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First SpaceX Missions To Mars: 'Dangerous and Probably People Will Die' (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As we get close to the end of September, when Elon Musk has promised to lay bare his plans for colonizing Mars at an international space conference, it seems like the ambitious founder of SpaceX can hardly contain his excitement. In an interview with The Washington Post, Musk gushed, "I'm so tempted to talk more about the details of it. But I have to restrain myself." SpaceX fandom has speculated for years about details of Musk's ideas, which include the Mars Colonial Transporter concept. The Transporter likely consists of a large first stage rocket and an upper stage spacecraft meant to deliver hundreds of people to the surface of Mars during the late 2020s and 2030s. Unlike NASA, which relies on public money and is therefore risk averse when it comes to "loss of crew" requirements for human missions into space, SpaceX appears to be willing to take some risks with the unprecedented exploration to Mars. Those first explorers would understand the perils, just as the pioneers who explored the New World or the poles of Earth did. "Hopefully there's enough people who are like that who are willing to go build the foundation, at great risk, for a Martian city," Musk told Washington Post. "It's dangerous and probably people will die -- and they'll know that." Eventually it will be safe to go to Mars, Musk said, and living there will be comfortable. But this is many years into the future, he acknowledged.
Go.
At the very least, death or not, it would be interesting. Earth is getting boring.
I'd happily go!
Nice understatement there fella.
This isn't like the moon... which is at least theoretically close enough that it is at least technologically feasible to orchestrate a rescue mission to bring people home if things go awry, if such provisions are at least planned for... certainly getting people back to earth safely (or sending more supples up) before they starve to death if food supplies were suddenly lost, for example. Mars is, to put it quite bluntly, a fucking ONE WAY TRIP.
Until we have the technology to get to mars in a matter of only a few days or less, I predict that every manned mission to mars that we attempt will have a 100% fatality rate. It is suicide to go there... plain and simple.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
for anti-aging, the slash skeptic brigade would come out in force. Talk about Mars, the pants drop, the penis erects and the sci-fi comes out!
Has Musk yet explained how he plans to keep them all from dying of radiation overdose?
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
And Musk/SpaceX is not? Just wait until the relatives of those who die – en route or on Mars – lawyer up?
Taht advanced robotic landers and excavators couldn't handle instead of humans.
With the state of the global economy in general and mass distrust amongst the super powers I do not like the idea of corporate space exploration especially when it comes to mars.
When I think a mission to mars I think international space station. I think of tens maybe hundreds of countries offering up their best and their brightest for a global national collaboration on a project that may span several generations but promises a lot.
It does not sound like that is what is happening though...
I haven't followed spaceX or any of this much, but it feels like this endeavor should be something the entire world can participate in together as a global community.
I want to hear about a true 100 year outline plan to actually colonize the damn planet. The scouting crews who will set up a base. The engineering crews who will terraform, mine, and so forth. I want to hear about the first wave colonization group that brings hand picked men and women from all sorts of countries to build a new community on mars... and then not live long enough to see the many people moving to mars for new opportunity like so many people came to America (and still come for some silly reason)...
I don't think Earth is ready for Earth, at the moment, much less mars...
We could always bio-engineer humans to better suited to the martian gravity... ...We have the technology, we can grow them...
Death on mars, following the crash landing explosive decompression and destruction of vital resources the remaining crew struggle valiantly to survive until rescue arrives in about 2 years.
Never really understood the need for these types of adventures, could someone explain why traveling to a barren rock is so thrilling! No trolling, and I understand the importance to science but even the quest for knowledge has it's limits.
That's an engineering problem and solvable. The larger problem is that there will be nothing to do if people go. You sit around in a bubble, drive around in a small bubble for short distances. Ever live in a small town with 200 residence? It would be like this, but much worse. They are nice to visit, but you go stir cray after a few days. Weeks if you are lucky. The only new things you'd ever see is whatever Earth decided to send.
Of course. To a space nutter everything is "solvable". Some things are not solvable. This is one of them. You cannot change human biology. We would quickly die due to the radiation and differences in gravity. The idea is ridiculous.
The radiation and differences in gravity would wreak havoc on humans [...]
The radiation, I can agree with. Differences in gravity?
Don't get me wrong, Zero G isn't good for you. But we really have no clue what one-third G will do. Unfortunately, NASA budget cuts left the Centrifuge Accommodations Module sitting on Earth, which we could have used to figure out the effects of less/more G over long durations.
