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Elon Musk: First Humans Who Journey To Mars Must 'Be Prepared To Die' (theverge.com)
At a conference yesterday, Elon Musk outlined his company SpaceX's plan to send humans to Mars. The vehicle is called the Interplanetary Transport System and it is capable of carrying 100 tons of cargo (people and supplies). Musk added that this rocket ship could take people to Mars in just 80 days. But he also reminded that the first batch of people who are brave enough to go to Mars should be well aware that they are almost certainly going to die. The Verge adds:During the Q&A session that followed, the question inevitably came up: what sort of person does Musk think will volunteer to get strapped to that big rocket and fired toward the Red Planet? "Who should these people be, carrying the light of humanity to Mars for all of us?" an audience member asked. "I think the first journeys to Mars will be really very dangerous," answered Musk. "The risk of fatality will be high. There's just no way around it." The journey itself would take around 80 days, according to the plan and ideas that Musk put forward. "Are you prepared to die? If that's okay, then you're a candidate for going," he added. But Musk didn't want to get stuck talking about the risks and immense danger. "This is less about who goes there first... the thing that really matters is making a self-sustaining civilization on Mars as fast as possible. This is different than Apollo. This is really about minimizing existential risk and having a tremendous sense of adventure," he said.
We're all going to die.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Basement on Earth, basement on Mars, the view's all the same...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
People who are going to stay on Earth should be well aware that they are almost certainly going to die, too.
The fact of the matter is he's right. And even if they do make the trip back, the probability that they will have crippling health issues is high. Exploring any frontier was dangerous throughout human history.
Out of several tens of billions of humans, only a fraction have not yet died, and of those who died, only a small percent of disputed cases indicate recovery.
You go first.
I nominate Congress to go on the first voyage. This would be the best use of taxpayer money ever.
....could we not try for the Moon first? I think that would make a little more sense and then once we have been more successful with lunar landings and possibly some form of colonization, we could move on to Mars and repeating the process.
I totally want to nominate zuckerberg to be the first one to go to Mars.
the chief qualification is a bit of a suicidal streak? what could possible go wrong?
Ill respect a guy who can fail and ask for help over a guy who is successful without failure. The latter is always hiding something.
Someone please take the Kool Aid away from this guy. His rocket just blew up recently and was asking for help in figuring out why...
And what have you done that is so amazing that we should care about your opinion? The guy has one rocket blow up and you proclaim him to be some kind of failure. Go out and find some new perspective. It seems you lost yours somewhere.
how meany people on death row will take this?
Seriously, where do I sign up?
And they figured out why. If it works, great.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Instead of pumping resources to be remebered as first at Mars we should rather start with permanent self-sustainable lunar base.
Once we master this we can try Mars.
At least I'd get away from all the Elon Musk stories.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Humans have precedent for sending out vessels filled with people who have a good chance of dying on their journey.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Dude, shut up. Really, shut up.
What is the difference if you are not prepared? Will you fail at it?
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
You know why your rocket didn't blew up?
That's because you never had a rocket to begin with.
How about we first master having a self-sustaining civilization on Earth?
The first Mars colony is always wiped out. It's the second one that thrives -- after 90% of the colonists are wiped out.
it's the living before it.
I know that there are alpinists (hundreds of people die in mountains each year), base jumpers, extreme divers, ...
There are LOTS of people disregarding the risk of death. It's a fact.
Nobody will go to Mars as a part of a job or for some salary.. they will PAY to go, on the other hand.
Someone please take the Kool Aid away from this guy. His rocket just blew up recently and was asking for help in figuring out why...
He was asking for evidence (recorded videos, audios, security camera footage), not help.
At this point I'm really wondering why people like you post this sort of thing. I mean, it's not like you have any insight into the situation.
It very much appears that you have an agenda (or an axe to grind), and chose to misrepresent the situation because you think it will add incrementally to whatever goals you have.
What are your goals? How does it benefit *you* to misrepresent what Musk is doing?
I'm constantly surprised by what motivates other people. As in - can never figure out why people do what they do.
(Maybe you shorted some SpaceX stock? No, SpaceX is still a privately held company. Maybe you work at NASA and don't like being shown up? Maybe you work at a competing launch company? Your behaviour is inscrutable.)
They arent concentrating on launching into LEO. We've already figured that one out as you pointed out. They are concentrating on trying to make economical and reusable stages to make spaceflight cheaper. There is no point in spending larger amounts of money on a craft to get to LEO (requires more fuel space for return trip) if there is reasonable risk that it will crash when it tries to land. They are smart enough to realize they need to know how to land first. I'm pretty sure they're smart enough to do the same with the radiation problem before they set out for mars.
