[HN Gopher] A Recap of the Mars Terraforming Debate
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A Recap of the Mars Terraforming Debate
Author : rbanffy
Score : 54 points
Date : 2021-05-13 18:27 UTC (4 hours ago)
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| natch wrote:
| It seems that it hasn't occurred to the author that we can also
| change humans to be more adapted to Mars. And stretch the meaning
| of human to encompass human like individuals who do not have the
| same parameters. Terraforming might not have to go as far as he
| thinks, to be sufficient.
| Dort wrote:
| I think humankind should first clean up the mess here on earth
| before even thinking about colonizing moons and other planets.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| There's a fantastic novel series that starts with _Red Mars_ , by
| Kim Stanley Robinson. It follows a series of the first colonizers
| of Mars, and every time it shifts perspective it dives into a new
| science/technology frame.
|
| For a few chapters you are following an engineer, and it talks
| about the alloys and techniques she's using to build housing. A
| little while later you follow a geologist and the topic shifts a
| bit as this geologist goes out exploring.
|
| You follow biologists, psychologists, economists, and each time
| it dives into the challenges they have in how they perceive Mars
| and what to do with it.
|
| Inevitably, there's a conflict between the "Reds" and the
| "Greens". Given the series titles (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue
| Mars), I'm sure you can figure out who wins. However, it seems to
| suggest a result that I find fairly likely -- it doesn't matter
| what you _say_ we should do with Mars, people are going to do
| what they want. We already don 't care about externalities here
| on Earth, there's no way we can police them on Mars.
|
| That said, while I used to be a huge fan of the idea of
| colonizing Mars, I've swung around to the idea that colonizing
| asteroids is far more interesting. Mars is relatively resource
| poor, and asteroids are incredibly resource rich. There are some
| kilometers wide balls of iron, nickel, and platinum group metals
| out there. Not to mention water and carbon. All the materials
| you'd need to undertake construction in space and none of the
| challenges of having to lift it into orbit.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _I 've swung around to the idea that colonizing asteroids_
|
| Metal asteroids can, with some luck, provide us with boundless
| supplies of pretty much all metals, as I understand it. This
| will be one of the great milestones in human civilization.
|
| But I think it's a place you go to work. Mars is far more
| interesting as a place to live and build a society.
| 8note wrote:
| You can fit a lot more people in the asteroids, and it'll be
| easier to transport stuff between them.
|
| Mars has a lot of the same disadvantages that earth does. Its
| got a lot of gravity, and you can't communicate through the
| planet from one side to the other
| cryptoz wrote:
| I love Red Mars. The whole series is good but Red Mars itself
| is fantastic, one of my favorite books.
|
| You practically get an undergrad in areology reading it. Super
| curious to see how our reality lines up with the timelines in
| the book.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| Speaking of areology, there is a small subreddit for
| precisely that field which is quite good:
| reddit.com/r/Areology
| Robotbeat wrote:
| On the contrary, Mars has all the resources of asteroids but
| the advantage of a water cycle that has concentrated and
| reformed minerals like on Earth. The ability to process the
| atmosphere directly is a massive and under-rated advantage.
| MOXIE proves it's not just possible but feasible to generate
| fuel (carbon monoxide) and oxidizer (oxygen) from the Martian
| atmosphere, and nitrogen and even a bit of water (hydrogen and
| oxygen) as well as argon are available anywhere on the planet.
|
| The "let's just build cylinders" (which I think we should
| eventually do!!) often strikes me as a knee jerk contrarian
| position, an attempt to avoid hard questions about environment,
| and a "grass is always greener in fields further in the future
| and with less solid understanding."
|
| Planetary bodies with water cycles (or a history of them) are
| rich. Airless bodies have massive difficulties that are often
| handwaved away.
|
| And now we have powered flight (without needing propellant)
| demonstrated. Mars really is a much better place to establish a
| permanent human presence.
| elihu wrote:
| I agree with that. The way I look at is is that Mars has the
| resources needed to support a population and interplanetary
| travel, whereas the asteroids are (probably) where the
| lucrative mining opportunities are. Eventually we may
| colonize the belt, but if so we'll probably do it by using
| Mars as the local gas station and supermarket.
| c048 wrote:
| Building 'cylinders' gives us an environment that's a lot
| easier to control, manage and safeguard compared to a whole
| planet. Most planets will be entirely hostile to complex
| earth based life to begin with. They'll require either
| complex terraforming or some sort of isolated environment,
| and that's not even bringing up issues concerning gravity.
|
| Furthermore, in future wars planets would also be far easier,
| bigger and immovable targets compared to asteroids and space-
| stations. Just look up what happens when you drop a 10ton
| tungsten rod from outer-space. Thanks to gravity, when it
| hits the ground it has the same impact of a small nuclear
| device.
|
| When humanity starts to create colonies outside of earth, I
| expect most planets will only become fully automated mining
| colonies. Colonizing planets is a Star Trek fantasy that,
| most likely, will not be worth it.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Living in a asteroid belt, makes the poorest person capable
| of getting a ion-engine on a rock the ruler over all the
| well-dwellers by default - after all you have the high
| ground.
|
| Thus speaks the lord thy over-lord:
|
| I. You shall not erect asteroid defences.
|
| II. You shall not send others to space to rule beside me.
|
| III. Once every aeon i shall send a rock to test your
| faith. You shall fight one another, to proof your
| worthiness.
|
| IV. Be nice to one another.
|
| V. Game-theory applies, but in a similar way for everyone
| living in system, to everyone else out-system.
| kortilla wrote:
| > Just look up what happens when you drop a 10ton tungsten
| rod from outer-space. Thanks to gravity, when it hits the
| ground it has the same impact of a small nuclear device.
|
| That's... not as good as a nuclear device? Susceptibility
| to 10 ton tungsten rods is pretty lame to worry about when
| a 10 ton actual nuclear bomb would be so much worse.
| c048 wrote:
| You're missing the point. The point is how easy it
| becomes to destroy planetary targets once you start
| having an extra-earth presence as a society. You
| literally drop heavy stuff from orbit and you have a
| nuke. You need an actual, guidable, nuke (or self
| propelled object) to have the same effect on a space
| station or asteroid.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Does that make Tesla a nuclear power though? Or do they
| need to conduct a test first?
| c048 wrote:
| You may not realize it yet, but they've already become
| our new overlords. Do you think they bothered with
| getting a certified driving license for that puppet they
| put in the car they launched a few years back? They don't
| care about our earther laws. Yet there he is, drifting in
| space.
| rasputnik6502 wrote:
| You don't drop stuff from the orbit - it doesn't fall
| down
| eloff wrote:
| There is a HUGE difference in metals concentration in
| planetary crust and an asteroid that's mostly that element.
| Also a huge difference in gravity if you want the materials
| offworld.
|
| You don't have to colonize them, but mining asteroids makes
| tons of sense.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I think a lot of it will ultimately depend on whether Mars
| has enough gravity to avoid the health issues that we see in
| orbital microgravity environments.
