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There’s no planet B

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Re: There’s no planet B

#101

Post by ben_w »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #85
adrianN wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which laws of physics prevent a permanent base on Mars?

Gravity primarily and the lack of carbon on the surface. Also the lack of a magnetic field to maintain atmosphere and shield from radiation.

Gravity can be solved the same way as on a space station (spinning), you just don't put the floors at the same angle because you're adding the constant vector from the mass to the frame of reference vector from being in a centrifuge.

Artificial magnetic fields are easy. Sometimes we do them when we don't want them.

Carbon is 1/3rd of the atmosphere (such as it is) by mass. Conveniently in solid form near the poles during Martian winter.

I'm not sure it has nitrogen in any significant quantities, though…

Re: There’s no planet B

#102

Post by lapcat »

fleventynine wrote: post #93
lapcat wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does loyalty to each other mean exactly? Do Americans have loyalty to each other? Do North Koreans? The (hypothetical) colonists would develop loyalty to their own silly, strictly hierarchical government that was imposed on them. (For some strange reason, many Americans still have loyalty to a 200 year old document. And others have loyalty to 2000 year old documents.) As usual, some people will benefit greatly f…

I'm skeptical of any such top-down hierarchy surviving for generations, especially if it isn't willing to be open to some form of self-governance necessary for political stability. If things eventually do escalate to interplanetary warfare, Mars has the significant advantage of having a much shallower gravity well. It's much cheaper for them to send missiles to Earth than vice versa, so perhaps the MAD threat will be…

> I'm skeptical of any such top-down hierarchy surviving for generations

Have you seen [gestures broadly] the world? People are people regardless of where you put them. There's no reason to believe that Mars will magically become a political paradise, simply because it's a long distance away from here.

> Mars has the significant advantage of having a much shallower gravity well.

But vastly fewer people, vastly smaller manufacturing base, and vastly more difficult living conditions.

Re: There’s no planet B

#103

Post by Maursault »

mabbo wrote: post #32

Let's set aside the part that making a planet where we could live is hard. Just presume we did that, to start. Let's talk Logistics . Presume there are only 1 billion people left on Earth when we decide it's time to go. How do you get them there ? The gravity well holding us here (and holding the air down so we can breath it) is pretty darn strong. Today we're hoping to get cost-to-orbit down to around $100/kg. I wei…

I agree with everything you said and everything in the article, except for the number of people. There are 8B people now, and, if nothing changes, by 2100 there will be 16B people. But I would not be surprised if this thing with the mice getting younger is developed rapidly for people in the next 20 years or less, and 20 years after that it's a staple of comprehensive health care, and by 2100 there's instead 32B people.

My thing is, whomever wants to colonize space and Mars and distant exoplanets around other stars... let them go. Let whomever wants to go, go. Encourage them to go. The rest of us can clean up the Earth and work to create a future society that doesn't use 175% of the available resources every damn year, work to find a balance that preserves diversity and honest to goodness Nature, stop expanding development and deforestation, finds some equitable solution to birth control, prevent stupid people from constantly breeding, support and encourage LGBQ and celibate priests, solve crime, and stop polluting the air, water, land and the food everything eats. Colonizing space and other worlds only helps Earth and everything living or that will live on it, because while there are very smart people, humanity as a whole is a complete idiot, so the best thing we can do is reduce and limit the number of people here without cruelty or genocide. Think of space as a suicide booth, and let people be free. We shouldn't let insurmountable odds deter them. People will lotteries. Throw enough spaghetti at a wall and sooner or layer, it will stick.

Re: There’s no planet B

#104

Post by linuxftw »

Indeed. There's no reason to send another penny's worth of material to Mars ever again. There will never be a sustainable colony there, ever, in the history of mankind, unless we develop some sort of free-energy technology or teleportation system like a science fiction movie.

Re: There’s no planet B

#105

Post by chitowneats »

Maursault wrote: post #103
mabbo wrote: post #32

Let's set aside the part that making a planet where we could live is hard. Just presume we did that, to start. Let's talk Logistics . Presume there are only 1 billion people left on Earth when we decide it's time to go. How do you get them there ? The gravity well holding us here (and holding the air down so we can breath it) is pretty darn strong. Today we're hoping to get cost-to-orbit down to around $100/kg. I wei…

I agree with everything you said and everything in the article, except for the number of people. There are 8B people now, and, if nothing changes, by 2100 there will be 16B people. But I would not be surprised if this thing with the mice getting younger is developed rapidly for people in the next 20 years or less, and 20 years after that it's a staple of comprehensive health care, and by 2100 there's instead 32B peop…

> so the best thing we can do is reduce and limit the number of people here without cruelty or genocide. Think of space as a suicide booth, and let people be free.

