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Elon Musk: We Must Put a Million People On Mars To Safeguard Humanity
An anonymous reader writes: Elon Musk's ambitions for SpaceX keep getting bigger. First he wanted to make the trip to Mars affordable, then he wanted to establish a city-sized colony, and now he's got his eye on the future of humanity. Musk says we need a million people on Mars to form a "sustainable, genetically diverse civilization" that can survive as humanity's insurance policy. He continued, "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. You would need to mine and refine all of these different materials, in a much more difficult environment than Earth. There would be no trees growing. There would be no oxygen or nitrogen that are just there. No oil." How fast could we do it? Within a century, once the spacecraft reusability problem is solved. "Excluding organic growth, if you could take 100 people at a time, you would need 10,000 trips to get to a million people. But you would also need a lot of cargo to support those people. In fact, your cargo to person ratio is going to be quite high. It would probably be 10 cargo trips for every human trip, so more like 100,000 trips. And we're talking 100,000 trips of a giant spaceship."
Get your ass to mars.
There is no way to "safeguard humanity" (at least in a physical sense). It's called "entropy".
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
on the first bitcoin atm and exchange on mars!
I suppose the number of trips to deliver a million humans to the Red Planet could be reduced if they could be convinced to breed once they arrive there.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Did we abandon terraforming? I know it takes time but it takes away many problems.
The only way such a colony could be sustainable would be if it mined Mars and it's moons for materials to construct most things. There is no way a Mars colony that depends on Earth cargo for raw materials will be sustainable.
I think Musk just jumped the shark.
That's what people said about Tesla and just about every real thinker of the past. It doesn't mean he isn't at least a little crazy. Crazy can be good. Take John Nash for example.
Elon Musk: We Must Put a Million Lawyers On Mars To Safeguard Humanity
There, fixed that for you.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious...service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
Russian Ambassador: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.
f you could take 100 people at a time, you would need 10,000 trips to get to a million people.
No. You'd store their DNA, ship that and "grow" people after it arrives. And after the robots have spent the time necessary building the infrastructure, making it habitable and amassing the minerals, water, gases and power generation needed to sustain the colony.
The only problem would be getting the robots to let go of control, once the humans arrive.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
It's 1491. King Henry VII is on the English throne. At the local pub we hear two gents talking:
"'tis but a land far across ye wandering seas to thine west, thoust doth say? 'tis be a land populated in the years to come forthwith by a million of our finest bravest men? Piddle and tallysworth! 'tis tosh and bother if I do say forth myselfth!"
He's right that we need to get populations of humans off this rock if the species is going to survive. Mars might be a good first step, but we need to think about more distance, Mars is too close. The gamma ray burst that kills off life on earth would just as easily kill everyone on Mars. If the problem was a wandering neutron star it's going to savage everything in its path.
We need to think about sending generational ships into space. Maybe we can't do it right now, but we should be working toward that goal. Perhaps Musk is thinking that generational ships are too big of a step with current technology and that we need to get comfortable spending longer times in space before aiming higher.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Seriously! While it would be a fun place to visit what nutter would ever want to live there permantly? No life, no trees, no grass. You whole life would be like living in an apartment building that you could never leave.
He advances mankind more in a day than you'll accomplish in your whole useless life. What kind of arrogance leads the simple-minded to throw rocks at people actually succeeding at changing the world?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Mars does not have a molten iron core, and hence doesn't have the cool magnetic field that earth does. That magnetic field does a LOT to protect our atmosphere from getting stripped off, not to mention protecting us from radiation.
Screw Mars. Spend all that money on making it nice HERE. We have the means. We have the tech. We could have a star trek utopia right here... Free education, opportunity through small businesses, cheap housing, plentiful energy. We could have all that right here if we just put a smidge of effort into it.
Take all that money and just pay off 5% of the population's houses. Those people, now freed from having to grind on the treadmill for their housing, could start small businesses... circulating money in the economy. It doesn't need to be much. Start a taco truck... Employ a few people... We'd have zero unemployment and a lot more happiness. The economic repercussions would be staggering.
A lot of human suffering is because a few assholes ruin it for the rest of us. How about we fix THAT? Screw mars...
I will stay here on the Green Hills of Earth
1 millon is a very big number. Mankind odds for the future could be vastly improved if we send maybe 1000 (specific) people to Mars. Or to the bottom of the sea, or maybe just sacrifice them in a volcano.
Seriously, for sending big amounts of people and materials elsewhere you need more than rockets, maybe an space elevator, or a cheaper/more efficient way to send big loads to space (there are several alternatives for non-rocket spacelaunch)
Five major extinctions on Earth does certainly work the statistics in his favor.
I'm certain the tardigrade will be fine, though.
And if you pick the right million people to send there, it's a win-win situation! I'm not sure that it would be really ethical to send one million bankster and lawyers to Mars though. At least from the Martians standpoint.
The same kind that causes people like you to make obnoxious little personal attacks.
You know NOTHING about the commenter, and you call them "simple-minded"?
Arrogance right there folks!
Well just F up that planet too.
The concept of treating planets as disposable vessels for humans to be sucked dry and then we move on basically makes us a cancer.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I just realized that by sending up more than a handful of nationally picked personnel, would require some sort of rule of law. Well, who will determine this? Should the Martian follow their "Launching states" laws? Their nationalities laws? What happens when another country, with their own culture and laws, sends out their own 1 million people? Will we need to start dividing Mars up into counties already?
"A 'person' is smart. 'People' are dumb, panicky animals and you know that."
Mars does not have a molten iron core, and hence doesn't have the cool magnetic field that earth does.
Spouting some bullshit during my lunchtime - would it be possible to make the core molten and thus spin up a magnetosphere by creating an artificial moon?
I'm thinking keep firing asteroids into the necessary orbit until you've accrued enough mass.
Obviously not a "done this week" project just a curious thought experiment.
I think Musk just jumped the shark.
Yeah, but he did in with his own rocket built by his own rocket company, and the landing ramp looks to be on Mars.
As I discussed here (~25years ago): http://www.pdfernhout.net/prin...
"As outlined in my statement of purpose, my lifetime goal is to design and construct self-replicating habitats. These habitats can be best envisioned as huge walled gardens inhabited by thousands of people. Each garden would have a library which would contain the information needed to construct a new garden from tools and materials found within the garden's walls. The garden walls and construction methods would be of several different types, allowing such gardens to be built on land, underground, in space, or under the ocean. Such gardens would have the capacity to seal themselves to become environmentally and economically self-sufficient in the event of economic collapse or global warfare and the attendant environmental destruction. "
And: http://www.pdfernhout.net/reco...
And here: http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/d...