|
| Do we have any idea, based on our experiences with space
| stations & lunar landings? Genuine question, I'd really like
| to know.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Mars has about a third of the Earth's, so it's not
| microgravity and is about twice as powerful as the Moon's.
| There are not many reasons to expect it will create huge
| health issues for earthlings but if you spend too much time
| on Mars without exercising on a centrifuge, adapting back
| to Earth could be a problem. There will be some loss of
| muscular mass, at least.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| Also going to voice my love for Red Mars, I found Green Mars to
| be much more of a slog to get through, but I really like
| anything KSR writes. Blue Mars was a nice finale though.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I wanted to like Red Mars, and the science stuff was well made,
| but a lot of the book is about politics, and to me, those parts
| were painful to read.
|
| I found it incredibly naive and unrealistic. Clearly many
| others disagree :)
| rbanffy wrote:
| I couldn't really like, or care for, the characters.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| I think it would be better to figure out how to establish self
| sufficient colonies capable of growth and replication without
| assistance. Starting out on planets and moons then in space.
|
| We could colonize the entire solar system by the time a
| measurable change has been made to the content of the martian
| atmosphere (if it's possible at all).
| capableweb wrote:
| > better to figure out how to establish self sufficient
| colonies capable of growth and replication without assistance
|
| Before we do that on planets and moons, what if we do it right
| here on Earth? Still large parts of the world are reliant on
| assistance from other "colonies", and there seems to be a human
| problem as the cause rather than technological or logistical
| problem.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| I think you're talking about reversing globalism. I honestly
| think it's easier to develop space colonies than reverse
| globally entrenched political positions.
|
| If we don't spread out there is a 100% chance we will all die
| given enough time. There are political forces aligned with
| your position which would seek to redirect any efforts back
| towards earth. If those ideas become entrenched we will never
| escape this planet and we will be forever subjugated and
| enslaved by its political machinations.
|
| With increased population density we always see more
| bureaucracy and authoritarian government and fewer freedoms
| and less autonomy.
| foreigner wrote:
| No, _you 're_ talking about transcending globalism by
| moving off or globe!
| gnarbarian wrote:
| Basically I just want to blast off into space where
| people won't annoy me.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Globalism has been reversed in the past. It's not some end
| state of humanity.
|
| Globalism => increased interdependence => increased
| fragility => collapse => localism => generate surplus from
| local institutions => increased profit opportunities from
| trade => globalism
| dfilppi wrote:
| Mars needs more gravity and raw materials (nitrogen). I suggest a
| large impactor or impactors to solve both. Now how to get them
| there...
| Robotbeat wrote:
| My whole opinion on terraforming Mars is it's a question for the
| indigenous Martians, not for Earth. Once there are people on Mars
| (perhaps descendants of people who come in our lifetimes) who
| have lived and survived on the planet for long enough for Mars to
| be their home, for them to have developed a distinctly Martian
| culture, way of life, and possibly
| cultural/mythological/spiritual/religious connections with the
| planet and their surroundings, who have had to survive the harsh
| environment for at least a few generations, then THEY should make
| the decision, not people millions of miles away arguing for or
| against it.
|
| They are the only ones who will have sufficient stake (their own
| lives) and perspective (living on the planet for the vast
| majority of their natural lives) to make this decision.
|
| Just like I think indigenous people on Earth have the right to
| environmental decisions on their land, so should Martians. They
| will cherish Mars more than we will ever understand.
|
| Secondly, I think that terraforming Mars should be seen in two
| levels:
|
| 1) making the atmosphere thick enough to go without a pressure
| suit in the deepest areas. This is technically possible (although
| not comfortable or healthy or safe, and requires some positive
| pressure) once the pressure exceeds the Armstrong Limit, or
| 0.9psi, in Hellas Basin. Notably, this can be even achieved (with
| a safety factor of 2!) within the volatiles budget that the "NASA
| says terraforming Mars is impossible" Jakosky paper claims.
| ...which is also something really frustrating. The bar for what
| counts as "terraformed" is made very high by the authors, higher
| than the physiological reality, and this is somewhat arbitrary
| but they treat it as an objective fact. Anyway. 1-2psi or so,
| mostly CO2. Similar conditions to this actually persisted for a
| while on Mars during the Noachian Period where there was flowing
| water and a very active water cycle, and this may have been when
| Mars had life that thrived if there was any. This level of
| terraforming could be accomplished within a century in principle.
| So if anything, this level of terraforming is really
| "Areoforming" and would potentially allow Martian life to thrive.
| This level is achievable and makes Mars settlement MUCH easier
| and safer without insane energy requirements (just orbital
| mirrors or solar sails could do it). Martians may decide to stop
| at this point.
|
| 2) actual breathable atmosphere. The pressure would have to be
| higher, probably 3-5psi, and oxygen to 1-3psi partial pressure.
| It would change Mars by oxidizing the surface. But the energy
| required to make this much oxygen is insane. petawatts for
| centuries. (Humanity uses just a few Terawatts of useful energy
| right now.) it'd likely kill surface Mars life unless it was
| adapted. And by the time this happens, Martians may already have
| adapted to the low oxygen environment, with maybe some sort of
| mechatronic/prosthetic oxygen carrying organ just like whales
| adapted to the airless ocean depths. So it may just be
| unnecessary. (There's one trick that could possibly make this
| fast and cheap: if huge quantities of perchlorates are found.
| Perchlorates exothermally release oxygen when catalyzed... they
| actually could produce power with oxygen as a byproduct. Some
| oxygen candles use perchlorates, and perchlorates have been found
| to be fairly common on Mars. It's a hail-Mary, but is an
| interesting potential option.)
|
| The timescale and feasibility (and, I argue, ethical
| considerations) between 1 and 2 are orders of magnitude apart but
| they're often treated as the same exact question, especially in
| the press which doesn't like getting too technical.
| robbles wrote:
| I remember reading that Mars doesn't have a magnetic field like
| Earth's to protect it from solar wind, therefore the atmosphere
| mostly gets swept away. Is that not the more difficult problem
| here? This debate seems to center on generating enough CO2, but
| that seems a bit irrelevant if it would just blow away. How would
| you even go about fixing the magnetic field of a planet?
| andys627 wrote:
| We can create a magnetosphere at Lagrange point between Mars
| and Sun that has a tail that would protected Mars from solar
| radiation. Radiation from other stars is still a problem I
| think? https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-
| atmo...
| rbanffy wrote:
| True, but at least the magnetic field could redirect solar
| wind (or, at least, its protons) to impact head-on and
| replenish Martian hydrogen instead of pushing the atmosphere
| away.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Build a worldhouse instead of full terraformation ?
|
| https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/484746e824a3a
|
| No need to worry about atmosphere loss & you can start
| incrementally and get usable land almost at only, not only
| after long years of terraformation.
| qayxc wrote:
| Agreed. Para-terraforming is a criminally underrated concept.
|
| With "terraforming" you'd have the problem that dozens of
| generations would have to work their proverbial asses off
| without ever experiencing the fruits of their labour. Not
| exactly a strong suit of the human race.
|
| Another advantage of the world-house approach is the
| possibility to leave sites of interest as-is by not including
| them. With terraforming it's impossible to preserve select
| areas for scientific or cultural reasons.
| meepmorp wrote:
| It's all about the rate of loss. If it's 1% per year, that's
| probably not going to work; if it's 0.0001%, that's a different
| matter altogether.
|
| Everything is temporary in the long run.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| From the paper in the article:
|
| >"MAVEN has observed the Martian upper atmosphere for a full
| Martian year, and has determined the rate of loss of gas to
| space and the driving processes; 1-2 kg/s of gas are being
| lost."