Unrealistic and honestly pretty cruel sounding despite your caveat. If space is a death trap, you will never get more than a few small caravans to give it a shot. No way that would put a dent in your 32B, a number you pulled from nowhere, loosely based on one recent study about improving longevity in mice.

Re: There’s no planet B

#106

Post by lgl »

L_226 wrote: post #80
eloff wrote: post #50

No matter how bad we fuck our planet, it’s still paradise compared to what else is out there. Elon Musk wants to go to mars, but Antarctica is much more amenable to life and nobody wants to live there. I understand it’s about having a backup plan for humanity. I think we could do it cheaper on Earth. I also don’t think we need one. It would be nearly impossible to make humans extinct at this point. We’re too adaptabl…

> nobody wants to live there Speak for yourself, I and many people I know would leap at the opportunity. As an Australian I have already considered applying for a rotation with the Australian Antarctic Division, and I will likely do so in the future when my life circumstances allow. With regards to your comment about bolide impact - you do realise that there is a non-zero probability of an impact that will destroy th…

Agreed. Way too many people seem to think that any asteroid impact would be similar to a thermonuclear device and could somehow be "survivable", which would only be true for relatively "small" asteroids.

The reality is that a large enough or fast enough mass hitting not only Earth but any of it's neighboring planets could completely destabilize the solar system on a (literally) planetary scale. So even our fear of asteroids hitting earth is already too modest as we should really worry about them hitting any planet, especially the inner ones.

Re: There’s no planet B

#107

Post by chriswarbo »

bulgur wrote: post #21
api wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

> The world is run by people who seriously think that we’ll have the means soon to terraform Mars (we won’t)

This is the straw-man I was complaining about.

Here's a direct quote from Musk, saying the exact opposite ( https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1329205209915154433 )

"Terraforming will be too slow to be relevant in our lifetime. However, we can establish a human base there in our lifetime."

> or at least put a million people there

That's an incredibly different question (see the sibling comment about Motte and Bailey fallacies).

A million people on Mars seems plausible, if we take "soon" to mean a century or two (Musk seems to have an incredibly optimisitic goal of 2050, but that still seems the right order of magnitude)

Re: There’s no planet B

#108

Post by Maursault »

chitowneats wrote: post #105
Maursault wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with everything you said and everything in the article, except for the number of people. There are 8B people now, and, if nothing changes, by 2100 there will be 16B people. But I would not be surprised if this thing with the mice getting younger is developed rapidly for people in the next 20 years or less, and 20 years after that it's a staple of comprehensive health care, and by 2100 there's instead 32B peop…

> so the best thing we can do is reduce and limit the number of people here without cruelty or genocide. Think of space as a suicide booth, and let people be free. Unrealistic and honestly pretty cruel sounding despite your caveat. If space is a death trap, you will never get more than a few small caravans to give it a shot. No way that would put a dent in your 32B, a number you pulled from nowhere, loosely based on…

140M people are born every year, but only 60M people die every year. We'll need to do something if the birth rate keeps increasing or even stays steady, or even slows down, but the death rate stops.

Re: There’s no planet B

#109

Post by fleventynine »

lapcat wrote: post #102
fleventynine wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical of any such top-down hierarchy surviving for generations, especially if it isn't willing to be open to some form of self-governance necessary for political stability. If things eventually do escalate to interplanetary warfare, Mars has the significant advantage of having a much shallower gravity well. It's much cheaper for them to send missiles to Earth than vice versa, so perhaps the MAD threat will be…

> I'm skeptical of any such top-down hierarchy surviving for generations Have you seen [gestures broadly] the world? People are people regardless of where you put them. There's no reason to believe that Mars will magically become a political paradise, simply because it's a long distance away from here. > Mars has the significant advantage of having a much shallower gravity well. But vastly fewer people, vastly smalle…

> There's no reason to believe that Mars will magically become a political paradise, simply because it's a long distance away from here.

Obviously it won't be a paradise. But the natural environment will select for hard-working individuals with grit, determination, and community spirit.

Re: There’s no planet B

#110

Post by chitowneats »

Maursault wrote: post #108
chitowneats wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so the best thing we can do is reduce and limit the number of people here without cruelty or genocide. Think of space as a suicide booth, and let people be free. Unrealistic and honestly pretty cruel sounding despite your caveat. If space is a death trap, you will never get more than a few small caravans to give it a shot. No way that would put a dent in your 32B, a number you pulled from nowhere, loosely based on…

140M people are born every year, but only 60M people die every year. We'll need to do something if the birth rate keeps increasing or even stays steady, or even slows down, but the death rate stops.

"if the birth rate keeps increasing" is another of your assumptions that most demographers find unrealistic. Rising incomes have solved this problem (perhaps too well) in every single advanced economy on Earth.

Is your assumption that certain developing societies aren't capable of this? Or won't do this? If that's the case, why? Why are we extrapolating current birth rates in places like West Africa 100 years into the future? That didn't happen anywhere else.

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