Seems like a decent purchase to choose with the only 1-UP we get. Unless you put great stock into 50 years of making profits for someone more connected ("corps are people") then hopefully getting to wither in some retirement crate. Then, sure, spend it on that.
That said, I have doubts that the heroic efforts I just compared to are actually available. Obviously Musk is going to make Mars work (and funding) seem as plausible as he can.
Isn't that also in the Microsoft License Agreement?
Table-ized A.I.
Do you have any idea how many rockets (and spacecraft) NASA has blown up over the years? Get some perspective. Fucking moron.
Liability insurance will be a bitch if the company has to guarantee bringing someone back alive.
If your goal is a self-sufficient colony on mars and your serious about it your opening move will not involve sending people there initially because this would be a pointless waste of resources.
It isn't enough to just preposition supplies you need to develop and transport a highly automated industrial base using technology that does not yet exist to create the things people will need to survive.
The solution today is basic research and development not building space buses and telling riders they are probably going to die.
You can't just ignore reality and subscribe to new age planning doesn't matter we don't need to learn how to walk first nonsense because if you do that you will fail.
You've never fixed a bug on a released product while simultaneously developing the next major release?
Products are like sharks. If they aren't constantly moving forward, they're dead.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Putting the practical aspects of getting there aside, this is no different than what many of our ancestors did at one time. Saying goodbye to everyone and everything that is familiar for the adventure of the unknown. Yes you will die. Quickly or slowly, in anticipated or unexpected ways.
Many people cannot envision a one way journey but others can. My great grandfather came to the US to join his sons. My great grandmother did not.
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
NASA has blown up a whole lot of equipment over the years and gotten a good bunch of people killed while at it, and I don't see you demanding anyone taking Koolaid from them.
Also, to be quite honest, asking for help in figuring out what happened is smart and useful. Not asking for help out of sheer arrogance, on the other hand, is the opposite of smart and useful. They figured out what happened and most likely now know to pay even more attention to it to prevent it from happening again, so, aside from the monetary losses, everything's better than before. Learning from mistakes may be a wholly foreign concept to you, but, thankfully, it's not that to the whole rest of the world.
I like the part in the SpaceX video where the rocket lands, and the door opens on magnificent desolation. This is artistic license. Obviously the material for a habitat would precede the arrival of people.
But yes, a first-try planetary colony won't necessarily work. Getting there is dangerous, and once you're there being able to continue to provide the population with air, water, food, shelter, and energy is going to have significant risks of lethal failures.
Bruce Perens.
So I have this friend with a father who is a Vietnam war hero. When the base was under attack, he would grab the nearest weapon he could get his hands on and run toward the enemy. He won a medal for demonstrating that after the enemy shoots the tail off your helicopter, it is indeed still flyable if you go just go fast enough. Funny thing was, his very successful military career was something of an accident. Before joining the army, when there was nothing at stake and nothing to be gained by it, he would get in trouble by doing some damn fool wild thing. After the umpteenth time the judge finally told him, it's the jail or the military, you choose.
It took a long time for me to understand because I am not like that myself, but some people need high-risk, crazy adventure to thrive. If that is denied to them, they will seize it anyway, however they can. So those people might as well expend that impulse on something socially redeeming, like establishing off-world human colonies, while the rest of us cower here on earth until interplanetary transport is proven safe.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
That is a certainty.
I still think we're better off going to Venus. It's bigger, it's got more solar radiation to work with, it's closer(almost half the distance)... we just need to fix the runaway greenhouse atmosphere(something we should probably figure out soon for other reasons...). Mars is just silly.
Musk is a Space Nutter.
You throw around the phrase "space nutter" as if that actually means something every time an article about Musk is posted. Let it go. If you want to make an evidence based case that going to Mars is not possible then fine. Ad-hominem attacks do not in any way bolster your case. They just make you look like a jerk.
There is no way ANYONE is going to Mars.
If you want to claim that people aren't going to be on Mars in the near future I would agree with you. Any such mission is going to take a while before it happens. If you are going to claim that it is categorically impossible that humans will ever set foot on Mars then you have no evidence to back you up. Present some actual and irrefutable evidence that putting humans on Mars is irreducibly impossible or shut up about it. So far your argument consists of calling anyone who is interested in solving the problem a "space nutter".
The trip alone would kill you with radiation.
And you of course have irrefutable proof not available to the rest of us that there is no possible way to mitigate that problem? Rhetorical question because of course since you don't and we know you don't. It's a known problem with numerous potential solutions. We aren't going to Mars tomorrow. If/when we do try to go it will be among the engineering challenges we face and one of the risks along the way. There is no evidence that it is a problem without any feasible solution given enough research and funding.
