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There’s no planet B

aeon.co

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Re: There’s no planet B

#21

Post by bulgur »

api wrote: post #17
Tangurena2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a "motte & bailey" [0] type of argument. The billionaires talk about "saving humanity" or "making a lifeboat" but when they get questioned, they maneuver the discussion to the motte: "there is no planet B" (or the equivalent). Then, when the attention is elsewhere, back to fantasies of Mars. [0] - https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey

This is a straw man. I still don’t hear anyone serious saying humanity will pick up and move to Mars or anywhere else. They say a very small number of humans (relative to the billions of us) may try to go to the Moon or Mars. That is conceivable. In our lifetimes I could picture basically McMurdo station on the Moon and some flights back and forth to Mars. I could picture a mostly autonomous settlement somewhere in 1…

[dead]

Re: There’s no planet B

#23

Post by lapcat »

api wrote: post #17
Tangurena2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a "motte & bailey" [0] type of argument. The billionaires talk about "saving humanity" or "making a lifeboat" but when they get questioned, they maneuver the discussion to the motte: "there is no planet B" (or the equivalent). Then, when the attention is elsewhere, back to fantasies of Mars. [0] - https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey

This is a straw man. I still don’t hear anyone serious saying humanity will pick up and move to Mars or anywhere else. They say a very small number of humans (relative to the billions of us) may try to go to the Moon or Mars. That is conceivable. In our lifetimes I could picture basically McMurdo station on the Moon and some flights back and forth to Mars. I could picture a mostly autonomous settlement somewhere in 1…

> This article is a straw man.

This comment is a straw man. The author gave a link to what the "planning" entailed: https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-p...

"‘Even at a million, you’re really assuming an incredible amount of productivity per person, because you would need to recreate the entire industrial base on Mars,’ he [Musk] said."

Re: There’s no planet B

#24

Post by geraldwhen »

28304283409234 wrote: post #16
phphphphp wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musk wants there to be a colony on Mars in the near future. As a first step, to prove Mars is liveable. As far as I can recall, he believes that we must be a multi-planetary species to survive which means Earth is destined to die. Space is absolutely a “earth is doomed, we must leave” fantasy for Musk and his acolytes.

Oh earth will be just fine. We are screwed. But earth? Just fine.

Earth will eventually die. And all stars. It’s not conceivable to consider expanding the longevity of the human species by more than all of known history, however.

Re: There’s no planet B

#25

Post by phphphphp »

api wrote: post #17
Tangurena2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a "motte & bailey" [0] type of argument. The billionaires talk about "saving humanity" or "making a lifeboat" but when they get questioned, they maneuver the discussion to the motte: "there is no planet B" (or the equivalent). Then, when the attention is elsewhere, back to fantasies of Mars. [0] - https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey

This is a straw man. I still don’t hear anyone serious saying humanity will pick up and move to Mars or anywhere else. They say a very small number of humans (relative to the billions of us) may try to go to the Moon or Mars. That is conceivable. In our lifetimes I could picture basically McMurdo station on the Moon and some flights back and forth to Mars. I could picture a mostly autonomous settlement somewhere in 1…

academia doesn’t set cultural expectations. If the culturally influential people in the space sector are saying humanity is doomed on earth and our future is on Mars and other planets, that’s the message most people will take onboard.

The article is written for people, not academia. Ask laypeople about Mars and you’ll get a representative insight into the Mars fantasy.

Re: There’s no planet B

#26

Post by simiones »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #9
chriswarbo wrote: post #2

> This futuristic dream-like scenario is being sold to us as a real scientific possibility, with billionaires planning to move humanity to Mars in the near future. As far as I'm aware, no billionaire has ever said anything about "moving humanity" to Mars or anywhere else; except to dismiss such claims as nonsense. Nobody is "planning" such a thing; let alone for "the near future". Musk wants there to be a colony on M…

I think one problem is that people hear the word colony and they add the term self-sustaining. on edit: fixed typo.