But many others have discussed similar things, so just another voice in the choir in that sense. If Musk really reflects on these issues (other than being another Mars fanboy) he will see that there are many possible avenues to decentralization and resiliency, of which Mars is just one. As we gain knowledge and experience in creating such systems, then we can disperse farther and farther to deal with bigger and bigger possible disasters (including the ones you point out about gamma ray burst or wandering neutron stars).
More ideas in that direction: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/...
And by others:
http://www.luf.org/
http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Mai...
http://lifeboat.com/ex/main
http://openluna.org/
Also something I've been involved with, but has since became more broadly "Open Manufacturing" and the maker movement: http://openvirgle.net/
So, generation ships etc. are interesting ideas, and they all fit into a large general picture of possibilities.
Still, for all that, making the Earth work well for most everyone (zero emissions cradle-to-cradle manufacturing, better healthcare and nutrition, a global basic income, better education for all, indoor agriculture, new power sources like dirt cheap solar and hot and cold fusion, and so on) is a good first step towards knowing how to live in space, especially given we are already on what Bucky Fuller called "Spaceship Earth". So, I see no big incompatibility between trying to make the Earth work for everyone and preparing for a future where there are quadrillions of people living in self-replicating space habitats throughout the solar system and ultimately the galaxy and beyond -- perhaps even into other dimensions and realities and simulations? Of course, there are philosophical issues still about all this about meanings in life and so on.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I think Musk just jumped the shark.
No, he's just selling some snake oil. If people are stupid enough to buy it, he will make a lot of money.
Earth is the only place humans can survive. No known natural disaster is going to make any this planet less habitable than any other planet in the solar system. No other planet in this solar system can be made habitable and sustainable to humans without RADICAL alteration of humans themselves. And no known technology is going to take us to other solar systems.
Yes, there may be technological advances that change this in the very distant future. But right now, wasting resources on Mars that would be better spent making the earth more sustainable in the long-term is foolish. You don't piss in the pool in hopes that one day you may be able to find some other pool in some distant land that hasn't been pissed in.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
It has been done before, mate.
A utopia by that name was founded in the South American nation of Paraguay way back in 1893.
No he is just dreaming big. I do question his statement that their would be no oil or natural gas. If mars had life it might be possible that oil and other hydrocarbons did form.
It is unlikely that they are around but impossible. If so we just need a lot of 02 and then burn baby burn! Mars needs CO2.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Just have sex like crazy and reproduce.
I think Musk just jumped the shark.
He said he wants to retire on Mars, takes on the auto industry with an electric car, builds a multi-billion dollar battery factory, builds a spaceship and wins a $2.8(?) billion contract to develop it ... and this is too far? What were you saying 10 years ago?
Yes, in the alternate reality that is Slashdot no claim is too outlandish. If one believes anything having to do with space exploration or extraterrestrial settlement is unrealistic or outlandish one simply lacks the requisite vision to appreciate it.
I'll not be drawn into a dick-waving contest with you, but I'll add that I've rarely been accused of simple-mindedness or being "fucking stupid".
Humans will evolve on Mars into some other specie. I agree in principle that we have to get off this rock if civilization is to survive, but to expect that humans will continue being humans on another planet somewhere is simply naive.
Perhaps we come up with something to make them comfortable with their poor position in life, like a promise of life after death with virgins on top.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
That's what people said about Tesla and just about every real thinker of the past.
Yeah, and that's what they also said about the crazy guy down on the street corner screaming about his perpetual energy machine, or the "visionary" proclaiming that we'd all be driving flying cars by 2000. Just because someone's ideas sound radical and people disagree with him doesn't make him right. Most "crazy ideas" really ARE crazy. And most "nutters" really ARE nutters.
In Musk's case, though, I don't think he's crazy. I just think he's a charismatic con man looking to line his own pockets by selling a pipe dream.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Machines surveying the landscape and building semi-subterranean structures. Have sites near the polar ice caps to tap the water trapped there and wind power and geothermal taps to power the whole process. All of this could happen long before the first humans step foot on the planet.
Despite being raised on a diet of inter-galactic sci-fi, I don't believe we will ever escape our gravity well in any numbers. There are only two things that get humans worked up - short term profit and religion. One won't motive space travel. And if the other does, bog help us.
1 Everybody changes the world. Some good and some bad.
2. Musk is right now building a super expensive electric car for the rich. He is right now Mr. Royce he is not yet Henry Ford.
3. He is build rockets but so are several other companies. He is doing well at it but it is not like he has made spaceflight cost $10 a kilo yet.
Everyone can and should politely question things like this. What kind of almost religious zeal causes you to result to insults at such a simple statement. I happen to think that Musk is doing a lot of good things. Mars may be over ambitious but their is a very wise saying. If you never fail you never tried hard enough. You on the other hand have resorted to worship and adoration for the man. You attacked the none believers with insults and I doubt that you brought any light on the subject. You most certainly did not inform anyone. In other words you have failed to take an opportunity to make the world a better place.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Put a million people on Mars with no oil, and what are they going to do? That's right -- they'll attack Earth to get our oil! No thanks, Elon.
I, for one, will *not* welcome our new Martian overlords.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
No way man, he's just becoming Tesla. He didn't just name his car company after the guy, hes following him down the rabbit hole to full blown mad scientist! Tesla was limited by the technology of the day, imagine what he could have done with super colliders and rocket ships. In 20 years Musk is going to make all of our sci-fi dreams come true!
As the subject says!
Didn't Forrest Gump explain stupid to you?
The parent is absolutely correct. Why is he modded "troll"?
Screw Mars. Spend all that money on making it nice HERE. We have the means. We have the tech. We could have a star trek utopia right here... Free education, opportunity through small businesses, cheap housing, plentiful energy. We could have all that right here if we just put a smidge of effort into it.
Well, we could do that too.
But us fucking up the planet isn't the only scenario that might cause planetary extinction. Do you remember what killed off the dinsaurs?
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
In Musk's case, though, I don't think he's crazy. I just think he's a charismatic con man looking to line his own pockets by selling a pipe dream.
Really? The man was independently wealthy. He could have bought his own island and lived in luxury the rest of his life. Instead he plowed his entire fortune into Tesla and SpaceX and was a couple of weeks away from losing everything. If the 4th SpaceX launch had failed like the previous 3 or if they hadn't figured out the drivetrain problems on the Tesla roadster he would have nothing now.
I'd think it's pretty clear that Musk is motivated by other things than money. You may agree or disagree with his dream, but there's no question the man is sincere.
Forget about sanitizing our spaceships - it proves very little. Spread life around the galaxy! It is our duty.
Basically correct, and we will either achieve strong AI within a century, or never.
