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Bill Nye: We Are Not Going To Live on Mars, Let Alone Turn It Into Earth (usatoday.com)
pgmrdlm writes: Bill Nye says the idea of Mars colonization and terraforming -- making a planet more Earth-like by modifying its atmosphere -- is science fiction. "This whole idea of terraforming Mars, as respectful as I can be, are you guys high?" Nye said in an interview with USA TODAY. "We can't even take care of this planet where we live, and we're perfectly suited for it, let alone another planet." As for living on Mars permanently: Sorry, Nye says that's not happening either. "People disagree with me on this, and the reason they disagree is because they're wrong," he quipped. The famous science educator and CEO of The Planetary Society appears on National Geographic Channel's series "MARS." While the series explores human beings living on the Red Planet and even mining it, that doesn't mean Nye buys into the idea. For starters, he points to Antarctica, where scientists are stationed even during the harsh winter months but no one lives permanently.
"Nobody goes to Antarctica to raise a family. You don't go there and build a park, there's just no such thing. Nobody's gonna go settle on Mars to raise a family and have generations of Martians," Nye said. "It's not reasonable because it's so cold. And there is hardly any water. There's absolutely no food, and the big thing, I just remind these guys, there's nothing to breathe." Plus living in a dome, then putting on a spacesuit to go outside will get tiring -- fast. "When you leave your dome, you're gonna put on another dome, and I think that will get old pretty quick," he said. "Especially the smell in the spacesuit 00 all the Febreze you can pack, I think it will really help you up there."
"Nobody goes to Antarctica to raise a family. You don't go there and build a park, there's just no such thing. Nobody's gonna go settle on Mars to raise a family and have generations of Martians," Nye said. "It's not reasonable because it's so cold. And there is hardly any water. There's absolutely no food, and the big thing, I just remind these guys, there's nothing to breathe." Plus living in a dome, then putting on a spacesuit to go outside will get tiring -- fast. "When you leave your dome, you're gonna put on another dome, and I think that will get old pretty quick," he said. "Especially the smell in the spacesuit 00 all the Febreze you can pack, I think it will really help you up there."
Aside from being cold, barren, and lacking an atmosphere... The place is covered in chemicals that are hazardous to humans. How many people would go to Antarctica if the snow was made of perchlorates.
Uh, nope.
Can't agree with you on that one. I think he's pretty great on just about everything he does.
The moon would require roughly 1,000 comets to terraform. Comets would provide both water, oxygen, and momentum (spin). Due to its weaker gravity, the moon would hold onto its atmosphere for tens of thousands of years.
Moving 1,000 comets seems not too far off from our capabilities today. Reaching the moon is definitely possible - we've done it. The only difficulty is social - as far as I know, we haven't pulled off such a multi-generational project.
There are plenty of places on Earth that we have not set up shop which are still a trillion times more hospitable than Mars. Go 400 km straight north of Ottawa (which in Canadian terms is pretty well next door) and you are in absolute wilderness. It is great country full of rocks, swamps and lakes but living there is hard. Except for a few valley towns, First Nations reserves and settlements, and some mining centres, people are measured in 1s and 10s per 100 square km. And it is pretty much endless. Now look at Mars - it is worse in every way. No air, no plants, no water and winters that are even colder! There is no economic argument for mining Mars when the potential of most of the Canadian Shield, the Australian Outback, and Siberia has not been explored . Even mining the ocean floor would be easier! What we need is to clean up our act here. Use less stuff, make less of a mess and start to work on the over-population problem in a sensible way (whatever that would be).
"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
-https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/arthur_c_clarke_100793
It's pretty sad that a guy that used to be the poster-child for science education and the limitless possibilities of the future has become essentially nothing more than a strident leftist mouthpiece.
cf from Bill Nye Saves the World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Yes, that's serious. Not satire.
-Styopa
As much as I lament to say this the current Bill Nye that we have now is either a corrupted version or a mere shadow of the guy we had once known. I do not make these statements lightly as I had at once looked to him as a scientific role model of sorts. He is one of the people that set me on the path to being more of a man of science.
However...he has stopped dreaming apparently. Now do not get me wrong the idea of living on Mars "Currently" and I use that word as in currently we may not have the tech to do it. But again however...we have no idea what the future can hold. And it will be a bunch of crazy people that make the first trip to see if it can be done. And probably after more failures than we can count we will get a method that sticks. That is the very essence of science itself, venturing into the unknown for knowledge. And this quest can sometimes mean that it requires a stupid amount of trial and error to get something to work.