This guy is a scam artist and is trying to get taxpayer money to fund it, so he can siphon it off to pay for his other projects.
I'm not sure you know what the word means. Building at last count 4 successful and industry changing companies, three of which have nothing to do with space nor rely on any direct tax dollars, is a peculiar means of scamming people out of tax dollars. Furthermore most of the SpaceX mission list has private companies as clients as of today so basically no tax dollars are at work there either. Additionally SpaceX is actually SAVING tax dollars by reducing the cost to orbit over what NASA can do themselves. You might want to actually use some facts in your argument at some point. They tend to help.
Since this is all really just a simulation, we need to concentrate on hacking the simulation from within. Then we can teleport ourselves to mars.
Maybe he/she doesn't like people who make outrageous claims they can't back up. While I have no ax to grind on this particular claim, I can understand being irritated by these kinds of people.
Okay, that's fair.
But if someone is irritated by that sort of behaviour, it would seem (to me) to be more effective to attack the claims, instead of other things. And misrepresenting seems a bit dishonest, and ultimately ineffective.
Is it *really* that obvious that someone could
a) be irritated by Musk,
b) be driven by irritation to attack other things Musk does, and
c) be dishonest enough to misrepresent?
I agree that it could be a reason, but it's a stretch.
Is this motivation/behaviour really that obvious to people?
Explain to me why we are going to a planet that has no magnetic field, which is why all the water,and atmosphere got stripped from it in the first place...
The best way to get volunteers for this these days would probably be to make it into a reality TV series.
Producer You understand that you'll be locked in with 25 others with no chance of ever returning home and a 0.05% chance of living more than 2 years past landing
Guy: but I'll be on TV, right?
Producer: *sigh*, just sign this disclaimer here, and here.
First ship to be called "GALAXY N-VII"
Table-ized A.I.
Will Mars have high-speed internet???
Why not the moon?
Oh sure, we've been there before... but seriously, if the goal is to build a self-sustaining permanent habitat as soon as possible, then why not build one on the moon first?
I'm not saying that we shouldn't go to Mars eventually, but I think talking about it before we've even started to seriously talk about colonizing the lunar surface, let alone doing it, is really putting the cart before the horse.
At the very least, the moon is less than a hundredth as far. Why do the people who propose this always refuse to even try to walk before they want to run?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The first Mars colony is always wiped out. It's the second one that thrives -- after 90% of the colonists are wiped out.
So what you're saying is that Mars is a VC firm and the colonies are startups?
Real lawyers write in C++
Really? I thought we all got passed human sacrifices. It's gonna be senseless deaths. How about we do the smart thing and build and ship a mini IBM watson and robots that will be remotely controlled by the watson computer so that we can build facilities. Than, we can ship more supplies(oxygen tanks, food,etc...) to mars until it's habitat ready for humans. If U.S government has no trouble in pissing away $1.5 trillion on a failing f-35 program they can do it for the Mars project.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for this, but why not start with settlements on the moon first?
I know available resources are different, etc., but there has to be some benefit to trying things out closer to home before we start pushing out that far, no?
Plenty of people died colonizing the Americas. Didn't stop more coming and keep trying hoping they would make it a success.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Tell that to Matt Damon!
Astronauts have to be prepared to die. People who sailed to America had to be prepared to die. Explorers in general have to be prepared to die. So what? It would be newsworthy if he said such people would be 100% safe (because that would mean either he had amazing technology, or he turned into a lying jerk).
Yeah right,but musk won't be on that first flight or any after,his "lifetime dream" as long as he ain't one of the ones having to risk their lives,he will want freezing on good ol mother earth until a few thousand others are alive to do the dirty work for him...put yer body where yer mouth is,ride the first one yerself...
There be gold in them there craters.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
This shouldn't surprise anyone. Explorers have been doing since the first "man" left Africa. When you are going where no man has gone before, the prospect of dying there is a real possibility.
Especially when space travel is involved. Armstrong and Aldrin actually had pretty low chances to return from the moon. They actually expected they would die there. That didn't stop them from going.
When boldly going where no one has gone before, death is always a possibility. Just let some one else wear the red shirt. Why tempt fate?
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
After having a "DOH" moment, I realized that I was thinking of GEO not LEO. And come to find out, they have launched multiple satellites into LEO as well as one into GEO
Rather than sending our criminals to prison for $50k/year until they die, if it's only $200k to send them to Mars, let's do that instead. I imagine a MadMax/Total Recall world would be the result, making journeys to Mars even more dangerous / thrilling.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
The troll persists because people keep feeding him.