Hauling 1M bodies to Mars is not an efficient way to populate the planet. Unless and until we have a reliable and cost effective artificial womb, the limiting factor is the ability to have babies. So we should start with, say, 100 very intelligent and skilled, and physically capable women. Each of them should be inpregnated on Mars with frozen, fertilized ova from a stock representing the genetic diversity of Earth. Did I mention that the ova should all be females? So assuming that each woman can bear 7 children in her lifetime (a reasonable average based on good medical care and historic norms) and that the generation time is 20 years, it would take about 125 years to reach a population of 1 million. During that 125 year period the women would be busy building a modern civilization while also devoting a major portion of their time ot childcare. Constant resupply of food and manufactured products would have to be provided from Earth. Oh, and I guess they could have a few males around... you know... for entertainment.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
And telephone sanitizers.
I think Musk just jumped the shark.
How so? He's been saying this for years now, in one form or another. And as a society you're lucky to have some crazy people like Musk to make up for legions of bean-counter types.
Insurance policy for the human race? If the human race is so destructive of its environment and self and pretty much everything else it comes in contact with, 1/ why is that not simply going to happen again on Mars? 2/ If history is any indicator, does the human race warrant being preserved? An alien civilisation would view us as a cancerous blot on the universe.
On the one hand, I think his number is off, or at least lacking detail. There's significant evidence that around 100k years ago humanity went through a population bottleneck of around 10k humans, so that seems like compelling evidence that a 10k population at least can contain sufficient genetic diversity to allow a species similar to humanity to survive. If you need a million hands to do work, then you could have those 10k people generate offspring, or you could augment their productivity by a factor of 100, or a combination of both, but as for moving people (or genes) from Earth to Mars, you should be able to get away with only moving 10k and still have at least a reasonable chance of being a back-up to our one planet egg basket.
Then there's the idea of needing to send 100k ships to Mars. Unless you're just swimming in delta V, then you should probably launch ships at or near the transfer windows that happen every 26 months. If you're sending a ship every window, then those 100k ships will take over 200 thousand years. A lot can happen in 200,000 years. Like really, a whole lot. If you're sending 1000 ships every launch window, economies of scale work really well for orbital transfers, and you'd be really a lot better off sending a ship 1000 times bigger. It'd still take 200 years, which is still a long time, but not nearly as long as 200,000. And if you only need 10k people, you could send 1000 at a time for the next 20 years, which while still seeming extremely optimistic, at least sounds within some bounds of rationality.
But maybe it's harder to get people interested in reasonable and achievable, but difficult goals than it is to get them excited about the unrealistic monumental ones. Sitting on the couch watching National Geographic, it's a lot more fun to say "I could totally go and climb Mt. Everest myself, I should do that!" than it is to get off the couch and go jogging for 15 minutes.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
That's just not a good disaster recovery plan at all. Everybody knows you don't keep your offsite backups in the same neighborhood.
The number of trips to populate is likely to be somewhat smaller if you send men and women who can reproduce. Those offspring can reproduce (assuming there are both m/f offspring) after 18-20 years. And, of course, people will die of natural and unnatural causes. What will the average lifespan be? Average breeding span?
It would be an interesting equation to figure out as to how many trips it would actually take to make a genetically diverse community that also has other society needs met in order to function.
Still, it will be a massive undertaking to build a colony of that size without significant advances in propulsion technology paring the flight times from months to days or hours.
Why would we need to populate Mars in order to preserve humanity? In case humanity managed to wipe itself out on this planet? If that's the case - humanity has managed to f*** up so catastrophically as to destroy itself on its home planet - then it doesn't deserve to be preserved.
Honestly it is a good thing he is not Henry Ford. Henry Ford was so much an asshole, that the United Auto Workers Union formed in direct response to his being a raging asshole to people and his workers in general.
Never aspire to be Henry Ford, he was a horrible evil man.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And what is the cost, both in terms of resources and pollution, of launching 100,000 times? Even if you kept it in orbit and brought people up to it it's a huge cost.
And I'm betting 100,000 launches is more than have been done in all of history. By a rather large amount, I'd think.
As usual, when I hear futurists telling us about the awesome the future will be ... I find myself thinking "this is impractical, way more than anybody will ever be able to afford, and probably never going to happen".
It sounds like we'd need to pretty much strip the Earth of resources to pull this off, and unless Musk is paying this out of his own damned pocket, I think the entire idea is doomed to fail. And that doesn't change the fact that you're diverting a huge amount of resources for a relatively small percentage of humanity.
This is flying cars, Mr Fusion, and a vast amount of engineering, plus ponies, unicorns, and cats living with dogs ... all in one big overly-optimistic ball of fantasy.
The sheer amount of energy required to do this is so mind boggling as to make the whole idea laughable.
I think the romantic idea of space colonization is pretty cool. But I don't really think it's quite as viable as people like to think it is. At least not with current energy requirements and sources.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
For some reason, when I see the name Elon Musk, I first think of Tesla, not SpaceX. It must be more prevalent in the news lately. What's it like to be the CEO of two of the coolest companies in the world?
This.
The main problem with the statement that he's "trying to sell a pipe dream" is the fact that he's actually building stuff. Actually creating jobs. Creating new things.
It's no longer a "pipe dream" when it's in fact reality.
I love the idea, but I think it's been mentioned on Slashdot before that the best way to preserve humanity is to build a colony underneath the Earth's surface. Quite far underneath to protect against various threats, including medium sized asteroids and super volcanoes etc. We're talking about a self-contained, self-sustained system, to the furthest extent that we can manage.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
So basically you're saying let's have Peace, Freedom, and Love for everybody here on Earth. That's far more wishful thinking than dreaming of a million spaceships setting off for Mars.
What technology (gun, car, airplane, microchip, Internet, etc) has managed to eliminate the old ills of poverty, war, etc? We don't need money to fix those problems, we need a change in atittude as a species. We need to eliminate the old supersititions (religion, racial biases) and newer isms (communism, etc). And then we might just have enough time and resources to fix not just the Earth but to terraform Mars as well.
There's a point where money can't do what you want, so you must use more money to empower the money itself to allow you to do it.
Due to the formidable problem of getting meatbags into orbit safely and cost-effectively, I suspect we'd have better luck uploading our brains into hardware that can handle really high G-forces, and roam the galaxy that way. _Much_ more efficient, don't have to muck about with food or disposal, just ensuring that there's enough solar power and what moving parts you have left aren't seized up.
Okay, okay, if you still want to, you could download back into a meatbag at your final destination.
Musk wants to protect the human race from geological and cosmological extinction events, like dinosaur-killer asteroids. We know that extinction events occur, and that we are currently in the midst of one of the largest such events known (mostly due to human predation and pollution - we're soiling our nest - but there's plenty of other dangers we aren't capable of controlling).
But let's face it; Musk might have the drive and ability to get us to Mars, he certainly does not have the resources or ruthlessness needed to prise the money you need for your project out of the hands of those who are currently sitting on it. The ruling class today loves pollution, and they love economic inequity, because they are driven to have better things than anyone else. That is their sole goal, and they achieve it both by increasing their holdings and decreasing everyone else's. The pure sociopaths are the ruling class and they aren't going to be dislodged without a revolution of some sort, hopefully a bloodless one.