Can we please send the members of congress on the first flight?! I mean come on, what's the worse that could happen?... and please include details. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The long term goal of spacex is to get a lot of people to move/be born on Mars, then charge them extravagant prices to get back to Earth.
Stop feeding the troll. "Space nutter" was in his first reply; he's not interested in an actual dialogue....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
If they go like this, they are doomed.8
Thank you Dave Raggett
Of course someone will just say "we will live underground on Mars!". But that is pure Scifi at that point.
Just one correction: Actually that would not be scifi but rather fantasy, inasmuch as Star Wars for example is considered fantasy - not scifi - because so much of it is just scientifically preposterous and absurd. In fantasy the creators don't actually care about science. In scifi they do.
Where are you gong to get that much lead?
Send it from Earth.
But won't that take a big rocket. Or at least a lot of smaller rockets?
Yes, that's the engineering part
Pay attention, kids. This idiot is exactly the type that was completely forgotten back in the Stone Age, and then the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age, etc.
There will always be naysayers. Yet the human race continues to press forward, regardless. And the ones that are quick to say "Never" are always proven wrong, eventually.
Think about this: we evolved from monkeys, yet there are still monkeys in the world. I say they were like this guy: too busy saying "Derp no we cant" and flinging shit to get anything worthwhile accomplished.
Can we send this guy to Mars?
Ultimately, the answer is simply this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Everything else is just a justification, true ones of course, but never the primary reason.
Some people get it, some people don't. I happen to be one of the people who do, and that's okay. It sounds like you happen to be one of the people who don't, and that's okay too.
"Violence is not the answer. Violence is the question. The answer is yes."
What does public money have to do with being risk adverse for loss of life? We're risk adverse because NASA decided to ram down everyone's throat that they were so good people wouldn't lose their life. NASA is the problem, not the public. Look at how many people lose their life every year climbing Mt Everest. NASA is underfunded for their current plans because they believe loss of life is not acceptable, not the public. We all see people die all over the place.
I think sending people to Mars, or really anywhere out is space is a stupid idea. I was just commenting that it's a solvable problem.
Then you can send people to probable death so they can build the foundation for realizing your safe and comfortable dreams.
We do, it's called test tube babies. We haven't yet modified them extensively yet (unless you count illegal Chinese experiments) but that's mostly due to ethics, not capacity.
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You are forgetting, you fuck in a bubble. I predict there will be lots of screwing around in the first Mars colony.
We should go to Venus upper atmosphere instead. It is a sustainable mission. No one has to die and we can round-trip crews and supplies quickly.
I was just reading a book on the Vikings this afternoon and happened to read the chapters on the settlement of Iceland and Greenland and thinking about space exploration.
Compared to even Norway, Iceland was a lot like Mars. Totally hostile climate, vast stretches of it totally unsuitable for human habitation. Extremely long voyage to get there in an environment -- the North Sea -- that's sure death if anything goes wrong.
Many died trying anyway, and not just all at once. It took several attempts by people who knew that previous ones had failed, fatally, to establish permanent settlements. And the ones that did fail failed for the same reasons Mars is risky -- we bring the wrong stuff and not enough of the right stuff, the climate is hostile, it's far away so you can't easily go back, and sometimes your fellow colonists turn on you and you slaughter each other *and then* die of starvation.
In many ways, at least as far as we know, the one thing we don't have to worry about on Mars is having to fight our way through hostile natives. Not only did previous migrants face long voyages to uncertain destinations, there was also the likelihood they would have to go to war with whoever they ran into -- hey, let's embark on a trip that's likely fatal simply in the conveyance we have available, to a place we might not have the knowledge or stuff to survive in, and let's do it to steal stuff from people who will fight us to the death to stop us.
Yet humans have been doing it for millennia, despite the risks and the repeated failures. It's part of what makes us human. If that wasn't part of our humanity, we'd still be eating mangoes and dipping sticks into anthills on the edge of the forest and the savanna.
Can we nominate people to be on the mission? Me? No thanks. But I've got a niece that is a complete waste of oxygen who would be perfect for this.
You are right. Test tube babies are bioengineered humans. The lack of basic science knowledge is the first thing you see in space nutters.
Assuming the radiation hasn't rendered all the men impotent by the time they get to Mars.