Honestly, I don't know what has to be wrong in a person's life for them to feel the need to spend their time acting like that. But it's the case for some people. I hope that whatever is wrong, things turn around for them.
Everybody point at the libertarian and laugh.
do the slashdot editors leave?
-linux... they can't *give* that shit away.
On the one hand, we could say that this is EXACTLY why private companies have absolutely no business in manned space exploration and why it MUST be a government endeavor. Because government does NOT have to cut safety to meet a profit margin.
On the other hand, ask the following list of people if space travel carries risk: Vladimir Komarov, Georgi Dobrovolski, Viktor Patsayev, Vladislav Volkov, Gus Grissom, Edward White, Roger Chaffee, Gregory Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kaplana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Ilan Ramon. And a host of others. And I wish we could ask them, "Was it worth it?" and pray that the answer is, "Hell YES!"
Or, to quote one James T. Kirk, "Risk is part of the game. Do you want to sit in that chair?"
God bless you, Astronauts and Cosmonauts! You carry our dreams with you.
Ego maniac.
I'd heard that prior to the explosion there was a guy wandering around the launch pad asking if people had seen his Note 7.
Was the first Arctic traversal a government mission?
How about the first summit of Mount Everest?
How about the first flight?
Nope.
Either private enterprise or not-for-profit groups.
Government does little in the way of firsts as they are bound by health and safety laws and sending people on fact-gathering missions is generally a waste of money. Technically the moon missions would come under military, even then, wouldn't they?
Don't wait for your government to be the first to cross the Atlantic or swim the English Channel. It ain't going to happen.
To quote XKCD: "For Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane."
Maybe he/she doesn't like people who make outrageous claims they can't back up.
That's a peculiar stance given that Musk has largely backed up most of his claims with pretty good results. Sure he has missed a step here and there but by and large he's done what he has set out to do to date. He's proposed some pretty audacious ideas but so far his track record is absurdly good considering the difficulty of what he has attempted thus far. Some reasonable skepticism is fine but it's hard to argue that the guy doesn't produce.
So he's going to use same slogan for the mission to Mars as for the self driving Tesla?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
pretty good odds, if he goes, Elon Musk will be the first murder on Mars.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I though the would all die... maybe he can use the dead people as shielding? Will that work?
Sounds like a perfect job for Islamic extremists.
Plus they love sandy wastelands!
Plus they'll be gone!
I wonder if anyone knows what percentage of the rockets that were part of the years of R&D leading to the first successful Apollo mission blew up? Whether commercial or not, all SpaceX missions are currently part of that R&D phase leading to Mars. This is very similar to the fact that many of the missions leading to the moon had other goals such as satellite launching.
Going further back, I wonder if there are estimates as to the success percentage of voyages to the New World in its early stages (in terms of open, mass exploration,,, say the 1500s).
Where would we be today without the courage of explorers? Even those exploring math and science on paper often have, and still do, risk their lives.
So musky! Moar posts from flat-earth idiots flaming "space nutters!" Moar! Moar!
You mean they'll all be clones of Count Rugen?
Risk is definitely part of the game. Even after the Nth one of these things takes off headed towards Mars and there's a thriving self sustained colony on Mars, something is still going to go wrong. Despite how safe we make airline travel, planes are still going to crash. Even if you cower in your basement there's a non zero chance you're going to die of CO2 poisoning.
My expectation is by the time the first colonists land on Mars, there will have been numerous autonomous missions that have setup methane and oxygen plants as well as metric tons of MRE's. That still doesn't mitigate the danger of half way to Mars your ship gets zorched by a CME. Or upon decent unbenounced to the crew a micrometeor has cracked the PICA heat shield and everybody on the surface is treated to a brilliant light show as a 100t of cargo and 100 people get sprayed across the martian sky. Without shielding in the MCT or on the colony on Mars what's your daily radiation exposure going to be? What number of people after spending 80 days weightless will land on Mars only to have their hearts give out, or that slight embolism that got stressed during take off finally pops?
I'm completely fine with risk, the question that needs to be asked is what the risk factor is going to be. Unfortunately, we can model this problem all we want, but people will still have to go do it and see what happens. I know before I'm too old of a man, they'll be a monument to the brave pioneers of colonization who gave their lives.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
You are perfectly right, sir.
At the pole there is air, and fishes, and penguins to eat. Life must be terrifyingly hard, but you still have the essentials.
And still nobody wants to settle there.
Indeed, when there'll be no room left at the poles, then maybe the next worst place will be Mars.
Now, before that, a billionaire can definitely play with sillies, even killing them legally...
Herve S.
his name should be Inigo Montoya, not Elon Musk.
