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Mars Colonies and Class Warfare (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: An argument about class warfare has broken out over the notion of a commercial Mars colony. It started when Elon Musk, who is said to be planning to retire on the Red Planet, mused that World War III could ruin his plans to settle Mars by destroying the Earth or at least damaging civilization sufficiently that space exploration has to be put off indefinitely, Newsweek, taking up the theme of another sort of planetary disaster, accused Musk and other space-minded billionaires of plotting to abandon the planet to the ravages of global warming while they go to Mars to live the good life.
Living on Mars would suck, personally I'd rather be dead than Red.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Robert Heinlein would be proud.
I thought the Martians were coming here because they messed-up their planet?!
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
If you're rich enough to go to Mars, you're rich enough to have a bloody brilliant life on earth, whether it's ravaged or not!
Newsweek... accused Musk and other space-minded billionaires of plotting to abandon the planet to the ravages of global warming while they go to Mars to live the good life.
You can jack up global warming until every single molecule of polar ice melts, and on top of that you can detonate every single nuclear warhead in existence, and Earth will still be an infinitely more habitable place than Mars. So the accusation of abandoning Earth to become a hellhole while billionaires live it up on Mars is stupid beyond belief.
Mind you I'm totally in favor of Elon or somebody sending people to Mars, but that would be as an exploration and human achievement rather than some bullshit class warfare thing.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Some people are locked into seeing everything as a function of class, leaving out about 95% of human existence.
And... Newsweek is still around?
accused Musk and other space-minded billionaires of plotting to abandon the planet to the ravages of global warming while they go to Mars to live the good life.
Seems more likely to me that Musk is going to Mars to get as far as possible from the idiot who wrote this piece and the likes of him.
This may be some kind of bizarre nerdy entertainment, but it will never happen. Ever.
A little over a century ago there was a person saying that very thing about heavier than air flight.
Unlike so many others, nerds know how to make their dreams come true.
Gravity is 0.38 g. Radiation and lack of oxygen are handled by living underground in sealed buildings, food grown in sealed surface greenhouses.
Expensive. Difficult. Not fun. Possible.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Really? And how is the human body going to survive on 38% of Earths gravity??? Idiotic. How are you going to build those "sealed buildings" and "greenhouses"? From material from the Home Depots on Mars?? Science fiction is fun to read, but it is FICTION. We cannot live on Mars. We have evoloved to live on Earth.
The human body can survive in 0% of Earths Gravity (at least for 14 months), so it's not like the body won't adapt to lower gravity. There may be some long term side effects that shorten (or lengthen) lifespan, but hey, living on Mars is risky enough that a shorter lifespan is practically guaranteed.
However long-term life on Mars may preclude ever returning to Earth's gravity, though it's possible that some rehabilitation and slow re-acclimation on the long trip home may make it possible to return.
I think it's technically possible to send people to Mars over the next decade or two, but probably not economically feasible for a billionaire or two, the Apollo program reportedly cost $170B in today's dollars, which is "only" around 30% of one years of the USA's military spending. So redirecting 20% of the military budget toward the project for 10 years should be enough money to pay for it.
Though right now, there's not much reason to do so except for the novelty factor - a life-extinguishing global disaster is pretty unlikely in the next century, and we have more pressing problems to solve on earth. But eventually it probably makes sense to colonize off-planet, just for redundancy.
A functioning Stellarator or any other working fusion system would cure most of the radiation problem (make your own magnetic field).
I've been wondering about the practicality of laying a planet-circling coil, superconducting would be nice too, for the purposes of covering the whole planet with a sufficient field. Would be easier to try on the Moon first.
"Of all the ways to avoid "the ravages of global warming", going to Mars would be the nuttiest I've heard."
Not forgetting the stupid notion that rich people need to go anywhere to avoid "the ravages of global warming" when the last working air conditioner, the last gallon of oil and the last kobe cow sirloin will be for them anyway.