A lead disk, 50m in diameter and 30m thick would have a mass of 6.8x10^6kg and provide a 10^9 reduction in radiation. This could be launched to Mars using ~150 Saturn V rockets.
Worked for Shackleton: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.co...
If Elon is so dead set to kill some one, then let him kill himself on a way ticket to Mars!
Elon is a very very special psychopath.
....if you started with something like Biosphere 2.
We can't manage a self-sustaining environment that doesn't require CONSTANT maintenance on Earth. To suggest that we'll somehow 'muddle through' doing it 100 million miles away is folly.
"Some people will die" sure, that hasn't caused humans to flinch from trying hard things. And yes, doing hard things costs lives in many cases.
But it's truly a shitty, sociopathic narcissist that is willing to throw away lives to no good end.
-Styopa
You're either a troll or an idiot.
Muscle power, picks and shovels.
Turns out lifting literally tons of stuff and burying a structure is much, much easier when everything weighs 1/3rd as much, and you're willing to accept that a few people will die in the process. If people can get there in something pressurized, then you can bury the thing after it arrives.
At its easiest, compressed air and plastic pouches would work.
But, hey, we don't have to even do that kind of thing when people here have already figured out how to make concrete out of readily available Martian materials (namely sulphur and dirt):
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/545216/materials-scientists-make-martian-concrete/
Or, there is the other other way:
Build with pre-existing rocks.
Finally someone is going to push us off this rock.
We stopped space exploration in the 1970s and never really returned. It's about time to start doing amazing things again.
Yes- people are going to die. And those who take the risk will understand the possible sacrifice for pushing our species forward.
Thank you in advance.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
Page refresh rates are a bitch...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
There were European bees on the second fleet.
Nobody has died from zero g on the space station yet. You don't understand the biology.
Learn to love Alaska
As far as we know, the one thing we don't have to worry about on Mars is having to fight our way through hostile natives.
You never know...
I'd go in a second, you're going to die eventually, might as well be for a worthwhile endeavor.
Well, of course:
This isn't Planetes -- in that one they go to Jupiter.
the one thing we don't have to worry about on Mars is having to fight our way through hostile natives.
You've not been paying attention.
No cute child bride, no deal.
And here's the HUGE difference in the comparison. We have literally decades of information and knowledge about Mars and 'what to expect' so we at least 'in theory' know 'what to bring'. That doesn't make it any easier obviously but the Vikings would have been literally 'sailing blind' in to an 'unknown world' as they'd have had 0 way to do reconnaissance/data gathering without actually going.
Musk has said that mankind's long term future lies in colonizing the solar system. Setting up a doomed-to-fail Mars experiment is a good way to discourage people to do that : he's too smart for that.
Expect a first phase consisting of several supply rockets with prefabs, equipment and tools. Expect a degree of heavy duty robotics to help with fabrication. Expect a *lot* of solar panels, plus of course Tesla battery packs... Most of this SpaceX could do today, with the exception maybe the heavy robotics that might be needed. Maybe we could use Waldo's instead.
The real challenge, as you point out, will be if we want to return. Ideally we would need Mars to provide the fuel for that, but we would still need to lift all the processing equipment there in order to prepare it.
But let's be honest: so far Musk has shown a *much* better rate of learning than any nation-state space program. Who would you bet on to get there first?
Why do you care so much about what Musk and his investors spend their money on that you have dozens of posts about "space nutters" and their delusions?
Just makes it looks like you're a lonely dick that just got dumped and are looking for fight.
This whole "colonization" business sickens me. Are we really going to allow repeating mass genocide like we did during colonization of America?
a lot like Mars
Not remotely close. In the worst of conditions in Iceland, I could walk around for minutes totally naked in the worst conditions, go back inside, dink some hot cocoa and be ready to do it again in a few hours. Mars, you'll be unconscious in 12 seconds if you space suit springs a leak and dead in 4 minutes. Iceland wait a few hours until the storm goes away, put on a heavy coat and spend a day out ice fishing. Mars, pour some hot water onto you freeze dried lasagna while looking out the window.
I think the more important question is "why do we want people living on Mars?"
Mars has very few of the resources needed to support human life. People living there will basically be a burden for people on Earth to supply with food, equipment, chemical energy, etc. All that, and you can only depart for it twice per year. If anything goes wrong between, oh well.
