51–60 of 79 posts
Yeah, let's just sit here on our planet, posting cats on the internet and wait for the next extinction event.
If your concern is the possible extinction of humanity, I don't see how an arduous journey to a barren and inhospitable wasteland is of any use to the cause. If we can manage to survive on Mars, certainly we can manage to survive on the most life-friendly planet known to man.
The author's main argument seems to be that nobody will want to do it. But historically, there have been numerous cases of colonists giving up a safe, easy life to go live somewhere inhospitable and dangerous. When I think about the first settlers that sailed across the Atlantic to colonize America, it seems amazing to me that people were willing to give up so much and endure such risks and hardships, but there have…
Other than economic ventures such as the Spanish stuff (pillaging) in south America and Jamestown (where the wasn't actually any gold, but "hey, tobacco grows pretty well") early colonization of the new world was basically driven by persecution. The inquisition or some local form thereof was present in pretty much all of western Europe at the time. England and other protestant areas were equally tolerant of anyone that didn't pray the way they did. Pooling your money to buy a one way ticket far as hell away and enough food to hopefully last the winter was a pretty good option. Possibly starving because you aren't a good farmer doesn't seem all that bad when a change of regime could mean that everyone in your community was at risk of imprisonment/death. At least you can kind of control whether or not you starve.
The author's main argument seems to be that nobody will want to do it. But historically, there have been numerous cases of colonists giving up a safe, easy life to go live somewhere inhospitable and dangerous. When I think about the first settlers that sailed across the Atlantic to colonize America, it seems amazing to me that people were willing to give up so much and endure such risks and hardships, but there have…
The first martians will be religious fundamentalists/social conservatives who pool their last few dollars to buy transportation and initial supplies for settlement of mars due to economic and social persecution on earth? Other than economic ventures such as the Spanish stuff (pillaging) in south America and Jamestown (where the wasn't actually any gold, but "hey, tobacco grows pretty well") early colonization of the…
The author's main argument seems to be that nobody will want to do it. But historically, there have been numerous cases of colonists giving up a safe, easy life to go live somewhere inhospitable and dangerous. When I think about the first settlers that sailed across the Atlantic to colonize America, it seems amazing to me that people were willing to give up so much and endure such risks and hardships, but there have…
The first martians will be religious fundamentalists/social conservatives who pool their last few dollars to buy transportation and initial supplies for settlement of mars due to economic and social persecution on earth? Other than economic ventures such as the Spanish stuff (pillaging) in south America and Jamestown (where the wasn't actually any gold, but "hey, tobacco grows pretty well") early colonization of the…
Everything I've said is much better summed up in this article. http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-coloni...
Its entertaining and has some truth in it but arguments about "we should be focusing on [blah] instead..." miss out on the benefits of the tech that exploration will bring. Going to Mars will help solve issues here and issues being solved here will help us succeed in living at Mars, eventually.
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imho, to assure a good future for what we already have (and hope to have), to make sure we will even have a launchpad so to speak, we need to preserve our treasure here and set it on a good path beforehand.
Wow, that was a sad read. I general tone was "My god, our planet is on fire and you want to spend time and resources going somewhere else?" Which I understand, after all we're spoon fed that message every day, but if you think critically about it you realize that the species as a whole will have to figure out how to live on Mars or its doomed anyway. I get the emotional angst, many people will remember that point whe…
A better solution are robots, robots are way better at surviving in space than we are, they have survived in Mars for years without any supply. So a more feasible set of milestones could be:
- Engineer self-replicant robots in Earth. We are still far from doing something like that but it seems something that we should be able to achieve at some point. Seeing that we humans are able to extract energy and resources from Earth, and build robots, there's nothing indicating that robots shouldn't be able to follow the same steps once they are advanced enough.
- Modify those robots to be able to self-replicate in Mars. Seeing that current robots are already able to survive in there, they have a much better chance than we have to build a sustainable environment for themselves.
- Once robots have a self-sustainable environment for themselves, put them to burn resources to pave our way there so that once people get there they are able to survive comfortably.
Yes, people made great discoveries by sea, but people had been surviving for long periods of time on the sea, and they were great at it. The same can't be said for space in current times.
The author's main argument seems to be that nobody will want to do it. But historically, there have been numerous cases of colonists giving up a safe, easy life to go live somewhere inhospitable and dangerous. When I think about the first settlers that sailed across the Atlantic to colonize America, it seems amazing to me that people were willing to give up so much and endure such risks and hardships, but there have…
How romantic.
And incorrect.
Folks explored the new world for a very obvious reasons: Money. Land. Resources.
Think spices. Gold. Slave labour.
That's it.
There's none of that on Mars.
These are decades or centuries long efforts which are solely for the purpose of catering to the current, Earth-optimized human form. If you want to head out into the universe, develop a new form. Adapt humanity to the place you want to colonize, rather than the place to humanity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If your concern is the possible extinction of humanity, I don't see how an arduous journey to a barren and inhospitable wasteland is of any use to the cause. If we can manage to survive on Mars, certainly we can manage to survive on the most life-friendly planet known to man.
I can imagine a variety of extinction events that could touch one world and not the other. I'm sure you can too.