I strongly suspect the Binary Boy is the new Doc Ruby - a trolling account for a regular /. poster. He seems to take the contentious, emotionally provocative point of view on too many issues to be legit.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Mars has more than double the gravity of the Moon. .38G as opposed to .165G. That makes Mars a more suitable environment for human biology.
I'm not sure how much this matters, but it's probably a factor.
Government does little in the way of firsts as they are bound by health and safety laws and sending people on fact-gathering missions is generally a waste of money. Technically the moon missions would come under military, even then, wouldn't they?
Technically, no they wouldn't as NASA is a civilian agency operating outside the chain of command. In every other respect, yes it was the military backing it and funding it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The problem is that on earth, for now, that technology would be a solution without a problem (I know, *for now*). The technology for space exploration has largely been adapted as a result of space travel successes solving problems that we didn't know we had here.
Google around, there's tons of safety, sustainability, health, etc technology that was specifically designed for space travel issues adapted to earth usage.
A successful colonization of a planet like mars would have a profound affect on the minds of the world because the lessons learned there will proof of concept true sustainability (without a net).
The way SpaceX's launches have been going lately, they're more likely to do right here on Earth than anywhere near Mars.
You make good points. However, there are the following difficulties with what you said:
* The moon missions were undertaken under the authority of NASA, a government agency, the titular head of which is the Vice President of the United States. There is no reason that they couldn't have stayed under military control (the early X-plane flights were military.) Why'd they change it up? And even if it were military, in the United States the military is STILL under government/civilian control.
* Everest? You mean the first successful summit of Edmund Hillary, led by Colonel John Hunt, British Army?
* The Arctic? Like the North Pole? Like the mission led by then-Commander Robert Peary, United States Navy, later Admiral?
* First flight from Wikipedia: "Five people witnessed the flights: Adam Etheridge, John T. Daniels (who snapped the famous "first flight" photo using Orville's pre-positioned camera) and Will Dough, all of the U.S. government coastal lifesaving crew; area businessman W.C. Brinkley; and Johnny Moore, a teenaged boy who lived in the area. "
"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win." - President John F. Kennedy
Its not a troll you nitwit. Just because someone doesnt share in your scifi delusions doesn't make them a troll. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO MARS. No one is. Ever. You can't even comprehend the complexity. How are you going to build a FUCKING FLEET of Mars spaceships? We have never even built ONE!
Instead "Elon Musk plans to send 100 people to Mars" it should be "Elon Musk plans most expensive method to kill 100 people"
Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.
Inigo Montoya: What's that?
Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.
You don't know what troll means. The truth is not a troll. You aren't going to Mars. Think about it: how the FUCK is he going to build 1,000 Mars SPACESHIPS like he outlines? Jesus Christ. Fucking Space Nutters.
Well, they did have buggery on the high seas.
Come to think of it, buggery is probably even more fun in space with zero-G and all that.
Sign me up!
"Life needs to be more than just solving problems every day. You need to wake up and be excited about the future, and be inspired, and want to live."
Which is exactly why I wouldn't want to go on a suicidal mission like that seeing as you'll most certainly die! There are 1000 ways to be excited and inspired here.
Bang bus in space, anal groupsex, 4K hi-def (2h 12m)
We're all going to die.
Of course, its just that being involved in colonization makes it significantly more likely to be in one's near future.
Colonization is dangerous, a large percentage of colonists die. Consider US history, Roanoke, Jamestown, Massachusetts Bay. And that was in an environment where it was relatively easy to live off the land. Technology can help in that you can bring such an "environment" with you but it will never be safe for that first group because like the aforementioned, we will likely have to learn the hard way what scientific, engineering and practical things had been overlooked despite our best efforts. This will be true for a private venture or a large scale government endeavor.
Many deaths among early explorers and colonists is not a new concept. That has and will always be something volunteers need to be OK with.
My life is the most precious thing I have or will ever have. Many billionaires would give every dime they own to purchase just one more year of life. I would not ever give it up for anyone, for any reason, ever. Nothing is worth that. I don't care if it makes me the last person alive on earth - nobody else is more important than I am. To me, at least.
Then you are a freeloader. What makes society work is the willingness to make a sacrifice for a stranger because it strengthens the group (the country in many's mind). It creates a culture where your offspring will be protected by those who are not blood relatives. Without that a society will collapse, your offspring will be at greater risk.
I guess everyone here doesn't remember George Bush talking about missions to Mars and being a laughing stock? Musk says it and every slappy on here has a raging hardon about it. I don't like either of them, but I find it funny that the hypocrisy of it is totally ignored. I understand one has a much better chance of accomplishing it but it still is funny to see the collective cream their jeans for their messiah.