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001910351.
| ..
| meepmorp wrote:
| Oh, I was thinking in terms of the cost benefit of
| terraforming. If you magically make the planet's atmosphere
| 1 bar of co2, how long would that last at a usable level -
| say at or above 0.5 bar - assuming no replacement?
|
| If that's 10k years it's less appealing, but 1m years might
| be worth it.
| FredPret wrote:
| Earth's magnetic field comes from consisting of a massive ball
| of molten iron surrounded by layers of rock, soil, and,
| ultimately, monkeys.
|
| The critical component for the magnetic field (the molten iron
| ball) is hard to replicate.
| jpollock wrote:
| That's probably a problem on billion year scales. I wonder what
| the annual loss would be.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| From the paper in the article:
|
| >"MAVEN has observed the Martian upper atmosphere for a full
| Martian year, and has determined the rate of loss of gas to
| space and the driving processes; 1-2 kg/s of gas are being
| lost."
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001910351.
| ..
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Its estimated Mars had at atmosphere for the first billion
| years. But loss is not linear. The less you have, the faster
| it's eroded.
|
| So to rebuild it, might want to quickly get to a sustainable
| value before its blown away again? I favor crashing Saturn's
| icy asteroids into Mars to release gigatons of water vapor.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Isn't it the reverse? The more atmosphere is present the
| faster it erodes away?
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Not according to the papers.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Which papers? That's really counter intuitive to me. I'd
| expect that a higher atmosphere concentration would have
| a higher rate of loss because the solar wind would grab
| more of it.
|
| Does this mean that mars is losing atmosphere faster
| today than it did 500million years ago? That's really
| fascinating!
| bpodgursky wrote:
| https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-
| atmo....
|
| > In answer to this challenge, Dr. Jim Green - the Director of
| NASA's Planetary Science Division - and a panel of researchers
| presented an ambitious idea. In essence, they suggested that by
| positioning a magnetic dipole shield at the Mars L1 Lagrange
| Point, an artificial magnetosphere could be formed that would
| encompass the entire planet, thus shielding it from solar wind
| and radiation.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| No problem - we just need to melt the outer core to get the
| dynamo effect - will only require 1 trillion nuclear bombs once
| we figure the technology to drill down to that depth.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| Perhaps that's the end-game for lord Musk's Boring Company
| TchoBeer wrote:
| Can't tell how sarcastic this comment is
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| First, I should note that I have a personal bias in that I study
| Mars for my PhD. I dislike Elon Musk, and I am not in favor of
| terraforming.
|
| That out of the way, McKay comes off as overly aggressive at
| times, and wishy-washy in others. It seems contradictory to call
| Jakosky's model ridiculous and absurd while also claiming we
| don't have enough data to know for sure. Jakosky is a well-known
| and respected Mars researcher, and I would much rather trust his
| 2018 paper over a paper or two written in the early '90s before
| we had detailed observations of the Martian atmosphere or
| surface.
|
| At the very least, I appreciate Jakosky planting an empirical
| stake in the ground for his position.
| Miraste wrote:
| You're not in favor of terraforming, full stop? Elon's nukes
| and ground CO2 idea seems dubious, and like his dome habitats
| idea (turns out they're very limited in lower gravity and
| pressure: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/28/domes-
| are-very...) I think it will be dropped quickly once SpaceX
| gets to Mars and starts working on habitation seriously. He
| talks big but he acknowledges reality eventually.
|
| However, I struggle to see a reason to oppose the concept of
| terraforming Mars. I don't study the planet for a living so I'd
| love to hear your thoughts on it.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| I see no point to it. As another commentor mentioned below,
| humanity is unlikely to travel to another star system. To me,
| terraforming Mars is like going camping in your backyard.
| It's different, it's harder, fun, but ultimately has no real
| purpose. Mars is more likely to be colonized for exploitation
| of its resources than as some utopian egalitarian human
| endeavor. To me that would be a shame. I would like to see it
| preserved more or less as-is as a record of its own history.
| Miraste wrote:
| Interesting. To me, Mars is a large rock in a universe of
| large rocks, but it could be our second home (even if it is
| done for profit). In conversations like this I often
| consider this comic: https://www.smbc-
| comics.com/comic/modules
|
| I don't care about Mars' surface processes. If I had a
| button to blast its outer layer off and replace it with a
| habitable one I would press it without hesitating - yet I
| imagine if I spent years studying the planet academically I
| would act differently, based on an amalgam of my concepts
| of "studying" and "Mars" I came up with on the spot and am
| ignoring anyway. Empathy is a poor substitute for
| understanding.
|
| There's a philosophical difference here too. I don't see a
| problem with pulling resources from as much of the galaxy
| as we can reach if it prolongs Earth life, assuming we
| don't find other lifeforms. The galaxy only has mystique
| when we assign it, which we can't do if we're dead.
| dheera wrote:
| I mean a few hundred years ago people believed humans could
| not ever fly, but it happened, and we take it for granted
| now.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| There is model for flight on Earth: birds. Humans
| achieved a similar feat through mimicry and the use of
| fossil fuels. There is no model for instellar transit. I
| am not optimistic that we can develop a technology that
| can speed transport between stars to such a degree before
| we destroy ourselves like every other hominid that has
| ever existed.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > There is no model for instellar transit.
|
| There is, but extrasolar objects don't have engines and
| do very low energy transits.
|
| We'd need a large habitat, a power source that can last
| for a couple thousand years and a lot - and I mean a LOT
| - of reaction mass to accelerate it and to brake it when
| it arrives at its destination. Ideally, it'd be preceded
| by numerous robotic probes that'd chart the worlds ahead
| for possible refueling stops (that could add a couple
| thousand years to the mission) and have a number of
| possible targets lined up on a reasonable trajectory so
| that if the next system is not really that hospitable or
| doesn't have anything worth doing a very large delta-v
| for, it can just press ahead to the next destination.
|
| Another thing it'd need is a lot of determination to
| build it, to seal it with a population, test it for
| generations to make sure the ecosystem works and is
| stable, and then send it out into the unknown without any
| possibility of returning to Earth. It's very long term
| engineering we rarely do.
| valuearb wrote:
| There are numerous credible designs for space ships able
| to reach a few percentage points of the speed of light.
|
| Reaching 10% would be enough to visit nearby stars within
| a lifetime.
|
| And once we can extend human life spans to many hundreds
| of years these journeys become even more achievable.
| kortilla wrote:
| The breakthroughs in flying came when we stopped trying
| to make machines look like birds.
|
| Submarines work well because we didn't bother making them
| anything like fish.
| dheera wrote:
| Planes work quite differently from birds. We were
| inspired by them, but we didn't copy them at all.
| Attempts in the past to copy birds mostly failed.
|
| We got to the moon, Mars, and several other solar system
| bodies in the past half century without any mimicry.
|
| Maybe you don't, but I have very strong optimism for
| technological advancement, and also for modifying our
| life form to rid ourselves of our tendency to destroy
| things before heading to other stars. When I say "we"
| will go to other stars, it won't be Homo sapiens, but
| another species that we will create as our successor.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| We got to the moon. 12 humans have walked on it. Note
| that 50 years later, nobody is living there, or working
| there. Nobody has even returned.
|
| We may get humans to Mars. It's technically possible. But
| I don't think we will ever live there.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| The person you're replying to stated elsewhere that they
| don't believe in the conservation of energy, so
| (ironically) save yourself the energy of arguing with
| them.
| dheera wrote:
| 50 years isn't a long time. I'm sure some dude said the
| same thing about Tibet being too harsh to live in, and
| yet there are cities there now.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| What are you talking about? People have lived in Tibet
| for 20,000+ years?