Why don't you pursue your goal, and stop criticizing Musk's lack of devotion to your vision, and I'll help both you, OK?
I think Musk just jumped the shark.
PHEH.
When Dear Leader Futarman jumps the shark, you can be sure there will be a motorcycle, and a shark, involved.
At least I hope he can do better than holing up in a casino for years and allowing his company to be used as a front by the CIA to steal a sunken Soviet submarine.
Actually, come to think about it, THAT's pretty rad.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
That land across ye sea already had a million people on it, long before Europeans "discovered" it. Mars is a bit different.
Actually history is not all that simple. Henry Ford also started paying his employees a living wage long before it was popular. In fact other industrialists hated him for raising wages.
Ford hated unions but actually paid his workers very well for the day. It was in 1935 that the problems with the Unions happened and Ford was getting up in years. It is a lot more complicated than you think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
Of course Auto Workers Union revises their own history and has removed a lot of the influence of radical communists from the official history.
He also "interfered" with his workers lives and offered programs to help with "heavy drinking", gambling, and dead-beat dads. He got a lot of flack for these programs in the day as being too intrusive.
Henry Ford in the end was a great man but also a product of his day. Today he would be seen as racist and anti-semitic. In the early 1900s he was seen are a radical progressive. No man is all good or all bad.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Your argument has a surface level truthiness that I found myself agreeing with until I realize the logic was quite flawed. I'll paraphrase your argument, "he was already rich and then he risked his money to start new companies so he must not be motivated by money". Take a counter assumption, assume he was always greedy, does having money prevent you from wanting more or taking risks to get it, just because you have enough in most peoples standards? I think clearly not. Musk might be motivated by things other than money, certainly he seems to have a fascination with Space, but you can't draw that conclusion based on the fact he was already rich ... are the Koch brothers not motivated by money just because they are already rich or take risks?
Except by ACs who don't want their own posting history examined. :)
Seem my other comment here, but in short, pretty much all the same sorts of technologies we need to live in space would make life better on Earth. These include better recycling, power generation, advanced medicine and nutrition, cradle-to-cradle zero emissions manufacturing, greenhouse agriculture, education-on-demand, a library of open source part designs for 3D printing or other manufacturing, better ways of resolving conflicts in small groups or between groups, and so on. So, we don't have to pick one or the other. Sad thing is, we too often seem to pick neither and instead prop up social systems built around "artificial scarcity" and "learned" stupidity.
In general though, I agree with you that we could make the Earth more like a "Star Trek" society. Here is an essay I wrote about that a decade ago:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/...
"This essay shows how a total of $14000 billion up front and at least another $2085 billion per year can be made available for creative investment in the USA by adopting a post-scarcity worldview. This money can help further fund a virtuous cycle of more creative and more cost saving efforts, as well as better education. It calls for the non-profit sector to help shape a new mythology of wealth and to take the lead in getting the average person as well as decision makers to make the shift in worldview to their own long term benefit. "
I'm nearing the end of reading "Player Piano" which several people on Slashdot have recommended regarding understanding humans and technology -- although I think a basic income rather than a work requirement would have created a different society, and Vonnegut also seems to ignore how much effort can go into raising healthy and happy children or being a good friend, neighbor, or citizen -- focusing instead of "jobs" in a manufacturing sense.
Related on learned stupidity, by John Taylor Gatto: http://www.naturalchild.org/gu...
"Our school crisis is a reflection of this greater social crisis. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent - nobody talks to them anymore and without children and old people mixing in daily life a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present. In fact, the name "community" hardly applies to the way we interact with each other. We live in networks, not communities, and everyone I know is lonely because of that. In some strange way school is a major actor in this tragedy just as it is a major actor in the widening guilt among social classes. Using school as a sorting mechanism we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander through subway trains begging and sleep on the streets.
I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching - that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very hard, the institution is psychopathic - it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to different cell where he must memorize that man and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.
Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted - sometimes with guns - by an estimated eighty per cent of the Massachusetts population, the last
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Never aspire to be Henry Ford, he was a horrible evil man.
Not to Godwin the thread, but I happened to have stumbled upon this yesterday...
" The relationship of Ford and GM to the Nazi regime goes back to the 1920s and 1930s, when the American car companies competed against each other for access to the lucrative German market. Hitler was an admirer of American mass production techniques and an avid reader of the antisemitic tracts penned by Henry Ford. "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," Hitler told a Detroit News reporter two years before becoming the German chancellor in 1933, explaining why he kept a life-size portrait of the American automaker next to his desk.
Although Ford later renounced his antisemitic writings, he remained an admirer of Nazi Germany and sought to keep America out of the coming war. In July 1938, four months after the German annexation of Austria, he accepted the highest medal that Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle. The following month, a senior executive for General Motors, James Mooney, received a similar medal for his "distinguished service to the Reich."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Now, as then, we have lots of overlap between government and corporate power structures.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
There's nothing wrong with Mars the way it is now. We should leave it alone.
It has been correct far more frequently than it has been wrong. You simply don't have a catalog of those occurrences. By the way, every example you gave took more than a "little imagination and time".
He was "independently wealthy" - he sold his PayPal stock and was incredibly rich. He could have just poured it into an investment fund and been set for life.
He literally was weeks away from losing everything. If that Space-X flight had not worked, all his money would literally have gone up in smoke.
I get it - you're super jealous of the guy. That's no reason to chastise others for pointing out what actually happened.
Did Musk write this when he was drunk? Seriously, if you want to do this, it needs to use mostly martian resources rather than sapping earths resources which are needed on earth. Unless a planet has a large supply of water, and at least the ingredients you need to make an oxygen atmosphere, the idea is a no-go. Ideally it would have some land surface (for mining) but also an ample supply of the above mentioned elements. The idea is virtually impossible. If you were concerned about survival such as from an asteroid, what you would do, is create survival groups around earth that would be equipped with underground facilities stocked with an emergency supply of food, not only for humans but also to feed livestock animals, as well as a seed bank. Hidden, secure, and fortified so the group could go underground for years, along with the livestock. The livestock and seeds would be used to rebuild agriculture afterwords. Unlike dinosaurs, we have the capability to survive the worst asteriod strike. though, you want to develop a plan to kill an asteriod before it hits the earth (with a nuke perhaps) as your first line of defense.
There would have to be massive infrastructure, of course, to support a colony that size, and as someone else pointed out, we're not going to up-and-move 1,000,000 people to Mars, even if the infrastructure magically appeared out of thin air.