They may have a waiting line of people wanting to go ;)
ISIL may not have a space program, but certainly would be interested in putting people in this trip...
Your legacy is your offspring, not getting you name in a history book. We are designed by evolution to protect that offspring, not ourselves. Societies evolved in order to extend that protection of your offspring to a larger group, a group that is not necessarily genetically related. That is why it is normal in society to risk oneself to save a child that is a stranger, because you are counting on and encoring others in the larger group to do the same for your offspring.
That's emotion drivel and mysticism. You might as well spend your life as an astrologer and fortune teller.
Presuming there's no such thing as a "soul", no part of you carries on. Not even in your children, who have unique DNA to which you contributed but which could have been made exactly the same way by a bit of genetic engineering. Your kids are different physical cells and their genes are their own, with some being copies of some of yours. None of your actual physical being lives on. Even if it did, it would be something as much "you" as a fingernail clipping. It's mighty strange to claim some satisfaction in the idea that you will leave behind a fingernail clipping.
"Legacy" is just an arbitrary construct and emotional babble. Yes, others will remember you for perhaps several generations (not that this will matter to you) but then they too will die off and your legacy will be forgotten just as it has for nearly every human being who has ever lived. Of the few who are remembered longer, the "legacy" can be completely upended by changing politics and values (see Columbus). Eventually, even the most famous person on Earth is forgotten, as proven that we do not know who he or she was in the year 15000BCE. Even if you are part of the tiny part of the population who are long remembered for a few centuries, it sure won't matter to you, therefore all this concern about "legacy" is more of a mental illness. It does not benefit Mozart one bit that we remember him, nor Einstein. It's the same sort of emotional padding against knowledge of mortality that atheists have long claimed religion to be.
Major General (USAF - Ret) Michael Collins, the command module pilot of Apollo 11 who has said he figured the Neil and Buzz had about a 50-50 chance and that he of course had better odds, but that he did not say it to them back then :-)
He did not say it out of concern. These guys were all (except for Dr. Harrison Schmitt) experienced military test pilots who had faced hazards and death in aircraft testing and were very aware of the details of the systems they flew and the actual risks involved. This is not the silk-scarf bravado of movie flying aces, but the cool assessment of well-trained and level-headed technical men choosing to take a measure added risk in their lives in exchange for potential benefit that they have deemed worth the risk, and then having a sort of dead-pan level-headed form of subtle humor for dealing with it.
"At the pole there is air, and fishes, and penguins to eat. Life must be terrifyingly hard, but you still have the essentials.
And still nobody wants to settle there.
Indeed, when there'll be no room left at the poles, then maybe the next worst place will be Mars."
The reason to settle Mars is much different than the reasons to settle "somewhere" on Earth. We have a window of technological opportunity to extend our "home" beyond the "goldilocks" zone right now -- to an area which at some future time will be in the "goldilocks" zone. We may not have this window 100 years from now.
Wont matter if we can settle the poles if the poles are the coldest place on earth at 250 degrees F.
Also, having our eggs in more than one basket offers us (as a species) a chance to survive an asteroid or comet impact.
No children here and I've never really care for them. I had a vasectomy when I was 28, and then the wife had a partial hysterectomy a couple years later. I'm 47 now and couldn't be happier.
There was a Russian group gathering hopefuls. They had a preference for young women from working class backgrounds. Even on Mars, you will need to cook, clean, plant, harvest etc. Not like the Moon where only science was done in one set of clothes eating pre-packed food.
You also want people with a sense of humor to with the sense of adventure.
Oh, it's Slashdot. That should explain it. But beyond that....
You don't have to go. You don't need to participate. You can come up with thousands of reasons why no one should go, but they matter only to you, personally, and not the slightest to people who DO want to go. Musk has a vision, and this is not Mars One, whose only claim to fame is hitting up its "selectees" for donations. Musk actually has a rocket ship. Call him a nutter if you want, but you'll be staying on shore so it's a moot point.
All I hope is that you will stay out of the way.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
I've always said if we can't bring people back safely from a trip to Mars we shouldn't go at all. It should never be acceptable to send a potential suicide mission to another planet unless it was an attempt to prevent further loss of life, e.g. to stop an asteroid or to spread our kind beyond this world for survival (i.e. Earth is about to implode). It is interesting how Elon ignores a trip to Venus, which would be a shorter trip (it is closer / 3mo) and would only require travel into the upper atmosphere to establish a base of operations from which the escape velocity is very low. Such a Venus mission wouldn't require suicide, and we could send resupply of food / oxygen / materials much more quickly. You could get those people back here if something goes wrong more easily as well, because the craft they went in could escape the gravitational pull, and it would require less fuel. If they have to come back early you simply don't get access to the shorter route which just means it might take a handful of months longer to get back, but still within reason.