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| The distance to the moon and Mars is absolutely trivial
| compared to even the closest star: to Mars is 0.0007% of
| the way to Alpha Centauri.
|
| >We got to the moon, Mars, and several other solar system
| bodies
|
| You're conflating humans and probes, which are vastly
| different.
| valuearb wrote:
| We didn't land on the moon?
| dheera wrote:
| > You're conflating humans and probes, which are vastly
| different.
|
| I disagree. Robots can build infrastructure far ahead of
| human settlement, such that everything already exists
| when we are ready to travel.
|
| We can also potentially re-engineer our own life form, or
| create an entirely new inorganic lifeform, to withstand
| various conditions, including radiation and a wider range
| of temperatures. That will be our successor.
|
| We are only _beginning_ to understand genetics in the
| past decade. We have a long, long way to go, and a lot to
| understand. Science is still at its infancy.
|
| Also, this is something I could never say in an academic
| context, but deep down I don't believe in conservation of
| energy, partly because the big bang itself violates it.
| Yes, I would be ridiculed for saying this in a scientific
| context, but so would someone in the 1500s for saying
| that the Earth goes around the sun. I think at some point
| in the distant future we will not be reliant on stars as
| our energy source.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| 'we' did not go to Mars, 'we' did not go to pluto. We
| sent cameras with walky-talkies. That is so vastly
| different than sending people to the moon, that it's not
| really something we can disagree on in good faith.
|
| If you truly do not believe in the conservation of
| energy, I think we're done here since none of my
| arguments will be good enough for such wild speculation.
| dheera wrote:
| If we can send cameras with walky-talkies, we can invent
| and send (possibly silicon-based) life forms that will
| carry on our legacy while being a lot more resistant to
| the elements, require much less support along the
| journey, and can tolerate whatever gases and radiation
| may be present at the destination while still reproducing
| and carrying on society just as life does now.
|
| Human bodies suck because they need to eat, need to poop,
| complain if what they eat isn't tasty, fight with each
| other, and get cancer, but our legacy as intelligent life
| doesn't need to continue in our current carbon-based meat
| bag form.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| I can't believe I'm entertaining a reply, but how would a
| human-invented lifeform sent to the stars carry on human
| society if it is a) not human, and b) light years
| spatially distance and thousands of years temporally
| distant?
|
| This reads like an ungrad astronomy major fever dream.
| natch wrote:
| The question "what makes us human" is a deep one that has
| vexed philosophers for a long time. I don't have the
| answer. If you have the answer, forgive me if I take it
| with a grain of salt.
|
| I do think it's possible that our best hope for
| navigating the transition beyond the singularity involves
| transplanting our humanness to another kind of life form.
| I'm not necessarily talking about uploading... more about
| a staggered intergenerational transition mixed in with
| life as we know it. I realize that to some people, this
| will continue to sound like crazy talk, until one day it
| isn't. It's ok if you are one of those people :-).
| dheera wrote:
| It would carry on our legacy as intelligent life. I don't
| think maintaining our current iteration in evolution is a
| condition that should be valued. We can evolve, or invent
| another life form that carries our civilization forward.
|
| Yes, it reads like a dream. Technological breakthroughs
| of the past were created by people with dreams, not by
| skeptics.
| natch wrote:
| I would like to see it preserved too, but it seems there
| are some tradeoffs with respect to survivability of
| intelligent life in the face of potential extinction
| events.
|
| This is assuming that worst case scenarios are possible on
| Earth as on any planet... I think that's a reasonable
| assumption.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I think we absolutely can travel to another star system.
| But more critically, this argument strikes me as goal post
| moving by space settlement skeptics: mass transport to Mars
| is increasingly appearing to be feasible, so we'll put the
| goal posts on Proxima b.
|
| The exploitation argument doesn't make any sense because
| Mars doesn't have any resources that would really make
| sense to ever bring back to Earth, except as a side
| product. It's a new home like an island in the Pacific for
| the Polynesians. I don't consider Polynesians settling
| uninhabited new islands to be objectionable at all, but
| instead an expression of what makes humanity wonderful.
| Preservation of a dead rock for preservation's sake makes
| no sense. It's treating stasis as better than life, and I
| just can't get behind that.
| medstrom wrote:
| One reason not is: we're directly responsible for any
| suffering that then happens on that rock. A biosphere
| full of life means horror and suffering every day for so
| many living things it potentially eclipses all humanity's
| past crimes combined.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| > "A biosphere full of life means horror and suffering
| every day for so many living things it potentially
| eclipses all humanity's past crimes combined."
|
| This is the most astounding perspective on the value of
| life that I can imagine. Like the argument of a genocidal
| supervillain.
| ithkuil wrote:
| "I have the moral obligation to kill all the living
| humans today so I spare the suffering of until
| generations hereafter"?
| beckingz wrote:
| By that logic we should take responsibility for the
| suffering on earth.
|
| Seems like the winning move is to go double or nothing
| and try and make life more sufferable (containing less
| suffering) on both planets.
| dheera wrote:
| Also honestly I think it's _extremely fortunate_ that we
| have Proxima Centauri only 4 light years away as our
| nearest star. It 's a red dwarf, and will continue to
| shine for at least another 4 _trillion_ years, a thousand
| times longer than the sun will shine. Of course, granted
| it 's habitability zone and other things are different,
| but that does not preclude us redefining habitability by
| inventing another life form to be our successor.
|
| Proxima Centauri will outlive the vast majority of stars
| in the galaxy.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that an a long time scale of tens
| to hundreds of thousands (not to mention millions) of
| years, the stars move around quite a bit.
|
| The Alpha Centauri system will be just 3 light years away
| in 30,000 years. In 1.4 million years, Gliese 710 will
| pass within 0.2 light years of Earth. That's close enough
| to be reached in a human healthspan with some beefed up
| (but still fairly sane) nuclear-electric propulsion that
| we could probably start building today if we had a reason
| to go out to 0.2 light years.