Well, they do when it's followed by "we shouldn't keep all our eggs in one basket". The only possible (though still extremely flimsy) reason for creating a Mars colony is if we think we can eventually make it self-sustaining. A non-self-sustaining colony on Mars is worse than useless.

Re: There’s no planet B

#27

Post by Mountain_Skies »

Star Trek and similar science fiction entertainment is far more responsible for the public having a belief in "Planet B" than anything else. Guess one could argue that tv and movies are the creation of entities that are like billionaires given their wealth and influence but even pulpy midcentury sci-fi magazines written by nearly impoverished authors were pushing the vision of humanity spreading far beyond Earth. Almost everyone in the developed world grew up in a cultural environment steeped in this sci-fi vision of humanity in space.

Re: There’s no planet B

#28

Post by ben_w »

phphphphp wrote: post #15
chriswarbo wrote: post #2

> This futuristic dream-like scenario is being sold to us as a real scientific possibility, with billionaires planning to move humanity to Mars in the near future. As far as I'm aware, no billionaire has ever said anything about "moving humanity" to Mars or anywhere else; except to dismiss such claims as nonsense. Nobody is "planning" such a thing; let alone for "the near future". Musk wants there to be a colony on M…

> Musk wants there to be a colony on Mars in the near future. As a first step, to prove Mars is liveable. As far as I can recall, he believes that we must be a multi-planetary species to survive which means Earth is destined to die. Space is absolutely a “earth is doomed, we must leave” fantasy for Musk and his acolytes.

> he believes that we must be a multi-planetary species to survive which means Earth is destined to die.

I don't read it as "destined to die", just that there is a non-trivial chance.

Mars… I want to be excited, but the more I think about it (and, bluntly, the more bad decisions Musk makes), the less I like the idea.

That said, Mars is sufficiently difficult in all the right ways that if we can make a self-sustaining colony there, the only way life on Earth will end is some kind of self-replicating swarm, either in the sense of an engineered pandemic (specifically an engineered one: a merely natural one we can probably defeat just like COVID) or a more sci-fi von Neumann swarm.

Mars has half our sunlight, it is colder than Antarctica, dryer than the Sahara, the air is thinner than the top of Everest, the soil is toxic, and we'd have to make any hydrocarbons from the air itself rather than digging them up.

Make a Mars colony work despite all of that, we'd easily survive a repeat of the asteroid-ending impact or nuclear winter here on Earth.

Re: There’s no planet B

#29

Post by api »

jbu wrote: post #4
chriswarbo wrote: post #2

> This futuristic dream-like scenario is being sold to us as a real scientific possibility, with billionaires planning to move humanity to Mars in the near future. As far as I'm aware, no billionaire has ever said anything about "moving humanity" to Mars or anywhere else; except to dismiss such claims as nonsense. Nobody is "planning" such a thing; let alone for "the near future". Musk wants there to be a colony on M…

True. But whenever I discuss the climate crisis/future with non-billionaires (i.e. most people I know) there's a significant population of 'don't worry we'll move to mars if it gets too bad'. I mean, have you been on HN for long?

Really? I must hang in different circles. I've never heard anyone say anything like that who has any clue whatsoever about space flight and what it entails... or is any kind of real engineer with a grip on reality.

Of course maybe I just dismiss clueless comments so rapidly that I don't register them.

I have heard people say we could put a settlement on the Moon or Mars, which is possible.

Re: There’s no planet B

#30

Post by folkrav »

pfdietz wrote: post #12
truculent wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When going boldly requires shared resources and has knock-on effects for everyone, shouldn't we all have a say?

No? I mean, if people who have money want to spend it on something like that, why should we have a say? It's their money, not ours. EDIT: ah, the perennial game of rationalizing taking from others when they aren't doing what you want them to do.

That's assuming everyone is on board with the very fact of living in a system where an individual can amass hundreds of billions of dollars while almost half the planet lives on a handful of dollars a day or less. I'd guess a good chunk of them would have something to say about that but just cannot.
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