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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'

#161

Most of this reads as "this is how it worked for me so it must work like this for everyone". I understand he "enjoys controversy" but it's hard to take someone seriously who says things like "Oh, politicians should just ignore the protests and keep their minds straight. It will go away. It always does. They’ll find another big issue after a little while and switch to something else.", as if protests have never effect…

Oh I don't know. I think it's refreshing to hear someone call global warming a serious threat while at the same time dismissing activists as noisy children participating in a fad.

I have so much more respect for these noisy children than the serious adults who have spent millions of dollars lying about this issue and bribing officials to ignore it.

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

#162
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

I argue we should be building a more capable and survivable successor to biological intelligence that can survive beyond traditional biological extinction periods (M of years).

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

#163
post #134
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.

It's kind of sad that you consider land being left in it's natural state as a waste. We have more then enough land for crops and everything else, we can just let some of it exist.

Not all of the federal lands are national parks. I'm not advocating for their dissolval. Only talking about the parts that are literally barren. You could e.g. put solar farms there that generate H2 or methane and fix the renewable energy problem. If you check the satellite photographs, so many parts of earth are yellow. I want them to be green and teeming with life, just like the other parts.

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

#164
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

It's nearly impossible to define 'something better to do.' Solutions to Martian needs could have applicability to problems here on Earth. Feeding, clothing, and housing are definitely problems Martians would have. What lessons might be learned in their relatively small, closed ecosystem that we're completely blind to here with Earth's abundance?

In my personal opinion, if humanity has any purpose or meaning at all, it's to spread Earth life. For all the faux human exceptionalism people like to extol, the one thing we can do that no other life form can do at any scale, is spread Earth life. (Panspermia seems incredibly unlikely to me and probably requires a near-perfect match between initial conditions on the planet and the organism(s) that happen to find themselves there.)

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

#165
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moon also has water and it's a lot closer. Whatever goes wrong on Mars, it might be months or years before they receive help. Building the technology and experience with something a lot closer might be a better option before moving onto bigger things.

Thats the value of Mars. It forces whatever is built there to be sufficient and is largely a one way trip. A moon base will probably function more like a research station on Antarctica. New supplies will be shipped, people will transition back home every 4-12 months. For health reasons you'll want to avoid people spending too much time on Lunar gravity. A similar issue exists on Mars, but causes the opposite result.…

> Thats the value of Mars. It forces whatever is built there to be sufficient and is largely a one way trip.

The immediate parallel that came to my mind were the first European settlers that came to America.

For instance, Jamestown where they started the winter with 500 people and made it to spring with 60 [1]

It may be an "advantage" but it's also very high risk.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starving_Time

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

#166
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…

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…

I think he wants to be Emperor Elon the first of Mars. It would be convenient for tax purposes, and there's lots of real estate to sell. Mars at ground level may be an uninhabitable dump, but Mars orbit is very strategic. And of course, a rocket that gets you to Mars gets you a lot of places. Like mineral-rich asteroids. Who would probably trans-ship minerals via Mars orbit.

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

#167
I wish governments and society in general would make a serious commitment to space travel and colonization, not because of some sci-fi fantasy, but because many of the problems facing Earth are really only problems if we're stuck on this singular planet.

Overpopulation? The universe is nearly infinite and there will always be new frontiers to explore. Environmental destruction from mining and use of carbon as a fuel source? The universe is full of minerals and using fossil fuels in space doesn't really hurt anyone.

I don't know enough about the current status of space travel technology, but it doesn't seem farfetched to say that we could be mass-colonizing the moon and Mars by 2100 if serious percentages of GDP were put toward the project.

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

#168
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His skill is getting shit done. The main contribution is from his employees, not himself. He manages to convince them to work for him with extreme hours for bad pay and without even receiving proper credit (check out how many authors the Neuralink paper listed, then check out the cern paper's authors). How does he convince people to work for him? Marketing. He's a marketing guy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Neuralink/comments/ce8a5i/new_neura...

Thanks for the link. The fact that his employees agree with this instead of going the cern route proves my point.

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

#169
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> 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. Well, you don’t know that humans can’t survive indefinitely at 1/3 gee. I know that because no one…

"Well, you don’t know that humans can’t survive indefinitely at 1/3 gee. I know that because no one knows that, so let’s not speculate on what the threshold gravity would be before we need to “become a different species” would be."

Yes, you are correct.

However, I think you'll agree that all evidence points in the direction that 1/3 earth gravity would be highly detrimental, somewhere along the scale that zero-gee appears to be...

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

#170
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but the cynic in my says... what SHOULD you be spending your billions on? Carefully grabbing more billions and political influence/power so you can have more influence/power? Or, you know, try to make humanity better?

My reply to thoughts like these are always the same: In the US we spend an insulting amount of money on military and defense. The amount of money Spacex is spending is nothing in comparison. If one is truly interested in helping humanity, then one should be advocating moving funds from the military to any branch of science or social welfare. To nitpick the small difference someone like Musk could make by doing someth…

NASA and the DoD (Through Iridium, GPS and other contractors/programs) are SpaceX's largest customers.

So that "insulting amount of money on military and defense" is where SpaceX gets it's money.

AFAIK we're (DoD) the only organization actually paying for starlink right now.

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