As a staging area for mining comets (if that's the idea) the moon makes more sense than Mars since it is out of Earth's gravity, has very little of it's own gravity (much less than Mars even) and can be reached in a few days.
I guess the whole hype surrounding Mars is more out of "coolness" than actual usefullness? Correct me if I'm missing something here.
Erm Iceland was settled by the Viking ... I don't think they really had hot cocoa or the rest of the technology that we now have that means we can survive in places a lot more hostile to us than we could 400 years ago.
You're suggesting that living underground is somehow a difficult concept?
Really?
Idiot.
Elon Musk, you go first. I am right behind you. Oh, what's that? Your rare leadership is needed here on earth? Don't flattter yourself, buddy. Besides the best leadership is leading by example, right?
Yep, I always laugh when they talk about digging holes as if it is a no brainer. Having worked in the mining industry, digging even fairly small tunnels is expensive, and uses lots of resources and hardware. Add near-vacuum, radiation, etc, and it is mind-manglingly difficult. Same with smelting metals and the converting them into useful things. These people have clearly never been anywhere near any of the processes that are required to turn dirt into manufactured objects. Sigh.
Nice to send people to their death for nothing. Really nice.
In one of his stories - and I can't remember which - Heinlein discussed an engineer project whose budget was complete with an estimate of the number of people who would be killed in its achievement. His project manager comments that this item isn't included in the public budget, for political reasons! This realistic assessment of the tendency for death to occur was very thought provoking; we SHOULD be honest about risk - instead terrorism is treated as disproportionately terrible, whilst antibiotic resistance, which is vastly more seriously, is labelled as potentially dangerous as terrorism to get people's attention.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/heal...
Sometimes the fact that 'if voting could change things, it wouldn't be allowed', should be taken as a comfort.
I guess you are talking about Greenland that was named that way for marketing purposes.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The trip will kill them first.
Totally hostile climate, vast stretches of it totally unsuitable for human habitation
You have to see that in context: growing grain might be tricky. Besides that the climate on Icelands is very friendly.
The winter temperature barely touches zero degrees.
As soon as they mainly lived from fishing and sheep they where fine.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Mars, you'll be unconscious in 12 seconds if you space suit springs a leak and dead in 4 minutes. ... And Mars has no vacuum. Air presure is a little bit lower than on the tip of Mount Everest. In the deep chasms it should be close or above 1/3rd of earths. Unfortunately the air is mostly CO2, though.
You are likely not even unconscious after 4 minutes. Why would you?
A normal person without any training easy holds the breath 90 to 120 seconds.
And after exhaling and not being able to inhale you don't drop unconcious imediatly, why would you?
If you prepare for it like a diver, you easy can live in complete vacuum, naked for minutes. You would probably bleed throuh nose and ears etc
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
What's the point? This "rock" is a very hospitable planet, take the least hospitable place on Earth and it is still way more hospitable than the most hospitable place on Mars. If people can't make a sustainable living here, they sure as hell won't be able to do it on Mars. And that's provided people could actually reach Mars, deep space travel has not even been tested on animals, much less humans. It would represent meaningless loss of resources, and I mean important resources, not human lives - we got more of those than we need, to the point thousands are left to die because nobody feels like spending the few cents needed to keep them alive.
People watch too much "sci"-fi BS and too little reality.
I guess you are talking about Greenland that was named that way for marketing purposes.
No it was not.
It was discovered during the medival warm period. The south part of Greenland was like today, probably even greener and warmer. You could grow potatoes there and grain, as we do in our times due to AGW *again*
However you are right, Icelands at that time (and today) are not particular cold due to the gulf stream. However large areas are desert like.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"pushing our species forward" - that would be people outgrowing idiocy, NOT people being idiots on another planet LOL
I'm by no means a space nutter. But I am a real life space engineer (aka rocket scientist). With a degree in nuclear physics. The problem has been solved here on earth. 6m of lead will stop an awful lot.
Where are you gong to get that much lead?
Send it from Earth.
But won't that take a big rocket. Or at least a lot of smaller rockets?
Yes, that's the engineering part
No, that's the funding part. And the funding well never come for that kind of endeavour.
Speaking of which, you could do it up like Australia and make a martian penal colony where we send all the undesirables like pedophiles. Still no child bride for you.