Honestly, I'm a big fan of the idea of starting with the Moon. Build a colony there. Most of the bugs can be worked out that way, relatively close to Earth, where people can be reasonably rescued if things go horribly wrong. Once we have a million people in permanent settlement on the Moon, then we could realistically think about having a million people living on Mars.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
If we could build a colony on mars, a harsh, deadly environment, why couldnt we just build the colony here if it goes a little worse.
We'll need a gigantic amount of pollution to make earth worse of a habitat then mars, no?
I mean, it doesnt even have a decent atmosphere to protect us from outer space radiation or just space junk flying around...
He was slightly more than just anti-Semitic - he actively helped the Nazis...
Here's how you do it. First you need to create very small self replicating spacecraft that can identify iron rich(and uranium rich) asteroids and icy asteroids. You program them to work in concert and attach themselves to these bodies and adjust the trajectories so they all pummel mars at approximately the same time, coalescing before impact. This is important the body should coalesce before hitting mars to keep as much matter in tact as possible. If you can gather enough material you can inject a molten core that will last a billion years.
You basically do the same thing with the icy bodies, but shower them down. The point here is to add water.
This is a really long term way of doing it but it is possible. All the ingredients are in the solar system.
Check out the book titled Spin for another long term option. But if we're going long term terraforming, the above method is my preference.
My personal belief is that we need to adapt to living in space and not focus so hard on figuring out how to live on mars. If you can thrive in space, then just about any solar system will do.
I think you must do terraforming first, or the tecnhological infrastructure to keep one million people alive would be just prohibitive.
It's entertaining reading down a thread of a split-personality AC arguing both extreme sides of an issue with itself.
Yep but what people do understand is that anti-semitism was not abnormal for the time. It was very common for hotels, country clubs, and so on to be "restricted". Would he have supported the extermination camps? I really doubt it. As I said you need to look at everything he did. A lot of them were good and others are bad. but to throw out the good is just as wrong as ignoring the bad. What would Henry Ford be like if he was born in the 1960s instead of the 1860s? He might have been Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or maybe even better.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It's Mars; a planet with no native atmosphere, climate, and landscape like Earth. That means everything. You may think it's a non-issue, but in fact is. People don't want to be holed up in geodesic dome glass domes and living underground like insects. Livable habitable space would be a commodity. Resources would be scarce. The chance for war/conflict and epidemics would be great (no escaping it). And unlike Earth where you can simply reboot society via going outside and farming a little plot of land, you can't do that on Mars!!! A Martian civilization starts and is maintained on the highest rung of the technological tree. Once you slip down from that, society is doomed!
Life is not for the lazy.
cut down on the hyperbole, please.
It would help to know a little bit of his history though. Both Tesla and SpaceX were at several points in the history of those companies within a week or two of going bankrupt. Both companies had some real struggles. SpaceX in particular was in really bad shape after the failure of the third Falcon 1. If that fourth rocket had not been successful, that company would not exist today. Similarly Tesla was falling apart as a company when the transmission for the Roadster wasn't working (at about the same time SpaceX was having problems). Deep cuts and firing a whole bunch of people at Tesla including the company president were sort of needed.
In other words, it isn't hyperbole, it is simply fact. Elon Musk was just a couple of weeks from going bankrupt. He took risks and lucked out.
I'm betting that you could probably up that number from a million to a hundred million bankers and lawyers by simply putting them into permanent hibernation prior to lift off. It'll also save money on the back end - just crash the ship into the planet, they're dead already anyway.
Awww, fuck it - just put all the dead bodies in a ship and get it out of Earth orbit. Who cares where they end up at that point? :-)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If you thought international politics was fun, wait until we get a whole new planet in the mix.
This complete waste of earthly resources would cause the actual doomsday scenario that it's ostensibly protecting us against.
The kind that doesn't give legitimate world-changers a free pass when they start with the crazy talk.
Let me emphasize the relevant portion of the summary:
How fast could we do it? Within a century, once the spacecraft reusability problem is solved.
The question was not how fast will we do it, he's answering how fast could we do it. We could put people on Mars in four years if we had the political will to do it. We don't, so we won't do it until China either threatens to do it or actually goes through with it first. As for launching a hundred thousand missions, that is impossible as long as we can't reuse spacecraft, which is mostly addressed by the last point (assuming the reusability problem is solved very thoroughly, e.g. only easily-replaceable fuel made of very common elements is not reused, and the used components are very easily refurbished).
Not that a colony of a million in space is a bad idea, but Mars?
Mars is *far* away, has almost no resources, the trip is long and requires a great deal of fuel. Moreover, if there's a problem, there's no nearby fail safe place to exit to.
Near Earth orbit, in contrast, is close by, near resources like water and oxygen and mined metals, requires little fuel and if there's a major problem in your environment, you can drop down to Earth and try again.
The basic logistics favor the Earth's LaGrange points, without the unnecessary addition of a trip to Mars.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
No known natural disaster is going to make any this planet less habitable than any other planet in the solar system.
You forgot to account for the fact that, in case of disaster, this planet will have 7 billion hungry, angry, selfish, armed-to-the-teeth humans trying to break into your survival bunker.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
If Elon Musk told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?
*No one* earns a free pass to have their ideas be exempt from analysis or criticism. I don't give a fuck what kind of car you built.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Didn't Forrest Gump explain stupid to you?
Does it have something to do with not reading the card under the lid of the box of chocolates so that you would know what was inside?
When Musk claimed he was going to start a new and successful American car manufacturing company when nobody else has managed to do so in the past half century or so and American manufacturing was considered a sick and dying animal, it was easy to label him a snake oil salesman. When Musk claimed he was going to start building rocket ships and launch stuff into space and make deliveries to the ISS at a fraction of the cost of anything done by NASA, it was easy to label him a snake oil salesman. But he just went ahead and did those things, successfully, at great personal risk because he's both driven and incredibly capable.
If there's one lesson we should all have learned by now, it's not to bet against Elon Musk. He's a risk taker with dreams greater than just about anyone alive, but I think the worst you can claim about him at this point is that his reach exceeds his grasp. Calling him a snake oil salesman is demonstrably unfair. All the other crazy things he's set about doing are happening before our eyes. Creating a self-sustaining colony on another planet may seem beyond our will our even beyond our capability at this point, but Musk's view that it must be done for the survival of humanity is a view shared by Stephen Hawking and many others. If there's anyone alive today who can make it happen, it's Musk.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
He literally was weeks away from losing everything. If that Space-X flight had not worked, all his money would literally have gone up in smoke.
If this is true (so far undocumented), then he's an idiot. What's far more likely to be true is he reserved a small fortune so that he could live comfortably for the rest of his life.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...
The aged and infirm need not apply.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Your logic is sound, but it doesn't address the question of whether Musk is a "con man" as the GP suggests. The parent poster rebuts the "con man" argument with an appeal to Musk's sincerity, but as you point out, good intentions are not sufficient. (A con man could have very "sincere" motives for taking your money -- to feed his kids, for example.)