|
| But other interstellar propulsion systems with higher
| performance are feasible, such as pellet stream beamed
| propulsion combined with a magsail. Really good fusion
| might work, too. Laser propulsion is feasible especially
| for probes but isn't terribly efficient (pellet stream
| uses like a hundredth the energy for the same payload).
| Antimatter would be nice, but I'm not convinced feasible
| storage could be developed to beat the usable energy
| storage density of fission or fusion... or rather we're
| probably much more than 100 years away from sufficiently
| efficient antimatter storage.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| I said this elsewhere in this thread, but I study surface
| processes on Mars, so to me the planet is still alive and
| active. Things change, mysteries unfold, new
| environmental conditions come and go.
|
| I'm sure you wouldn't object to national parks or
| wilderness areas, it's just that in the case of Mars
| there is no (known) life. How much each of us values the
| presence of life will differ, but in my view it's worth
| preserving Mars.
| kortilla wrote:
| Pick a different planet to preserve.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Venus is very easy to preserve.
| ianai wrote:
| To me, if mars had life in its past and no longer does
| then we could consider it one huge grave. Lost in the
| terraforming debate I read is that any atmosphere we
| managed to kick up would be temporary. It might take a
| long time to leak off, but they're not discussing any
| means to reverse the trend. As I understand, Mars doesn't
| have an active core and thus magnetic field holding its
| atmosphere in place. There's no way we're going to fire
| up a core...
|
| Turning choice, large asteroids into liveable habitats
| seems an infinitely more productive task.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Firing up a core is hard, but laying superconducting
| cables around the equator is not particularly hard
| (probably easier than terraforming). It could replicate a
| magnetosphere just fine, while also functioning as a
| planet wide electricity grid and a decade-long battery.
| valuearb wrote:
| "Temporary" == millions of years.
| albertzeyer wrote:
| > I would like to see it preserved more or less as-is as a
| record of its own history.
|
| But on the other side, what is really the point to this?
|
| In a couple of million years, none of this really matters.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| I see it as littering, we'll all be dead in 100 years so
| what does it matter if I toss my trash into the bushes?
| beckingz wrote:
| What about leaving behind awesome artwork?
|
| We could turn mars into a sweet art project.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| You mean add graffiti to my beloved red rocks? Blasphemy.
| tw04 wrote:
| >and I am not in favor of terraforming.
|
| Why not? It would seem that's something we're going to have to
| master in order to populate the galaxy. Seems like it would
| make sense to figure it out somewhere close to home so we can
| have all the appropriate gear onboard a flight out into the
| cosmos.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| We aren't going to populate the galaxy. We aren't even going
| to populate Mars. We are going to live on Earth until
| something cataclysmic happens, and then we will be gone.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| That's really likely to be true if you walk into the future
| believing it.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| Seems a little grandiose considering its just a comment
| on HN.
| dheera wrote:
| I strongly disagree with this. We have several hundred
| million years left, and we've only been around as an
| intelligent civilization for what, 100K years?
|
| 200 years ago nobody would even _think_ of flying on Earth,
| and yet here we are, taking it for granted that you can get
| almost _anywhere_ on this planet within 24 hours for a
| couple thousand dollars, and within a century of inventing
| the car we landed a robot on freaking Mars.
|
| Now I _do_ think that we will take charge of evolution and
| invent a form of life that will be our successor to
| withstand a much harsher range of conditions and absent
| from the "bugs" of current life such as cancer and heart
| disease, rather than our current unreliable meat bags, but
| we'll make it happen nonetheless.
|
| All that said -- I do want to see more attention toward
| terraforming _Earth_ as well. Even with zero global
| warming, the sun 's brightness will increase such that our
| oceans will boil away within 1 billion years, even though
| it won't actually engulf the Earth for another 4 billion. I
| would think it's realistic to extend the habitable period
| of life on Earth from ~300 million years to maybe 2 billion
| years with some terraforming tricks. That will buy us more
| time to terraform Mars or Saturn's moons in preparation for
| the red giant phase of the sun.
|
| Also, learning to terraform the Earth can reverse global
| warming, because, you know, politicians don't give a fuck
| about stopping it, so we should attempt to learn to reverse
| it as a backup plan while the political environmental
| efforts continue in parallel.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| I think the disconnect here is between potential and
| probable. Humanity likely has the potential for
| interstellar travel, but our nature will prevent it in my
| opinion. Homo sapiens have twice come to the edge of
| nuclear oblivion already (being saved only by luck
| essentially), and I would wager we are are speeding much
| faster towards nuking each other than reaching the stars.
| dheera wrote:
| If nuclear war breaks out, it will be sad, we will lose a
| lot of our population, and cities will be destroyed, but
| I do not think a nuclear breakout will result in the
| death of humanity. I cannot see a realistic war scenario
| in which we will destroy every habitable corner of the
| planet.
|
| And if we can cure cancer in the next 50 years (I think
| realistic), we'll have even better odds of surviving an
| event, as a species.
| natch wrote:
| The person you are replying to has said he would not mind
| if all humanity were to die and go extinct. Ugh.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| The collapse of all plant life would mean the death of
| humans. Nuclear winter is a well-studied and modeled
| phenomenon.
| dheera wrote:
| I don't think we would collapse all plant life.
|
| While we have the theoretical capability to destroy all
| plant life, I think realistically we'd end up
| obliterating a few cities before war would cease, and a
| full-on nuclear winter is unlikely.
| kergonath wrote:
| You don't need to kill _all_ plants, just enough of those
| we can eat. Not even all of those, either. Look into
| history to see what happens when enough people don't have
| enough to eat.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| > I don't think we would collapse all plant life.
|
| I mean it's not really about what _you_ _think_. See the
| top two links here about the devastating effects of
| small-scale conflicts
|
| - https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00794-y
|
| - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1919049117
|
| - https://doi.org/10.1126/science.222.4630.1283
|
| - https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JD030509
|
| - https://doi.org/10.1080/03036758.1986.10423349
|
| - https://doi.org/10.1029/2006JD008235
| kergonath wrote:
| > We have several hundred million years left, and we've
| only been around as an intelligent civilization for what,
| 100K years?
|
| This sounds wildly optimistic, considering our chronic
| inability to fix our behaviour before it results in
| excessive damage. Never mind the occasional asteroid.
|
| > 200 years ago nobody would even think of flying on
| Earth, and yet here we are, taking it for granted that
| you can get almost anywhere on this planet within 24
| hours for a couple thousand dollars, and within a century
| of inventing the car we landed a robot on freaking Mars.
|
| The myth of Icarus is a bit older than 200 years. So are
| Leonardo da Vinci's drawings. Plenty of people did in
| fact think of flying, most probably before they had any
| way of writing it down for us to read.
| margalabargala wrote:
| It's been 241 years since the first manned unpowered
| flight, in a hot air balloon. Granted that's a long way
| from getting anywhere on the planet, but I'm skeptical
| that 41 years after that event no one was thinking of
| flying.
| f00zz wrote:
| Not with that attitude.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| As the commentor below stated, I do not believe humans will
| colonize anything but our own solar system. Things are simply
| too far away, even assuming there is some breakthrough that
| speeds up travel by two or three orders of magnitude.