With Mars you are just screwed; getting off the planet requires a giant rocket, sending supplies if they're low or out has to be done ahead of time or not at all, the distance is farther, and the window for getting home in a viable time is smaller. You miss that window you're dead. Also, we've already studied the dirt there enough with robots to know its just a desolate wasteland no more interesting than our moon. You can't have a base of operations for long there that can stay livable. Venus on the other hand, as long as we're not travelling to the ground, has livable temperatures in the upper atmosphere with the proper climate control. The oxygen we bring with us would keep us afloat without any extra power required due to oxygen being lighter than the lower atmosphere there. The acid in the atmosphere is an issue, which can be solved with acid proof materials. However, puncture the base of operations on Mars, it implodes and everyone dies. Whereas on Venus, you would have a slow leak over the course of hours that is easy to detect and seal in time before it becomes a more serious issue.
The whole thing is a no brainer, it really surprises me that someone like Elon is so laser focused on Mars which is clearly a loser in every way.
Surely he is talking about his shareholders.
... Space X concentrate first on building a ship that doesn't explode .. Just saying is all
It will be anything but a pleasant death. Lungs exploding? Eyes being sucked from you head. Don't sign me up.
Given all that, surely it would be a more worthwhile goal to establish a moon colony first. It would cost only a fraction of what a Mars colony would cost, it would help bootstrap the colonization infrastructure that a Mars colony would need, and would determine if humans are even capable of surviving the psychological stresses of persistent existential threats.
There is a difference between a frontier which is habitable but inhabited and a frontier which is not inhabitable without artificial tools. Settling Mars is not like settling the prairie. Its more like settling the bottom of the ocean and we have not managed to do it even though its just 7 miles away. Asking people to go as settlers at this point is just murder. If we were to send professionals to start a terraforming and then send Settlers in 100-200 years once the terraforming has started to take effect it would make sense. Sending settlers without terraforming is just not economically feasible. We would have to evolve a separate species who could live in artificial environments forever.
**Life is too short to be serious**
I feel like he can get away with saying that, because of the surprise turnout for that other project's one-way trip sell. We already know there are people who are interested enough in the glory, and/or the fame, and or the adventure to get willingly take the arrows in the back.
and start with the second. Better chances for survivial, right?
No wonder you need to be prepared to die if you're planning on going with SpaceX...
Elon himself will not be one of those people. What a psychopath.
The troll persists because people keep feeding him.
Honestly, I don't know what has to be wrong in a person's life for them to feel the need to spend their time acting like that. But it's the case for some people. I hope that whatever is wrong, things turn around for them.
An extra chromosome will do it! I suspect though that 110010001000 is just one of those kids that is socially awkward and is in the phase where he thinks that if he can convince everyone he is the smartest guy in the room then everyone will like him and everything will be good. He has a lot of growing up to do it seems. I don't really know though, he may actually have downs syndrome.
Your son is your time machine? I can already tell your son is very young and not that developed, yet. All newer parents talk like you. Where they believe their children are basically conduits to their own past. Where you can correct your own past mistakes by having your son not make them. You. Could. Not. Be. More. Wrong. Seriously. Do yourself a favor and stop walking down this path while you still can. Your child will be the most healthy if you treat them like they are *their own person* (which they are)... instead of an extension of yourself.
Love him. Be an influence. Be there for him when he needs you. Be unconditionally supportive (which doesn't mean agreeing with every decision he makes). That's all you need to do.
But please don't make him a prisoner to your own failures, successes, dreams, and fears. Let him develop all of those on his own. He will love you for it -- forever -- and never hold resentment.
Actually there are no penguins anywhere near the south pole, nor any fish -- those are thousands of miles away at the coast. But the main problem is, as you say, that nobody wants to settle there. There's just nothing "cool" about the south pole to anyone but a few scientists. People do want to go to Mars, so despite the much harsher conditions, the chances for settling Mars are somewhat better.
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Anyone traveling on a rocket associated with Musk should be prepared to die. Even if it's just to the space station. Plan for your death as early as launch.
I'm going to take you at face value here, at least for the sake of argument. I do hope that you understand that the reason people perceive you as a troll isn't because of your views; it's because you hang out in these threads writing prolific posts that are either playground-style insults (which makes you come across like a 5th grader) or, conversely, deliberately pretending to have opposite views to those that you actually hold in order to mock people.
This is not how adults behave in civilized society. It's how someone who just wants to start fights behave. It's the sort of behavior you generally only see in either drunks or children.