For me the deciding factor is the quality of Musk's work. He delivers excellent products at a reasonable price. Even if he did so for "greedy" motives, the fairness of the deal would disqualify him as a "con" man.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
How much energy under ideal conditions would it take to send 100 women + a sperm bank to Mars with enough food, water, equipment, bacteria, plants, animals, etc. needed to start a viable colony? It all comes down to energy. If it requires more energy than we can deliver, then we are stuck on this planet forever. You can't cheat thermodynamics.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
And I'm sure Elon has rarely been accused of "crazy talk" by anyone who isn't fucking stupid.
Get over yourself.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
We need to move people to Mars to save humanity. I'd say investment bankers and stock analysts would be a good start.
Thinking about it... why bother flying all the way to Mars just to get rid of them?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What did the poor Australians do to deserve suffering?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Even so, unless it hits the colony we should be ok.
Everyone's so afraid of a "deep impact" strike. But face it, we're 8 billions. Total annihilation is unlikely. Sure, a few billions thereof would die, but that's not the end of the world.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
He completely ignores any sex that leads to kids born on mars.
In other words... people who 'Get some ass on mars.'
If you're go to is a exaggerated fictional character, maybe you should sit down and consider that you are actually wrong?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Watch "Revenge of the Electric Car". http://www.imdb.com/title/tt14...
It covers a period when both SpaceX and Tesla were on the verge of bankruptcy and Musk put the very last of his savings into making payroll at Tesla. He had no reserve. He was "all in".
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Most existential disasters are...
1) man-made
2) larger than one planet in scope
There are only a few threats that wouldn't take out Mars too. A meteorite and a plague are the two that come to mind.
Others would likely effect both. A real global war would likely spill over. A passing black hole, solar system, etc, would kill both too.
And then the bigger question: who cares? I don't think anyone on Sirius would mind if we all disappeared. Nor most of the millions of species here on this planet.
It will still be a shitload more habitable than Mars. I'd rather be fighting Mad Max mutants for gas than having to fight for my next breath.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Yes, the guy built a good electric car.
That's a little different than colonizing Mars.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Doubtful. That you think the feasibility and necessity of establishing a million-strong Mars colony are so patently obvious that anyone who disagrees is clearly "fucking stupid" speaks volumes with respect to your own arrogance.
It was done in one trip.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Dirt isn't a big problem, nor are the other materials.
The premise has been examined by Andy Weir in his fiction book "The Martian", which shows that you can survive on relatively little. I am making the assumption that he did his chemistry and biology homework whilst writing this :-)
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
That's what he says, at least. Of course, men in those positions have usually made it a habit to twist the truth to their advantage.
Humanity has survived them all, though.
...we need a Million Man Mars?
You're assuming making money at that level is about the goods and services it can buy - and it's almost certainly not. At that level money is starting to be able to buy (a tiny amount of) power. And that's where the real temptation starts. Musk doesn't even try to hide this - his business ventures are all openly about exercising the shred of power his wealth grants him to try to shape the course of human development. The question is only whether that is his actual goal, or simply the banner beneath which he is seeking to accumulate even more power.
And of course there's no reason it can't be both - by all reports power is highly addictive, but as a species we're also facing some really ferocious trials in the next couple centuries - if a powerful man cares at all about the world he's bequeathing his children it behooves him to try to carve out a place where they might live comfortably. On Earth Musk is a small fry in the power game, and most the players are still pushing hard to strip the masses of even more wealth and power, setting the stage for a repeat of the French revolution, which *really* didn't go well for the small-fry power players (and US wealth inequality has already surpassed the levels that presaged that revolution). On Mars Musk would almost certainly be de-facto king, and in a position to offer sanctuary to those powerful players seeking to flee the mess they created (along with their entourage of highly skilled craftsmen of course) . Good for the survival of the species if things turn really sour, and really, really good for Musk and his family.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
There are people who believe mars can be terraformed with our days technology in less than 100 years. ... but also basically only using our days tech.
www.marssociety.org
Or read the red/blue/green Mars triology. Yes the later is "just" SF
People don't want to be holed up in geodesic dome glass domes and living underground like insects.
I know plenty of people that either never have left their home city, or when they did just visited another big city (like Paris or London).
For them it would be no difference if the whole city was under a dome.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Be careful about believing the myth that Ford paid his workers well to help the common man. He did seem to have a lifelong obsession with that, but it tended to be very much of the "if you'll all just live exactly the way I tell you you'll be better off" variety that doesn't necessarily deserve to be lionized. As for paying his workers so much more - he had a major labor problem on his hands at the time; the work was horribly, mind-numbingly dull, even by the standards of factory work at the time, and he had to hire over a hundred men to get just one that wouldn't quit within three months, and by extension that probably meant he was scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of quality, all of which was hurting production efficiency terribly. By doubling the wage he immediately became a *far* more appealing employer, dramatically increasing employee retention and giving him his pick of the available work force.
It also, perhaps not incidentally, gave him considerable leverage in imposing his brand of "righteous living" on his employees.
He also had a significant PR department sculpting his public image through film and other media, rare among business tycoons who typically care primarily about their image among their socioeconomic peers(who Ford supposedly despised as a class), which is something to keep in mind when considering the legends that have survived to the modern day.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Actually we know Mars has natural gas - we can detect methane plumes in the atmosphere, believed to be from the photo-decomposition of surface minerals. The question is only whether it has any *harvestable* reserves, and that probably depends on there having been billions of years of life on the planet.
Perhaps more to the point, even if hydrocarbons are everywhere on Mars, they wont be a viable energy source, because they're only half of the equation. To get power you also need oxygen with which to burn them, and on Mars you have to produce your own oxygen from CO2 and water, and even at 100% efficiency that's going to cost you about as much energy as burning the fuel (again at 100% efficiency) will provide. Add in normal efficiency losses and you're just digging yourself an energy hole. Hydrocarbons may still be useful for concentrated energy storage (rocket fuel, etc), but not as an energy source.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
What makes one a scientist?
And Mars is the wrong habitat for altered humans. If you're going to fix humanity, remove dependence on uncommon conditions. Instead, make us survivable in common conditions:
high radiation
low temperature
vacuum
microgravity
Then we can go live on asteroids or artificial space habitats and not worry about expending a lot of energy just to leave our home rock and find another one. We can live in orbiting space habitats and move them out of the way if a big rock is coming our way. If one space habitat gets smashed anyway, well, tragic, but ideally we'll have millons.
And these re-engineered humans will have a far, far easier time making it to other solar systems, but not to other "life zone" worlds, but rather to artificial worlds in orbit free of the worst chains of gravity.
