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

Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet

newscientist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 153 posts

Re: Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet

#131

Post by consumer451 »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #100
triceratops wrote: post #23

Between the realism about terraforming Mars and the strong likelihood that faster-than-light travel may never happen, is anyone else feeling a bit melancholic? It feels like a possible future has been taken away from us.

I also feel that a good solution of the Fermi Paradox is that interstellar travel is either impossible or too unpractical at scale and that humanity may be trapped in this system forever.

I believe that that Fermi Paradox is not a paradox at all. It's just a poor set of assumptions. Life is likely extremely rare, and intelligent life is likely astronomically rare.

Technological interstellar traveling life does not appear to exist anywhere in our Local Group.

The Local Group is only 10M light-years across. A single technological species that had arisen on any of the trillions of planets, traveling at 10% the speed of light, would only need a 100M years to colonize the entire Local Group!

We are alone, or at least the first. This is a good thing if you look at how we treat "lower" species on our own planet.

Re: Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet

#132

Post by triceratops »

albatross79 wrote: post #130
triceratops wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what people said about sailing across the sea, flying, and a million other things as they toiled in the dirt growing beets. Many of those fantasies did come true. Maybe not for the dreamers themselves, but for someone. Interstellar FTL travel will likely never happen for anyone. There's a difference.

So? Flying is a chore. What do you expect to find with FTL travel anyway? We pretty much know what's out there and it doesn't look all that interesting. It's a lot of rocks. Maybe there are some weird life forms that would be interesting in an academic way. Otherwise it looks very much like we are outliers and that nature's purpose, if it has any, is different and orthogonal to ours. This human drama is just a side s…

You would've been the farmer serf dad telling his son to keep his mind on the ground instead of looking at the birds :-D

That's not an insult. Everyone values different things.

Re: Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet

#133

Post by IAmBroom »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #100
triceratops wrote: post #23

Between the realism about terraforming Mars and the strong likelihood that faster-than-light travel may never happen, is anyone else feeling a bit melancholic? It feels like a possible future has been taken away from us.

I also feel that a good solution of the Fermi Paradox is that interstellar travel is either impossible or too unpractical at scale and that humanity may be trapped in this system forever.

The Fermi Paradox is about the (intelligently-created) radio silence, not the lack of little green tourists. We'd eventually notice an advanced civilization in a period that intersects our time/distance coordinates (i.e., if Alpha Centaurians had radio 4-1/2 years ago, we'd probably hear it).

But otherwise, yeah, we're imprisoned here by 'c'.

Re: Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet

#134

Post by triceratops »

consumer451 wrote: post #131
stephc_int13 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also feel that a good solution of the Fermi Paradox is that interstellar travel is either impossible or too unpractical at scale and that humanity may be trapped in this system forever.

I believe that that Fermi Paradox is not a paradox at all. It's just a poor set of assumptions. Life is likely extremely rare, and intelligent life is likely astronomically rare. Technological interstellar traveling life does not appear to exist anywhere in our Local Group. The Local Group is only 10M light-years across. A single technological species that had arisen on any of the trillions of planets, traveling at 1…

> would only need a 100M years

That's an enormous span of time. There's no reason to believe even a technologically advanced civilization would survive for that long. Let alone maintain the impetus for constant colonization. We gave up going to the moon in less than 10 years.

Re: Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet

#136

Post by jfengel »

wongarsu wrote: post #105
inaros wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you are going to explain why instead of just stating an opinion...since an opinion is not an argument...right?

For starters "Terraforming Mars" is not a prominent feature of Musk's Mars plans. He's repeatedly stated that it's possible to do so, but the things he's consistently said he wants to do are to establish a Mars colony and turn it self-sufficient. Then maybe terraforming as a long-term goal, but the success of his mars colony does not depend on terraforming at all. On his whole "if you can terraforming Mars, you can t…

It's not even about terraforming. Fixing earth is cheaper and easier than establishing a self-sustaining colony on Mars.

Re: Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet

#137

Post by consumer451 »

triceratops wrote: post #134
consumer451 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that that Fermi Paradox is not a paradox at all. It's just a poor set of assumptions. Life is likely extremely rare, and intelligent life is likely astronomically rare. Technological interstellar traveling life does not appear to exist anywhere in our Local Group. The Local Group is only 10M light-years across. A single technological species that had arisen on any of the trillions of planets, traveling at 1…

> would only need a 100M years That's an enormous span of time. There's no reason to believe even a technologically advanced civilization would survive for that long. Let alone maintain the impetus for constant colonization. We gave up going to the moon in less than 10 years.

Yes, but in the local group there are many, many trillions of planets. That’s a lot of chances at bat.

The more commonly used example is our galaxy, which would only take 100,000 years at .1C, and has many hundreds of billions of planets.

Re: Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet

#138

Post by phs318u »

TwoNineA wrote: post #3

I think Neil DeGrasse Tyson said it best (paraphrasing): It takes less money and effort to fix Earth than to terraform Mars.

I completely agree... IF the implied caveat is “for ALL of us”.

If, on the other hand, you are talking about an extremely small subset of the population (maybe the size or of the world’s billionaires, their families and key staff), it might be cheaper to partially “terraform” within very large bio-domes that moderate Martian excesses (UV at the surface, dust storms etc), than to repair the Earth. In the former case you’re limiting scale to what you need without having to deal with the ungrateful peasants that are just after your money.

Re: Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet

#139

Post by UncleMeat »

inaros wrote: post #72
wongarsu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our Mars robots are awesome, but they take years to accomplish what astronauts could do in days. Our latest and greatest model (Perseverance) has traveled 40km (25mi) in 5 years, with the support of a scout helicopter. Which is more than what Curiosity managed in 13 years. But that's approximately what they did in Apollo 17 in five hours. Granted, Apollo 17 didn't make quite as many stops to analyze rocks, but it sho…

Those robots were designed 20 years ago... You can send now a whole swarm of humanoid robots, that would recharge 24x7 out of a KRUSTY Reactor [1], you did not even had LLMs then. [1] - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20205009350/downloads/03...

why would a humanoid robot be preferable to one designed for the specific tasks at hand?

Re: Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet

#140

Post by tim333 »

keepamovin wrote: post #45

Humans must expand through the solar system and beyond. Mars is an okay goal, but the moon is a better bet for living quarters for now. Earth is a jewel, but we have to expand and explore. It's our destiny. Ultimately you need to live underground on the Mars to avoid radiation.

I don't know about must expand but there are always going to be a few wanting to that.
Post reply on HN