As such to just wave his hand away at the idea itself just means that whatever childhood wonder that poor man had possessed has clearly been extinguished.
Ahm, it really isn't human nature outside science fiction. When you talk to economists, anthropologists, people who actually study human nature rather than wax poetic about it, the prospects for a martian colony vanish pretty quickly. There just are not enough good reasons to do it outside fulfilling fantasies, and when one actually looks at what is involved in maintaining a self sufficient colony (hint : you can't do it with a couple of 3d printers and some magic mining machines), it gets crushed pretty quickly. The only reason Antarctica remains an international research park is that there has been so little interest in colonizing it. Law and treaties follow what people want to do, and quickly get abandoned if there is a push to do otherwise.
Antarctica is a pretty poor comparison as to why people don't settle there and make a living (there are these things called treaties, and they are worded in such as way to keep it as pristine as possible, limited personal and camp sizes, no mining, etc...).
He's also wrong about how much frozen water is available because truth be told no one knows for a matter of fact yet (but some argue there is actually a great deal locked away below ground).
There is nothing technically preventing people from living in a self sustained manner (from a constant resupply standpoint) so long as they are able to use the natural resources available on mars and have the energy they need (even if water reclamation is a major concern, it is possible to recycle most of the water needed).
Last but not least, exploration and pushing onward to new vistas is one of our defining traits. Ergo, I argue Bill Nye is no longer human. He was abducted after his tv show in the 90's and replaced with one of the prune people of planet asshole.
Find some valuable resource worth extracting* down there and there will be folks living down there. Or find some reason for trade routes to go through there (and need some kind of support) and the same will occur. Otherwise you won't find folks living anywhere. For example, see multitudes of mining towns and interior ports that have come and gone. As for Mars? Right now I don't see either. *Knowledge qualifies. And there are people down there permanently. For some value of "permanent". Just don't tell your neighbor how the book turns out!
And the difficulty and expense of all those things you mention is orders of magnitude greater than living in the Antarctic, which nobody does. Even the ISS doesn't have proper permanent residents, and that's only a day away if there's anything majorly wrong.
Heat:
Antarctica lowest: â'89.2 ÂC
Mars lowest: â'153 ÂC
Heating something from -153 to room temperature is the same energy as boiling it twice over. And you're doing that all day, every day, constantly and hoping the insulation saves you some power.
Power isn't free either, you need a whole bunch of equipment with a limited lifespan in a very harsh environment (see above) producing an AWFUL lot of power just to keep the temperature up and the lights on.
Water:
Collect it from where? How do you get more when you start having kids and living there? Nobody cares about recycling what you have but the processes are not 100% efficient... you'll lose water every time you use some. You'll need regular water sent to you by Earth or someone, or a way to generate it en-masse that we don't really have yet.
Food:
Now that you have limited water stocks, you need more water. Lots more water. More water to sustain the food year-round than you drink as pure-water yourself.
And that food doesn't grow out of nothing. It requires energy. From the soil, fertilizers, the sunlight, etc. It gets an awful lot of energy on Earth. It gets NOTHING on Mars except what you bring with you. E=mc^2. Though I'm slightly misusing it, you need an awful lot of solar power to make anything approaching a physical thing you can eat from the raw materials around you (which you will use up and need to be replenished from off-world sources unless you're literally synthesising food from pure energy, which you're not going to be for a few centuries yet). Watch/Read The Martian - terrible movie/book, precisely because you only need look at the calculations done in it to realise the amount of stuff you need for even one human to live any length of time.
Plants give out O2. Presuming you have them. You'd need about 700 potted plants to generate enough O2 and, more importantly, consume the CO2 that you're exhaling and choking yourself with. Per person. For anything from 5-10 people, you would need an entire garden centre or thereabouts. 24/7. Lit up, growing, thriving, fertilised, sustainable, no disease, etc.
Small groups may be able to survive for limited amounts of time presuming they have a reliable supply of very expensive and heavy equipment coming from Earth all the time.
You can no more "live on Mars" than you can "live on the Antarctic", or the bottom of the ocean... you need a lot of equipment and a ton of support and hope like hell that nothing goes wrong, and do it for short trips, with people willing to risk their lives and accept an awful lot of compromise.
NOT "Hey, let's all move there and start a family."
So, he's exactly 100% correct.
Mars is not a candidate for terraforming, but it would make an excellent radioactive landfill.
Why not just put them at the Lagrange Points? Much less delta-v required to get there.