--PM
There's water in those iceballs known as comets.
H2O + energy is the big stumbling block. Solve that, and everything else can work with enough will and resources.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Diversity is easy enough - bring lots and lots of frozen sperm from as wide a cross-section of humanity as possible. For that matter bring frozen ova as well - no inherent reason that most of a woman's children need to be genetically related to her, though we'd probably need a bit of a cultural shift as well to facilitate that.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Funny thing is his brand of "righteous living" is not all that different from common sense to day.
He was anti-smoking, anti-drunkenness, and pro child support.
What a terrible thing.
"He did seem to have a lifelong obsession with that, but it tended to be very much of the "if you'll all just live exactly the way I tell you you'll be better off" variety that doesn't necessarily deserve to be lionized"
So he was a democrat like Mayor Bloomberg?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Apparently, about 2000 individuals is enough to rebuild the human race. Because DNA information indicates that at one point there were about that many people alive. (Google 'human population bottleneck' and take the top link returned to Wikipedia.)
--PM
Why are we so arrogant to assume we must do everything to save our species survival?
If we do ourselves in, then we do not deserve to exist and should not spread as far out in the galaxy like some kind of plague until some aliens cure the problem. Going to mars is an exercise that might motivate people but it has ZERO merit. Send robots... and figure out a new economy that saves us, nature, and lets us live in peace with the advanced robots that replace nearly every human profession (which will come sooner if you just invested in robotics for Mars instead of wasting effort infecting another planet with humans.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Why aquaponics? If ever there was a poster child for insect farming, a resource-constrained space colony is it: 90% conversion from biomass to meat, and they can thrive on the cellulose-rich biomass that's useless for human consumption. Plus there's essentially no risk of pathogens or parasites migrating between you and your animals, a serious consideration in a nearly-closed micro-ecosystem.
I also question how feasible industrial robots will be within the next few decades. While robotic earthmoving equipment and other force-multipliers would no doubt be incredibly helpful, robots are not know for their versatility in unfamiliar circumstances, and that's practically the motto for colonizing an alien world. If we could wait for another century or so robotics might reach the point of being able to operate at least semi-autonomously, but if this Mars thing is to be insurance against the challenges facing Earth during the next couple centuries, we've got to start now.
As for the colonists, I agree it'd be no place for the casual sorts any time soon, but you'd better damn well have a cadre of mental heavy-lifters on hand to deal with the inevitable problems - engineers, biologists, doctors, etc. to complement your contractors and construction crews.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Umm, probably not a whole lot of use for plant/animal husbandry on Mars - it's going to be centuries at least before you can grow anything on the surface - you have to build up a stable microbial ecosystem before multicellular life can be introduced. So you'll be growing plants that have been bred/engineered on Earth to thrive in the environment in your greenhouses, because you just don't have the time or equipment to try to do that on Mars, at least not until you already have a thriving colony established.
As for plants - I've been touting the advantages of nanocellulose in this contect for a while now: easily worked, stronger than aluminum, gas-impermeable, optionally nearly transparent, and on Mars even it's water solubility would be far less of an issue. And you can extract it from practically any cellulose-rich material using only heat and mechanical processing, so you can return the rest of the waste biomass to your greenhouse for recycling.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Anything Earth-based is going to have to deal with the socio-political fallout of imminent ecosystem collapse: Doesn't do you a damn bit of good to have a viable closed ecosystem unless you can also support a militia sufficient to repel the barbarians at the gates - and if things get bad on Earth the "barbarians" are going to be fully equipped with modern military hardware - your garden doesn't stand a chance. A Mars colony won't have to worry about that - and Mars is by far the most hospitable place in the solar system outside Earth.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Exactly. Building any kind of colony in space will probably be easier and less expensive than building it on Mars. If nothing else, it will be a lot easier to send the initial manufacturing equipment there, since it will be a lot closer to Earth. And once it's built it will have lots of advantages: closer to Earth, no gravity well making it hard to come and go, closer to the sun (hence much greater supply of solar energy), and you get to live in normal Earth gravity (from rotating the colony to create artificial gravity) rather than the 38% Earth gravity you get on Mars. We don't even know if humans *can* be healthy living long term in such low gravity.
Way back in 1975, NASA estimated the total cost of building a space colony large enough to permanently house 10,000 people at $190 billion. And that was relying entirely on 1975 technology. This is totally something we could do, if we really wanted to.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
I'm all for colonization of other worlds in order to hedge our bets for humanity's survival, but given results showing deleterious health effects when one is not subject to Earth gravity for a prolonged period, it would be silly to try to colonize Mars and its feebler-than-Earth gravity until genetic engineering can assure good health for the colonists. Good luck having this wrinkle ironed out in a century--and that's something I'd be willing to long bet on.
There is reason to be greatly pessimistic in regards to space exploration, because the general tendency has become for us to turn towards inner space, not outer--a phenomenon driven by information technology and the continued encroachment of the virtual into the daily lives of most. It's far cheaper (effort, energy, and resources--not merely finance), and the eternal human drive for short term rewards and maximal convenience at minimum cost pretty much guarantees eventually the physical world will be relegated in status to the minimum necessary to survive "for the time being", while most of a mind's time is spent in the virtual. Little attention will be paid by the vast majority to long-term continuation of humanity--far less than even today, when this concern is already so impoverished.
I'll note here that Asimov's greatest novel (albeit one not among his most famous works), The End of Eternity, has direct bearing upon this issue, and is more relevant now than it was at the time it came out back in the 1950s.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
If you build a massive transportation infrastructure capable of hauling people & cargo for numerous several month journeys, you've pretty much adapted humanity to live in the space between worlds. At that point, why limit yourself to just Mars? As much as I'd love to visit, climb the mountains, rappel the canyons, and explore the lava tubes, there's a lot more solar system to see. Colonizing Mars adds one element of redundancy, but numerous self-sufficient space colonies, living off sunlight and the rich (and accessible) resources of asteroids would be far more robust - and interesting.
Worth reading http://www.space.com/21554-mar... on toxic soil on Mars.
And unlike Earth where you can simply reboot society via going outside and farming a little plot of land, you can't do that on Mars!
You can't necessarily do that on Earth, either. Earth as it is right now, sure. But it hasn't always been like it is now... in fact it mostly hasn't been like it is now, and it's guaranteed that it won't always be like it is now. Changes can happen with lightning speed, too. A supervolcano eruption, a meteor strike... or even just climate change. What would happen if the planet suddenly reverted to "Snowball Earth", with 30 feet of surface ice covering the equatorial oceans?