| dheera wrote:
| There have been several order-of-magnitude breakthroughs in
| travel speed for the past 200 years. We have several
| hundred million years of time on Earth to go, and a couple
| billion on the solar system, to figure it out. We also have
| plenty of time to figure out how to re-engineer and evolve
| our own bodies to deal with radiation and other hazards.
|
| We will figure it out.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| We simply exploited fossil fuels.
|
| You are extremely optimistic about having several hundred
| million years left on Earth, when the longest living
| hominid existed for only ~2 million years.
|
| I firmly believe that homo sapiens will self-destruct
| long before that point, as we have greatly overstressed
| the planet in only 200,000 years, mostly in the last 200.
| aaronax wrote:
| We could learn how to "simply exploit" atomic fuels. That
| should be good for another magnitude or two, right?
| kergonath wrote:
| The funny thing is that we know already quite a bit about
| how to exploit them. Now, putting that into practice is
| another matter.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >We simply exploited fossil fuels.
|
| This hand waves away all the accomplishments in seafaring
| prior to the 19th century.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| What were the order of magnitude speed developments in
| seafaring before 1800? I'm not familiar with the topic.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Navigation techniques improved substantially. While not
| inherently a speed improvement it increased the effective
| range of mariners by a ton resulting in effectively the
| same thing.
| kergonath wrote:
| > While not inherently a speed improvement it increased
| the effective range of mariners by a ton resulting in
| effectively the same thing.
|
| There were _loads_ of innovations around the shape and
| profiling of ship hulls depending on conditions in which
| they operated. Same for sails and stuff, not to mention
| doing away with rowers. This improved speed quite a lot
| on top of range.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| Navigation is irrelevant to the space flight argument
| though, we know how to navigate between planets and stars
| (in theory). Speed is the limiting factor.
| kergonath wrote:
| > We simply exploited fossil fuels.
|
| Not simply, but mostly: progress started before the steam
| engine. But yeah, pop sci is hyping a lot of things that
| are very, very unlikely in the near future, and it looks
| like we won't have much beyond that.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| This is a pretty terrible argument, mostly because it
| seems to support Musk's and Zubrin's position that if we
| stop progressing we risk falling into stagnation, decay,
| and ultimately extinction and yet you're somehow using it
| to say we SHOULDN'T try expanding to other planets or
| star systems. It doesn't seem logically consistent!
|
| My view is that learning to master inhabitation of Mars
| and other places in space will enable us to revert Earth
| from a bunch of agricultural land and farms and suburban
| sprawl back into a garden (dotted with dense, luxurious
| cities) which we camp out in during the weekend.
|
| Space development shows how to thrive WITHOUT fossil
| fuels. It's so strange to me that folks seem to have this
| backwards.
| meepmorp wrote:
| > My view is that learning to master inhabitation of Mars
| and other places in space will enable us to revert Earth
| from a bunch of agricultural land and farms and suburban
| sprawl back into a garden (dotted with dense, luxurious
| cities) which we camp out in during the weekend.
|
| How does that work, exactly?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| In space, any food produced would have to be grown
| inside, sealed away from the outside environment to
| protect it from the vacuum or near-vacuum of space or
| Mars. We will grow it in greenhouses or perhaps vats
| (staples like corn or wheat can be replaced by fermented
| foods like @solar_foods or @feedkind, using ultimately
| solar power, this is actually more efficient than
| photosynthesis and with a much smaller environmental
| footprint than agriculture) and certainly not have free
| grazing cattle (which is the biggest land use in the US).
| On Mars, we're already beginning to master solar/battery-
| electric flight, so perhaps we may not need so many
| surface roads and we can place trains and such
| underground. Our footprint on the planet Earth could
| shrink by an order of magnitude even as our economy and
| quality of life improve (the density effect on economic
| productivity is well-established--and Mars will be really
| expensive to live on unless in large, dense cities...
| suburban sprawl being prohibitively expensive). These are
| all things that are fairly hard to prove on Earth as the
| whole system has an inertia due to developing with
| abundant fossil fuels, but on Mars we will be forced to
| rely entirely on renewable (mostly solar but perhaps wind
| and geothermal) or nuclear power, so a Martian society
| becomes a blueprint and a powerful proof of concept of
| how Earth life can be..
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| We use the rare Martian mineral handwavium
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| I totally accept extinction. It's natural. Homo sapiens
| will burn bright and briefly, and the planets will
| continue to spin. I would argue that it would be much
| more worthwhile to spend money improving Earth for humans
| while we can, than dumping trillions of dollars into
| spaceflight (which I say unironically as someone who is
| currently paid by NASA).
|
| >Space development shows how to thrive WITHOUT fossil
| fuels.
|
| Not sure how that's the case given the staggering
| emissions of Falcon 9 for example.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Every satellite in orbit that lasts more than a week or
| two uses solar or nuclear energy. Starlink is solar
| powered and uses electric rockets to reach final orbit
| and maintain position.
|
| Hydrogen is one of the most common rocket fuels, and
| Starship will need to used synthesized methane (which we
| actually make on board ISS using direct cabin air carbon
| capture and the Sabatier process using hydrogen made from
| water split with solar electricity) on Mars to return to
| be reused, and Musk said SpaceX would eventually use
| synthesized methane for Earth-side refueling of Starship
| as well.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| From your comments I feel like you _gotta_ be familiar
| with Kim Stanley Robinson 's novel SF _Red Mars_ (if not
| you'd like it), but here's how he tries to make you feel
| better about your NASA budgetted job, while agreeing with
| your basic analysis on things like terraforming and many
| other things you've said (the plot of his earlier novel
| notwithstanding, he's partially doing penance for it).
|
| > However, even if slower, terraforming Mars remains a
| great long-term goal; but long-term meaning like ten
| thousand years. Which means we have to get our
| relationship to our own planet in order for anything
| interesting to happen on Mars...
|
| > The main project for civilization now is creating a
| sustainable way of life here on Earth. That's the
| necessary first step; anything beyond would rely on that
| succeeding, so exploring space is less important now.
| That said, space science is an earth science. What we
| learn around the solar system can often illuminate the
| project we have here of keeping this planet's biosphere
| healthy. So I like the space program, and feel it is not
| funded out of proportion to its importance. Robotic
| missions are already doing a lot of what we need done,
| but humans are better at many things than robots, and
| it's more exciting to see humans on the other planets
| than it is to see robots. So, on balance, I'd like to see
| more investment in space science and less in areas like
| weaponry. Our taxpayer bailout of the banker gamblers who
| lost their bets in 2008 cost us about ten thousand times
| the entirety of what we've spent on NASA.
|
| https://www.publicbooks.org/earth-first-then-mars-an-
| intervi...
|
| This interview in particular is worth reading for this
| whole topic being discussed here.
| tlb wrote:
| Which parts of our solar system do you think we should
| colonize?
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| None besides Earth.
| [deleted]
| sigg3 wrote:
| Not even a cozy hotel on the moon, overlooking the earth?