Air pressure on Mars is 0.5% of Earth. You can't compare Mars to Iceland at all, the latter could support human life the same as Norway, you could grow food, breath the air, drink from the rivers, hunt the animals. A Mars colony would be totally dependent on supplies from Earth for decades if not centuries, and a single mistake or technical problem would kill everyone instantly.
They become freaking billionaires, duh.
a lot like Mars
Not remotely close. In the worst of conditions in Iceland, I could walk around for minutes totally naked in the worst conditions, go back inside, dink some hot cocoa and be ready to do it again in a few hours. Mars, you'll be unconscious in 12 seconds if you space suit springs a leak and dead in 4 minutes. Iceland wait a few hours until the storm goes away, put on a heavy coat and spend a day out ice fishing. Mars, pour some hot water onto you freeze dried lasagna while looking out the window.
The trip to Iceland back then was as risky as it goes. Navigation was difficult, a storm could sink the ship, disease could not be cured. No steel boats, just wood and sail.
Plus you never knew what happened to the other crews. Did they survive or not? They could have a happy life, but no communication back to the motherland. Missing Iceland and ending up in Greenland without knowing it - totally possible.
yes people will die. If you review the history of spaceflight you will see that people died. It comes with the territory.
You're either a troll or an idiot.
Muscle power, picks and shovels.
Good lucky digging the ultra-frozen martian tundra with a space suit.
For sure they will die eventually whether on a spaceship or not.
Jesus is the way to the Father.
That's hindsight for the Iceland part. While Iceland is in fact more habitable than Mars, from an exploration standpoint we know more about the risk on Mars than the Vikings knew beforehand about the risks they'd face on Iceland. It's not like the Vikings first sent robotic probes to Iceland.
What if we make it safe for the rich to go first, and then let the cost go down over time?
/. can celebrate or whatever, and poor people don't have to die.
Basically make it like every other scientific breakthrough we've ever had.
Also if rich people die, the childish occupiers on
Surely we shouldn't even consider sending people over until we've had self-supporting robots over them for 10+ years setting up industry or whatever's necessary to sustain life without dependence on supplies from earth.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
LOL even tho I agree with him I'll say this, he does sound like he has an axe to grind with Mars.
I think Mars stole his lunch money once. Or fucked his girlfriend while he was at work.
On earth it's not a hard problem, but on Mars it is.
What makes you think I'm talking about the transporter? The Dragon alone is much larger than anything we've ever landed.
The Falcon can return to Earth and land because there is sufficient atmospheric drag to slow it down to the point where a modest amount of delta-V will allow it land safely. On Mars, there isn't sufficient atmosphere to do so.
That's the basic problem with Mars - the gravity is too high to land propulsively, and the atmosphere is too thin to land using solely aerodynamic drag.
I don't think there is a high enough mountain of paper work that can be signed to eliminate SpaceXs liability. We *should* be able to make such agreements, but I don't think we can.
And what would you call them if not engineered? Do babies grow outside of the womb naturally?
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One of the problems with current designs is limited amount of spacecraft cubic capacity and redundancy spec'd for such a long voyage (beyond any sort of rescue). First of all, instead of the crew capsules with relatively small service module the transit craft should be the size of several ISS, minimum. The craft should be staged in high orbit as a product of numerous launches. There should be a trailer spacecraft with supplies/accommodation following a couple of days back and several at way-points ahead. Further, the landing area on Mars should already be prepped robotically before the human craft lands. Launches years before should provide all sorts of redundancy in terms of alternate shelter, stockpiled water & food, equipment, escape craft, etc.. Each person should have at least 400 sq feet of personal living space and additional common shared space (think Amundsen-Scott). Obviously the past limit was tonnage cost to put into orbit, but hopefully Musk will be lowering that cost by a factor of 100. And hopefully Bigelow can add less costly living space. Else this'll be just a one shot deal to Mars for a few iron-men.
Mars, you'll be unconscious in 12 seconds if you space suit springs a leak and dead in 4 minutes. You are likely not even unconscious after 4 minutes. Why would you? A normal person without any training easy holds the breath 90 to 120 seconds. And after exhaling and not being able to inhale you don't drop unconcious imediatly, why would you? If you prepare for it like a diver, you easy can live in complete vacuum, naked for minutes. You would probably bleed throuh nose and ears etc ...
Why would you? Because in a vacuum your respiratory and circulatory system work in reverse. Your blood delivers partly oxygenated hemoglobin to your lungs, where the zero partial pressure of oxygen there strips it out and you exhale the oxygen.