We're eventually going to have to learn to either (a) sustain human life in extreme conditions or (b) engineer the planet's climate, deflect rocks, suck the energy from supervolcanos, etc., or else we'll die. Learning to live on Mars, or in space for that matter, without constant support from Earth is a Good Idea.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Floating cities in the upper atmosphere of Venus would be much more inviting. Venus is a lovely planet, just the ground is a bit too low down. Loads of solar energy, air is a lifting gas, you could live in a bubble of regular air floating in the atmosphere (if the outer atmosphere doesn't melt your bubble due to being a bit sulphuric acidy) The sulphuric acid can be used for things, add copper oxide and you get copper sulphate plus water, it contains oxygen and you have loads of solar energy, so splitting things with electrolysis is viable. There are probably interesting resources on the surface (perhaps freed up nicely by all the acid rain) which robots could go down and extract.
I think it is the second best planet in the solar system.
While I fully agree we could make this place a Star Trek-like utopian society (a la The Economics of Star Trek), the point is that no matter how seaworthy you make a ship, it can still be sunk. The Earth could still suffer an extinction event that we can't prevent. Mars is really our best Plan B. We have to get in more boats to make sure we stay afloat as a species.
Mars is the easiest of the options. The others - the moon (too little gravity, can never be terraformed), a giant space station (extremely large structure required to contain 1 million humans), Venus (cloud cities perhaps), Jovian satellites (radiation, extreme cold) are tougher options.
Are you trying to make Mars the next Australia?
There is a The Surprisingly Strong Case for Colonizing Venus.
That's what the Martians said about Earth!
I'd think it's pretty clear that Musk is motivated by other things than money.
One motivation might be fame. Even if that fame is being the man who caused billions of dollars to be wasted and caused the economic collapse of earth.
Remember this is the man who also proposes the Hyperloop. Just because he has some good ideas does not mean all his ideas are good.
You left out privately building space ships delivering stuff to the International Space Station with more reliability and for a fraction of the cost of anything NASA's done.
So there's that.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
No, Elon Musk was actually at a point where not only these companies were in risk of bankruptcy (noting also that he personally guaranteed much of the debt of these companies too, not to mention having fiduciary responsibility over the debt of these companies as CEO), but that he even was in debt at this time too.
You are simply wrong. He was very much at risk of personal bankruptcy too and definitely losing everything he had.
I applaud the man for his forward thinking but he's living in a dream world if he thinks this is even remotely plausible any time soon.
:)
As far as manned space travel goes, we've barely made it to the moon. Our GLOBAL space program barely qualifies to even call it such. It's rare we can get a vehicle off the ground on the first try ( or three ) without some glitch mucking things up. And we're just trying to get it off the damn ground lol
Consider:
We still use fossil fuels
We kill each other over make believe entities in the sky
We kill each other for resources
Hell, we kill each other for fun and for practice
We haven't conquered war, poverty, hunger or disease and he thinks we have what it takes to colonize another planet ? For what exactly ? So we can spread our problems to Mars as well ? Hah
Maybe, just maybe, it's the destiny of a species as fucked up as ours to go extinct lest we infest the rest of the galaxy with our " way of life ".
We can't even fix the problems we have here on Earth and this guy is talking about going to Mars
Hint: Odds favor an extinction level asteroid / comet strike long before the dominant species on this planet puts their differences aside to allow us to achieve the level of technology needed to colonize another planet.
Nash is a schizophrenic who ended up in a psychiatric hospital and is at least partially responsible for the Cold War paranoia of the 70's. Could've picked a better example there bud.
He also practically invented Game Theory which revolutionized science, sociology, and mathematics. Sometimes it takes someone with extremely abnormal thinking to see what others can't. John Nash recovered from his problems and was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 1994 and a Double Helix medal in 2010. I don't think I could have picked a better example.
That's what he says, at least. Of course, men in those positions have usually made it a habit to twist the truth to their advantage.
True enough, but we have to consider that behavior is a product of our way of life. Our society doesn't adapt well to truly radical ideas or altruism.
There will be no barbarians at the gates in Antarctica, or under the ocean.
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Specialization and dvision of labor are essential factors of technological development. You need a large population (demand) to justify some investments such as education in advanced fields, advanced machinery for high productivity and pursuing economies of scale.
I doubt that a population of a million could support the level of technology required for life on Mars. Working knowledge would be lost (knowledge in a book in little use compared to knowledge in someone's brain).
There have been historical instances of such regressions where groups were cut off from the larger population and regressed technologically as their market shrunk.
As Adam Smith put it, "The division of labor is limited by the extent of the market".
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
Again, still a WORLD of difference between that and colonizing Mars.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
If it's that big of a deal (and it is), it should be taken more seriously than sending a bunch of people to live in what amounts to a giant ant colony underground.
Step 1: Nuke the poles and melt the C02 caps. Thicken the atmosphere and warm the place up (martian warming?)
Step 1.5: Optional; send icy comets to Mars and bombard the place with them. May require advance rocketry with harpooning or netting capability to capture and redirect them.
Step 2: Advancement in bioengineering; seed the planet with bacteria or planet life that will convert some of that C02 to oxygen.
Step 4: Half-life should from previous Step 1 should made for human colonization possible. Also, technology should be further along and advanced anyhow.
Why are we thinking about putting the cart before the horse at this point? There's much prep work to be done beforehand.
Life is not for the lazy.
Forgot Step 3: Profit!
Life is not for the lazy.
I don't think colonizing before terraforming (assuming we even bother) is putting the cart before the horse, unless you assume that the only way humans can live is on an Earth-like planet. Why should we limit ourselves that way? As for needing more advanced technology, the way you push technology forward is by trying to solve specific problems. Basic research is also useful, but directed, focused efforts get farther, faster.
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Granted, but it's twice he's taken on a "there's no way, guy's a joke for even trying!" kind of challenge and succeeded really beyond anyone's wildest expectations.
It may turn out that this endeavor is simply beyond the ability of humanity in its present state of development, but that's a far cry from Musk being a snake oil salesman. Again, you can accuse him of having a reach exceeding his grasp, but he's demonstrably capable of accomplishing far more than anyone imagined when he first made his ambitious claims. There are a lot of steps between where we are today and a human being stepping onto the Martian surface and Musk appears to be taking some very practical approaches to taking each of those steps. He may not make it all the way there, but he obviously isn't insincere in his efforts.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
The British transported prisoners to Australia and look how that worked out. Assuming we ignore Mel Gibson for a bit.
What I want to know is why everyone is so worried about continuing the human race. What is so important about it? Where does this obsession with having the human race be eternal come from?
You could bring any number larger than one breed pair, a few extra women, and a supply of 'male samples' to impregnate them once arriving. Even some already fertilized eggs to be implanted for surrogates. That would be more economic than taking that many people. I guess we could go full on and try artificial wombs, but that is getting a little to sci-fi even for me. Still the need for supplies until the colony could be big enough to be self sustaining is an significant logistics issue.
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."
Errrm... no. We didn't survive any of them. Humanity did not exist at the time.