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| I'd be down, but it's more likely going to be an awful
| penal mining colony armed with nukes pointed back down at
| us.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Why?
| ModernMech wrote:
| > Why not? It would seem that's something we're going to have
| to master in order to populate the galaxy.
|
| I think the unstated premise here is that populating the
| galaxy is something we should do. Looking around at what
| we're doing here on Earth, I think humanity populating the
| galaxy would be a net negative for the galaxy.
|
| You know how the aliens from Independence Day are portrayed
| as a race that goes from planet to planet draining its
| resources until there's a husk left? That's exactly what
| humanity would do. There's no question about that.
|
| https://independenceday.fandom.com/wiki/Harvesters
|
| "The Harvesters are a race of highly intelligent and
| incredibly technologically advanced hive-mind
| extraterrestrial beings. They are a threat of universal
| proportions that seeks to harvest and destroy planets to
| refuel their ships, to grow, and to perfect their technology
| at the expense of driving indigenous races to extinction."
|
| We are the Harvesters in this story.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Better to master our behaviour on our own planet first before
| we go and trash another.
| lexicality wrote:
| The article doesn't seem to address the problem of how you stop
| your new atmosphere from also dissipating into space. Surely
| that's a slightly more important problem?
| Narishma wrote:
| Doesn't that happen on geological time scales?
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| From the paper in the article:
|
| >"MAVEN has observed the Martian upper atmosphere for a full
| Martian year, and has determined the rate of loss of gas to
| space and the driving processes; 1-2 kg/s of gas are being
| lost."
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001910351.
| ..
| 8note wrote:
| That sounds similar to earth's?
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| Earth's is more like 3kgs if I remember correctly
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Yes. We should, if we can.
|
| We're possibly going to have to terraform Earth in the near
| future, and could use all the experience we can get.
| kfarr wrote:
| I think we've already started terraforming the Earth, perhaps
| not intentionally at first but now armed with data on climate
| change we continue our warming ways.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| What from the article are you staking your comment on? Why do
| you think that? Hoping for a more substantive response.
|
| Edit: I see you fleshed out your comment more.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| I would conclude the opposite. If in fact Earth requires
| terraforming, that would be the strongest possible argument
| against any human influence on other planets. Our current
| irresponsibility should be proof in and of itself that we
| should not try. To me it feels deeply wrong to use Mars as some
| sort of testing ground when it is currently pristine.
|
| Also, with a rich and privileged life raft available on Mars,
| there is no incentive to preserve the world we have now.
| _Elysium_ comes to mind.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| That seems like an argument for stasis.
|
| We're likely to know more in the future than we know today,
| which means we should never do anything today because we will
| be able to do it better / with less risk / more reliably /
| more efficiently / etc. tomorrow?
|
| We wouldn't be facing climate change if we hadn't
| industrialized.
|
| But, then, we also wouldn't live in a world of plenty and
| have increased the human carrying capacity of the planet many
| times over either.
| chalcolithic wrote:
| The Sun luminosity increases, preservation will only work
| short term.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| Are you referring to the sun going supernova? I'm not
| familiar with the luminosity increase.
| chalcolithic wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth
|
| Given that the only option outside of SciFi is generation
| ships we have very little time.
| Miraste wrote:
| > currently pristine
|
| I don't understand this line of thinking. Mars isn't
| pristine, it's sterile. Dead. It's the perfect testing ground
| because it can't be made worse.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| Guess pristine is subjective. I study surface processes on
| Mars so to me the planet is still alive and active. Things
| change, mysteries unfold, new environmental conditions come
| and go.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Geological processes aren't sentient.
| FredPret wrote:
| Martian soil is a fine, toxic dust. The planet is far from the
| sun. It is also too light to generate the gravity we evolved in.
|
| We should be living in spinning space stations in warm-and-toasty
| solar orbits
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| We can try living in both, see which one's better.
| FredPret wrote:
| That would be the best outcome. Also, the Moon, it's right
| next door
| worik wrote:
| I really hope it is a pipe dream.
|
| Wrecking one planet let's move to another - I do not like that
| philosophy.
| Animats wrote:
| The entire surface area of Mars is less than 5x that of Siberia
| plus the Sahara desert plus the Australian outback, areas
| currently not worth developing.
| jl6 wrote:
| Some random ideas off the top of my head for why developing
| Mars is better than developing the outback:
|
| * Do scientific research and exploration
|
| * Win fame and prestige
|
| * Enjoy having no existing property claims or cultural heritage
| to disturb
|
| * No laws. Make your own laws. Escape persecution.
|
| * Build a low light-and-RF-pollution observatory
|
| * Create the ultimate off-site backup
| klmadfejno wrote:
| > The entire surface area of Mars is less than 5x that of
| Siberia plus the Sahara desert plus the Australian outback
|
| This is such a weird statement. It's less than five times three
| very large areas combined... It leaves me with no idea how
| large it is. For those curious, it's about the same land
| surface area as earth has (removing oceans).
| 8note wrote:
| Its three large areas we aren't putting effort into putting
| people and terraforming.
|
| They've got the same challenges but are easier
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| Thats the first thought I always have when terraforming is
| discussed, we can't even fix earth, how would we fix
| another planet.
| Miraste wrote:
| None of those are on another planet - it changes the value
| proposition.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Yes, it makes it much less valuable, since anything of value
| you can produce is much harder to bring into our normal
| economy.
|
| If we were talking about another planet in another solar
| system, you could have some arguments about long term
| survival, but otherwise the earth will at worse become as
| inhospitable as Mars, until the sun burns them both to a
| crisp at about the same time in a distant future.
| Miraste wrote:
| There are all kinds of cataclysms that would end humanity
| on Earth while leaving Mars untouched. Global nuclear war,
| asteroids, and solar flares are three relatively likely
| ones that come to mind.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Global nuclear war would neither wipe out humanity nor
| leave the earth in any shape nearly as bad as Mars,
| either in terms of temperature, radiation, atmosphere,
| soil quality etc.
|
| Similarly, any asteroid impact of a size that the Earth
| has seen since life appeared would neither wipe out ALL
| of humanity nor leave the Earth in a shape as horrible as
| Mars is in right now.
|
| Edit: we know this for sure, because even after the
| asteroid that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs, human
| sized and larger animals survived and thrived through the
| impact and fallback, despite having no access to any kind
| of technology or preparation. If the cold-blooded
| crocodiles could do it, I'm not worried about our
| chances.
|
| Solar flares do not count as earth-ending events, at
| worst they could destroy our current electric networks
| and kill and strand maybe millions, but they are not in
| any way civilization-ending, nevermind life-on-earth
| ending as far as I know.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| Are you arguing that the surface area is too small or too
| inhospitable? What does the development of those areas have to
| do with Mars?
| Animats wrote:
| That, even if successful, it's not worth it.
| pie420 wrote:
| Having your name be immortalized forever in history is
| something that appeals to a lot of people, especially
| billionaires who have run out of things to buy.
| _Microft wrote:
| Comparing Siberia, Sahara, Antarctica or the Australian
| outback to Mars seems flawed because there are many places
| that are a lot better suited for human activities and
| settlement on Earth. We would not want to go there unless
| other options are ruled out. So emphasis is "on Earth".