Your skepticism on this is bizarre since this is a very well studied and understood situation that, believe it or not, is very important here on Earth. You see decompression of aircraft at high altitude is the same thing and happens accidentally with some regularity. In fact "12 seconds of consciousness" is really unrealistically long it is actually 6 to 9 seconds of useful consciousness.
The facts are weak with this one. No wonder he is so confused. The densest atmosphere on Mars is 11.5 millibars at Hellas Planetia (a deep canyon). This is the same pressure as Earth at 99,000 feet. The air pressure at the top of Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) is 337 millibars, thirty times higher.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
only off by 2 orders of magnitude so 15,000 Saturn V rockets
Nobody has died from zero g on the space station yet. You don't understand the biology.
Maybe nobody died yet, but many experience severe loss of vision acuity and early symptoms of retinal issues which could lead to retinal detachment and permanent blindness... And *nobody* understands the biology behind this yet...
Except you and the troll that asserts 0g is necessarily fatal.
Learn to love Alaska
Not true at all about Iceland - it is believed the vikings landed in a glacial area in the south east, thus the name.
I have lived there, and although it's not a picnic, the temperature variations are relatively mild due to the Gulf Stream.
About forests - it is believed about a quarter of the terrain used to be covered by forests. Human activity killed it with subsequent soil erosion. There are efforts to bring back the forests (personally I disagree with using evergreens for this, but anything is better than nothing):
http://www.skog.is/forest/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18&Itemid=38
Death doesn't scare me and I have a sense of adventure. Contributing to the Greater Good would be an honor.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
History likes to repeat itself.
When the western world (Americas) was discovered, Europe was in an age of enlightenment, lots of wealthy folks, kingdoms, privileged cultures, exclusivity and such. Basically you can say the 1%-ers ruled the land. And because of that the 1%-ers took ultimate risks (some themselves, most using other labor/people) such as sailing to the Americas, high scale trade, crazy stunts, grand things..... which some we praise for today.
I guess we're heading back into those times.
The question is do we want to head back into those times?
You're assuming there *is* a warm and cozy inside filled with hot cocoa or even the fuel to make it hot. One of the challenges of Iceland and moreso Greenland was a lack of trees for building materials and fuel.
Falling into freezing water can kill you in two minutes, and even if it doesn't immediately kill you, you might drown because you can't move your muscles adequately to swim.
Obviously the lack of atmosphere on Mars is a serious problem, but because it's severe doesn't make the cold and barren new landscape faced by explorers in the 9th century not dangerous, especially when they only had what they brought with them in small boats over hundreds of miles of open ocean. "Oops, this sucks, let's go back now" wasn't really an option for them, either.
"Yet the human race continues to press forward, regardless."
On this planet. Which your Stone Age people did.
"Think about this: we evolved from monkeys"
No, we didn't. Basic science fail, we can safely ignore you.
There are many reasons people will choose to do it.. Why people climb Everest or travel in tiny planes or ships around the world? People do it for the feeling of achievement, to prove something to themselves or/and others.
Many think that everyone wants a beach house somewhere in tropics, have unlimited money and basically sip mohito while sun bathing for the rest of their life...
The truth is many want challenges in life, whatever it is to climb the steepest or tallest mountain, solve math puzzles that no one can solve in hundreds of years, hike into wilderness with just backpack on your back, etc., and as far as I am concerned building Mars colony will be the ultimate challenge.
Mars colony doesn't need to be profitable, fully self sufficient or logical, once its population reach about 100 people and they can support themselves with water, energy and basic foods it will become permanent. You will not be able to get people off even if you paid them money to leave.
> ... humans have been doing it for millennia ... It's part of what makes us human.
Nonsense. All those past explorations were for practical purposes -- to own land, to find new trades routes, etc.
Going to Mars at this time in our history would serve absolutely no practical purpose for humanity whatsoever. It would not help us to address a single pressing or practical problem here on Earth in the foreseeable future. Such missions should not be publicly funded at this time (Musk and SpaceX would not be paying for this mission out of their pockets).
Public funds should instead be spent to help address our pressing and practical problems here on Earth in the foreseeable future.
nuff said.
I think you overstate the practical value of past expansions and completely understate the moral weight of such expansions in light of the fact that the places all but the most primitive stone age migrations entered were already occupied by someone else.
