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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.
At the moment we're showing great dexterity in de-terraforming Earth.
I think as long as we don't tackle this one we should be at least careful with prospective terraforming projects.
Um, are you high? Perhaps the "Science Guy" should learn a little bit about Mars before talking about it. A large portion of the planet has permafrost at or near the surface.
I'm not actually that much of a Mars advocate, and think the simplicity of using water there is overplayed (people talk about it like it's some sort of pure snow that you just pick up and melt, but it's (mostly) a rock-hard toxic brine mixed with sand and clay) - but come on, if you're going to talk about something, learn the basics.
"Define 'interesting'". "Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die?"
Physics fundamentals dictate that Mars will never resemble Earth, but it's human nature that people will one day live on it in a self-sustaining manner.
We could make Mars Earthlike in all but gravity and the blissfully longer day, but I'm not sure what the point would be. (Sure, that atmosphere would be lost in a million years, but so what?)
I don't think it will ever make sense. It will just be much easier to make huge orbiting habitats for those who want to escape Earth. Starting at big enough to hold 100k-1 million people, these start to make a lot of sense. You get the gravity and atmosphere you want, without the mind-boggling time that terraforming would take.
If we can only get robotic asteroid mining started, so that heavy industry isn't at the bottom of a gravity well, everything else becomes practical. And mostly-self-directed robotic mining equipment no longer sounds like far-fetched SF. More like inevitable loss of all the mining jobs on Earth. Start making millions of tons of rocket fuel in high orbit and suddenly the Solar system is ours for the taking.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The fallacy ad hominem (abusive) is "This guy is evil, therefor his claims are wrong." The first post is This guy is irritating; he may or may not be right. Not the same thing.
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You're technically correct, but missing the bigger picture.
Sure, we can't live in Antarctica permanently. But we haven't spent any of the last 200 years there trying to make the outposts there permanent either. So of course we can't.
If we had wanted to, we probably could have. We could have built giant underground farms with grow lights, dropped in a nuclear power plant, built an underground infrastructure, etc. And we could most likely be pretty self-sufficient there, since it's got oxygen and a lot of ice to melt for water. (I'll note that Mars doesn't have either. At least, not relatively pure water ice, not mixed with perchlorates.)
You can't use Antarctica as proof we can't live permanently on Mars since we didn't try to live permanently there. If we had tried and failed, that would be another story.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
It isn't. It is actually a reasonable, if incomplete statement. A more robust expression would be that due to the nature of evil, there can be no reliance on Trump. In fact, however, Trump is not simply evil, but a selfish moronic blowhard asshole who is known to lie over even easily disproved matters. Not to mention his tendency to reverse his position based on whatever inanity goes through his brain.
Therefore, you should assume he is wrong until demonstrated otherwise, or even better, ignore him utterly. And you ought to have been doing this twenty years ago.