|
| Mars might not have regions that are better suited than
| these inhospitable parts of Earth but it has the feature of
| "not being Earth".
|
| Consider it a backup/fallback for the "single point of
| failure" that Earth currently is not just for humanity but
| for all of life in the universe that we know of.
|
| Now that we are developing the technical abilities to be
| able to remove this possible failure point and to finally
| add some redundancy for life, I think we are almost morally
| obligated to do so.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > See it as backup/fallback for the "single point of
| failure" that Earth currently is (not just for humanity
| but) for all of life in the universe that we know of.
|
| What could happen to the Earth that would make it even
| close to as inhospitable as Mars?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Very little, if anything. Which means that it'll be a lot
| easier to resettle Earth from Mars if something
| cataclysmic happens to civilization here than it was to
| settle Mars in the first place.
|
| It hardly matters that the apocalyptic Earth is more
| hospitable to human life than Mars currently is if we
| don't have any humans left to resettle Earth.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| What could kill all humans on Earth, while leaving it
| hospitable and re-settleable from Mars?
|
| Even if a huge asteroid hit, we could almost certainly
| build shelters where more people could survive the
| initial impact than we can settle on Mars in the
| foreseeable future.
| datameta wrote:
| Even a partial ecosystem collapse would make it a
| tremendously difficult multi-generational effort to
| return to modern levels of technology.
|
| An analogy: a bunch of important files become corrupt
| (cataclysmic event) and the domain expert is no longer
| with the company (loss of knowledge and industry). It is
| much easier to move forward if one has a way of
| contacting a subject matter expert (Mars colony) to
| restore or rebuild what has been lost.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| What would make Mars more suited for housing such
| expertise, that couldn't as easily be stored in an
| artificial environment somewhere on Earth?
| datameta wrote:
| Even if we distribute such library and manufacturing
| vaults and ensure they are staffed by those who can use
| them - the world that arises post-cataclysm may not be
| one of great cooperation. I can foresee scenarios in
| which such valuables are used as tokens of power to
| subdue neighboring factions.
|
| I believe we also need a colony to hold on to seeds of
| _civilization_ in the very sense of the word.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Again, why would the colonists on Mars, a much more
| resource-restrained environment than the post-cataclysm
| earth, be any more willing to cooperate or bring back or
| perpetuate civilization as we understand it today?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| We could, and we have, but how useful would they be? What
| are they missing?
|
| It's like making a backup of your computer but never
| testing restore. The chances of that backup not being
| complete or recoverable are fairly high.
|
| The backup of human civilization on Mars will probably be
| theoretically worse than one that can be made on Earth.
| But it will be supporting life, making it fully tested
| and thus practically better.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Yes, but it would cost millions of times more resources
| and energy, and it will not be achieved until well after
| such technology becomes trivial to deploy everywhere on
| Earth.
| _Microft wrote:
| It does not take an event that makes Earth as
| inhospitable as Mars. It only needs to be bad enough to
| remove our capability to go beyond Earth to doom life to
| be limited to Earth itself. If life should persist in the
| long run, we need to start spreading it beyond Earth.
|
| We might not colonize a neighbouring star system in the
| near or medium term future but I am convinced that if we
| do not start moving out into the solar system, we never
| will go anywhere else either.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I still don't understand what kind of event could make
| the Earth so inhospitable that we lose the ability to
| leave it, but it would leave Mars with this ability
| intact.
|
| Mars has no fossil fuels, so that can't be it. Minerals
| cant really be destroyed or exhausted. Technological
| knowledge is much easier to preserve from cataclysmic
| events on Earth than it is on Mars (if we fall under some
| kind of technophobic super empire that seeks to destroy
| this type of technology, that will as easily spread to
| Mars as to the rest of the Earth).
| 8note wrote:
| Specifically preventing us from leaving earth?
|
| If our low earth orbit space gets too full of debris, we
| become stuck until we can find ways to clear it out.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That seems much more doable than having a completely
| self-sustaining space industry on Mars (from mining to
| chip manufacturing and everything in between, all life
| support functions intact, all underground or in heavily
| radiation-shielded buildings, and no fossil fuel
| plastics, all spanning the Martian globe to actually get
| access to the various minerals).
| zabzonk wrote:
| Quite. What I would like to hear from all these gung-ho
| types, is how we go about producing quantities of a
| simple 2-core power cable, on Mars, or in the asteroids
| or the Moon.
|
| But no doubt they will say: use broadcast power.
| FredPret wrote:
| A nuclear conflict would do it. You don't even need that
| many nukes to kick up enough dust to doom us all
| tsimionescu wrote:
| If we were able to build self-sustaining colonies on
| Mars, surviving on a nuke-ravaged earth would be easy as
| pie.
|
| Sure, temperatures would go down (but nowhere near as
| cold as Mars) and it would be hard to harvest plants, but
| we would still have fossil fuels to generate electricity
| for grow rooms, and we would still have earth soils that
| are ultra-rich in nutrients. The surface would be nowhere
| near as radioactive, so people could still work outside,
| allowing mines and so on to keep operating as today.
|
| Overall, while it would be a huge tragedy, kill billions,
| and destroy our civilization as we know it, it would
| still leave the Earth as an absolute paradise compared to
| Mars.
| giantrobot wrote:
| The point where Mars could be some sort of viable backup
| of anything on Earth is centuries and trillions of
| dollars away. Up until a Mars colony(ies) has enough
| _local_ infrastructure and industry to be entirely self-
| sufficient it 's survival will require access to Earth's
| infrastructure and industry.
|
| Mars also has fewer natural protections than Earth: a
| thinner atmosphere, no magnetic field to speak of, and no
| giant moon that deflects or absorbs at least some
| percentage of objects that would otherwise impact Earth.
| So Mars is more susceptible to dangerous radiation and
| object impacts than Earth.
|
| For the same cost outlay (or way less) as trying to make
| Mars an effective backup for Earth Earth could be made
| more robust and dedicated purpose-built backups could be
| created.
|
| Mars as a backup of Earth is like a cheap eBay thumbdrive
| hanging from a wind chime on your patio is a backup for
| your data.
| _Microft wrote:
| I would take a cheap eBay thumbdrive hanging from a wind
| chime on my patio over "no backup at all" any time.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| They are hundreds of times easier to settle than Mars, and
| probably richer in resources, so settling them would seem
| like a good first step before thinking of cities on Mars.
| OmicronCeti wrote:
| This piece from the NYT suggests that Siberia may be the
| new frontier: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/1
| 6/magazine/russ...
| kergonath wrote:
| It gets easier by the day, whilst the permafrost melts
| away.
| lancesells wrote:
| I believe they are saying that the Mars landscape is akin to
| the regions he listed and that these native locations are far
| easier to develop or live on than going to another planet.
| yborg wrote:
| I think he's pointing out that we have cold and arid
| environments with a standard atmosphere and surface gravity,
| and a magnetosphere to deflect cosmic rays that we don't
| colonize right here on Earth. Traveling millions of miles at
| huge expense to try this on Mars doesn't seem like a sensible
| endeavor right now regardless of its feasibility.
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