Most of Rome's territorial expansions were purely conquest for the benefit of its ruling class -- the subjugation of foreign peoples, expropriating their wealth and enslaving their populations.
The Vikings were even worse in this regard. While the Romans were often inclined to merely extract tribute and extend political dominance, the Vikings for the most part were motivated solely for plunder and often just killed everyone they found and took what treasure they could carry, with little practical benefit for their home countries and without any long-term settlement. To the extent that the Vikings expanded their territory to "new" lands, it mostly Greenland and Iceland, and the Greenland expansion ultimately failed. In the British Isles, by the time they got around to doing anything like "settling" they had largely been assimilated into the existing Celtic and Anglo-Saxon cultures they invaded.
Travel to Mars is less about its immediate practical value and much more about its secondary value in learning what it takes to get there and explore. The secondary value of the technologies and know-how of making this work will produce profound benefits for things like sustainable energy and medicine here on Earth, and without any of the moral implications of military conquest.
> I think you overstate the practical value of past expansions ...
Not really.
> ... the places all but the most primitive stone age migrations entered were already occupied by someone else.
Doesn't matter. The explorers still set out for *practical purposes*.
> Most of Rome's territorial expansions were purely conquest for the benefit of its ruling class -- the subjugation of foreign peoples, expropriating their wealth and enslaving their populations.
Thus for *practical purposes*.
> ... the Vikings for the most part were motivated solely for plunder ...
They carried that out *for immediate practical purposes*.
> ... with little practical benefit for their home countries and without any long-term settlement.
They carried out their raids for the *practical purpose* of plunder. The items plundered certainly benefited whomever financed/supported their raids.
> Travel to Mars is less about its immediate practical value and much more about its secondary value in learning what it takes to get there and explore.
That's a very weak justification for the spending of billions in public funds. We can get those very same kinds of benefits by addressing our pressing and practical problems right here on Earth.
> The secondary value of the technologies and know-how of making this work will produce profound benefits for things like sustainable energy and medicine here on Earth ...
We don't need to go to Mars for that. We can simply research and develop those technologies right here on Earth.
The sunrise and the sunset for instance.
The idea to make it habitable (would not call it "terraforming" as it will be very un-terra-like afterwards).
And for me, my "day rythm" is longer than 24h, never really checked wat my natural rythm would be, I asume between 26h and 28h, and Mars at least offers me 24:43 :D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Thanks for the info, that makles sense.
However you get unconscious after exhaling. But not as long as you hold your breath.
Or what exctly would be a reason for that?
That 11.5 millibars was supposed to be on "null" not in a canyon. Interesting, must have remembered something wrong then.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
That's a very weak justification for the spending of billions in public funds.
And what exactly do you think it cost to send a half-dozen legions off to expand Rome's borders and who do you think actually benefited from it? Rome was a spoils system, where the aristocrat who was at the top got the state to fund their army and then kept the spoils for themselves. It was the very definition of using state funds for personal enrichment. It makes Lockheed Martin look like a charity.
We don't need to go to Mars for that. We can simply research and develop those technologies right here on Earth.
Except we won't, because there will be no profit-driven motive to develop many of them. The space program largely been driven to solve problems related to space travel but whose solutions turn out to have significant applications on Earth.
I think people living in the US, or really anywhere in North America is a stupid idea. Yet there are still millions of people there.
> And what exactly do you think it cost to send a half-dozen legions off to expand Rome's borders and who do you think actually benefited from it?
If it was paid for by public funds, and if the public didn't benefit, then the public would've been justified to protest it.
> ... the aristocrat who was at the top got the state to fund their army and then kept the spoils for themselves. It was the very definition of using state funds for personal enrichment.
Then the public would've been justified to protest it.
We don't need to go to Mars to research and develop technologies.
> Except we won't, because there will be no profit-driven motive to develop many of them.
Quite the contrary. Practically any research and development which can help us to address pressing and practical problems here on Earth in the foreseeable future can be profited from. Basically every technology which is helping us today earns income for *someone*.
> The space program largely been driven to solve problems related to space travel but whose solutions turn out to have significant applications on Earth.
We don't need the space program for that. We can "solve problems" and provide "significant applications on Earth" by researching those problems here on Earth directly. That the space program succeeded in solving problems only shows that we can solve problems that we address. Let's address the right ones directly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
That that is is that that that that is not is not.