Do you understand why you get perceived for being a troll because of it? To stress the point: it's not your opinions that are in question here. It's how you interact with people who have differing opinions from you. If you want people to see you as a mature individual capable of holding a rational conversation, you would need to drop the insults, drop the pigeonholing of everyone into uniform "FOE" category wherein you ascribe a whole gamut of perceived beliefs to them, learn each person's actual beliefs on each particular issue at hand, and try to hold a conversation on its merits.
Otherwise, you of course have the freedom to keep just posting elementary-school insults and mockery. But I do hope that you realize that the only result of this is going to be that people perceive you as a troll. I'm not saying any of this to be mean. You stated that you're being open here, that you're not trying to troll, that you just want to express your personally held beliefs (note how I'm translating this out of insult-talk into the type of tone used in a normal conversation between two adults, as a demonstration). Do you actually want rational conversation with others, something where you might influence others, educate them, change views, etc? Or are you just looking to vent rage? What are you personally "getting" out of your posts? What are you wanting to "get" out of them? What goal(s) do you have?
To give some examples for self-observation, some things to ask yourself when reading over a post.
1) Would your average person, not involved in this conversation or this topic, reading over my post, perceive all or part of it to be insults directed at the person I'm talking to?
2) Do I sound angry?
3) Am I ascribing to anyone who expresses a view that in any way relates to any aspect that I'm opposed to, a whole set of beliefs which they haven't expressed? Aka, if a person says that they think that the Falcon 9 is a good launch vehicle that this means that they also think EM Drive is real? If a person says that they think that space tourism is a growth market, does that mean that they think that they personally are going to be living on Mars in a decade? In short, am I treating people as individuals, or just ascribing views I dislike to them because they expressed at least one view that I disagree with?
4) Is my tone such that a person reading this actually going to take what I wrote seriously, or are they going to see it as "this person is just trolling, trying to get people angry"?
5) Does my post contain words that well recognized as insults, such as "nitwit", "nutter", "moron", etc? Do people generally take part in a discussion with someone who uses insults? Do they generally want to listen to what that person has to say? Do they generally see a person who relies on insults as an educated adult, or as an immature, angry person with either personal problems or an axe to grind?
I recommend reading over your posts and asking yourself these questions.
I'll take 'em!
Thank you
Did he really say "they are almost certainly going to die" -- what is that, 95-100% chance of death? Seems like it would be pretty pointless with those odds since the goal is to have living people on Mars. What I did see from that article and video is that he said they must be "prepared for death" and there is a high chance of dying. That could be much less than 50%.
In regard to Slashdot news related to the trip to Mars... First post I read: Elon Musk Proposes Spaceship That Can Send 100 People To Mars In 80 Days! I read that post hearing the sound of the Beethoven's 9th symphony in my head. Then I read the second post: Elon Musk: First Humans Who Journey To Mars Must 'Be Prepared To Die' Something tells me they a tad bit of work on their marketing. ;-)
existential insanity
I want to travel to Mars, work hard and come back to earth!
If generations do this, there will come a day, we need not go back!
Death and taxes are the only truths on Earth, on Mars there are no taxes!
Wake up!
existential insanity
I want to travel to Mars, work hard and come back to earth!
If generations do, there will come a day, we need not go back!
Death and taxes are the only truths on Earth, on Mars there are no taxes!
Wake up!
Well, this initial group of adventurers is going to need some sort of name. Hrmmm. It's not going to be a lot of people, so really it's more of a squad of people going on a mission they might not return from. These people must be suicidal. Hrmm, what to name them what to name them....
How about the Musk'ateers?
im ok with that. BANZAI!
Nobody to get bribes from? Nobody to bullshit? Nobody to push around?
Besides, almost every one of them would stand no chance at passing the physical. It's not going to be like riding a bus.
I figure if you're going to mars, it's a one way trip. There is no way to send you back for the foreseeable future. Even if there is, I expect you'll be dead in no more than 5 years. I have a feeling you won't even make a year due to the sun's radiation. Maybe not even 5 minutes if the sun decides to blow some particles out that way. It's very hostile over there.
I just want to register someplace how mystified I am that not one single living soul seems to have the foggiest idea what the word "existential" even means; yet I seem to see and hear it everywhere I go. This Musk person seems to be no exception. It seems to be a generational thing too, because while Boomers (for example) or GenXers don't know either - at least they don't use the word every time they are expressing themselves and attempting to appear intelligent.
Elon Musk says the first people to Mars will die, but he doesn't say how they will die.
They will either die a slow, painful death, or they will die screaming their heads off. Take your pick.