Post by Diederich »

Another quote from Carl Sagan:

For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood.

We invest far-off places with a certain romance. The appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. *Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game, none of them lasts forever. Your own life, or your band's, or even your species, might be owed to a restless few, drawn by a craving that they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands, and new worlds.*

Herman Melville in Moby Dick spoke for wanderers in all epoch and meridians. He said, "I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas."

Maybe it's a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds, promising untold opportunities, beckon. Silently, they orbit the sun. Waiting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH3c1QZzRK4

Re: Mars Is No Earth

#30

Post by nickthemagicman »

staticman2 wrote: post #13
nickthemagicman wrote: post #9

If you think on a large scale, humanity has a limited number of years left until the heat death of the sun... so this planet..and us..arent going to be here forever. And that's if we don't nuke each other first. Humans are very minimally removed from violent monkeys evolutionarily. It's not far-fetched to imagine a nuclear war being started simply by an insult to a mentally unstable world leader. It took humans 100,0…

Your genes might compel you to try to leave the planet and keep mating after our sun dies, but our species will inevitably be dead once entropy kicks in at the heat death of the universe. Ultimately we are going to go extinct and there is no point to the colonization scheme other than delusions of grandeur.

Yeah but we have 200 billion years until the universe ends and 5 ish until the heat death of the sun.

Let's focus on one thing at a time!!!

(*All numbers are estimates)

Post reply on HN