[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Why would a city on Mars avoid Armageddon?
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Ask HN: Why would a city on Mars avoid Armageddon?
And a nuclear war could be multi-planetary, wiping out humanity
everywhere.
Author : amichail
Score : 46 points
Date : 2021-11-28 14:12 UTC (8 hours ago)
| aaron695 wrote:
| You are very confused.
|
| The nuclear bombs were to save earth, it was designed to split
| the asteroid in two or blow it up form the inside or something
| something. It wasn't very scientific, but still way better than
| Deep Impact as entertainment. Go watch stuff on Youtube about
| Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) if you really are into
| this sort of stuff [1]
|
| Why would people on Mar not be into Michael Bay? Well, they
| probably will, humans don't really change sadly. He'll probably
| become a historic figure in some sort of sect, our culture is
| going off in strange directions. Strange compared to the past
| 100,000 years, where it was just simple stuff about the gods and
| we killed each other over that.
|
| How about step one we get to Mars, then worry about the culture.
| It'll be very interesting whatever way it goes.
|
| [1] Or read "Cubeworld", by Henry H. Gross for a fun short story
| on this idea, by making the Earth a cube the change in gravity
| something something deflect asteroid
| https://www.amazon.com/Mathenauts-Mathematical-Wonder-Rudy-R...
| "Mathenauts: Tales of Mathematical Wonder"
| DicIfTEx wrote:
| To some extent, this is the overarching theme of the second
| season of _For All Mankind_ ; you may find it interesting.
| _Microft wrote:
| <<Edit: maybe I should have prefaced my comment with the
| following: I am going to argue as if you were referring to a
| _self-sustaining colony_ on Mars because the idea that an Earth-
| dependent martian city might improve odds of survival does not
| make much sense at all, imo. >>
|
| Sure, that could happen but expanding to Mars would improve the
| odds of survival (because an extinction event on both planets
| simultaneously is less likely than one just on Earth). Earth is
| currently a so-called "single point of failure" (SPOF)[0] for
| humanity and all forms of life that we know of.
|
| If we spread humanity and life to Mars and beyond (in an
| independent/self-sustaining way and not just as an outpost that
| depends on Earth), neither of the planets alone is SPOF anymore.
| The solar system is still SPOF but even the close galactic
| neighbourhood might not be of much help against events that
| threaten the solar system as a whole (see e.g. about the effects
| of a gamma-ray burst [1] in our 'proximity'. Note when reading
| [1] that 1 kiloparsec = 3200 light years! [2]).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_point_of_failure
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-
| ray_burst#Effects_on_Ear...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsec
| soared wrote:
| This is the correct answer. War may spread to mars, but a
| massive volcanic eruption that blots out the sun (or other non-
| war mass events) is less of an issue if you live on another
| planet.
| ModernMech wrote:
| My issue with this is the definition of "you".
|
| Yes, "humanity" will be in the universe, but they will not be
| one homogenous culture. What's the probability that Martian
| humans will get jealous of Earth's vast and plentiful
| resources in 100 - 200 years, and they wage open nuclear and
| biological war on Earth to wipe out all Earthling humans?
| Based on what I know about humans, the probability this
| happens approaches 1 as time moves forward.
|
| And how will they evolve? What will they look like in 1000
| years? 1 million? We don't know of any alien species now, but
| if we send humans out into the stars we will essentially be
| creating a new evolutionary branch of spacefaring humanoid
| aliens. What kind of aliens will they be? The friendly kind
| that sends scientists to other planets to study their ways?
| Or will they be warlike aliens from Independence Day, roaming
| the cosmos like Genghis Khan and consuming all in their path?
| Again, based on what I know about humanity, we will be both,
| but the latter could show up one day and just destroy Earth.
|
| Personally I think none of this will happen. We will wipe
| ourselves off Earth before we can support autonomous space
| colonies. Likely we will fuck things up here and then our
| space colonies will shrivel and die from lack of supplies.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| The problem with pessimism is that it is usually wrong,
| always counterproductive, and almost never gets held
| accountable for either. History is chock full of wrong
| pessimists. Smarter ones than you or I, even -- but still
| wrong. Hopefully you will be another.
|
| Imagine an alternate history where Britain never let
| colonists go to the Americas on the assumption that either
| Britain would collapse before the colonies became self-
| sustaining or the colonies would become belligerent and
| conquer Britain. Now extrapolate out what the actual
| alternate-history would have likely been, and whether those
| concerns would have been wise or foolish.
| [deleted]
| ModernMech wrote:
| > The problem with pessimism is that it is usually wrong,
| always counterproductive, and almost never gets held
| accountable for either. History is chock full of wrong
| pessimists.
|
| History is filled with correct pessimists as well. Has
| anyone ever been wrong by predicting that humans
| competing for resources on a frontier will come into
| violent and deadly conflict with one another?
|
| I realize it's not a particularly deep or insightful
| thing to say, but there seems but be an unchecked
| optimism in these threads, one that builds a narrative of
| humanity spreading to the stars and filling the universe
| with our light. Meanwhile on Earth Prime we have famine,
| genocide, war, and an unquenchable need to consume and
| multiply. If Corona were sapient it would be making the
| same argument - we must spread to the stars to continue
| our existence! No one really stops to ask "why?". Why
| should we spread to the stars? Why is the continued
| existence of our species important to the universe?
| Doesn't this line of reasoning make humanity no better
| than a virus?
|
| Imagine humanity coming across a planet filled with
| sapient alien trees. Completely defenseless and they have
| no concept of war. What would humans do at first chance?
| Slaughter them and use them for fuel or building
| materials. Is spreading the idea and practice of genocide
| across the universe really what's best for anyone? What's
| the other side of it? Is there an argument for why we
| should do this thing that isn't grounded in selfishness?
| dTal wrote:
| >Why is the continued existence of our species important
| to the universe?
|
| It's important to _us_ , which is the only criterion
| worth a damn when deciding what _we_ should do.
|
| Specifically, the continued existence of at least some
| members of the human species is probably the _only_
| ethical axiom that every single human on Earth can agree
| on. If you openly disagree - if you embrace the
| extinction of the human race as a personal goal - well I
| can only say that we are irredeemably enemies, and I will
| seek your destruction with proportionate effort to my
| estimate of your likelihood of succeeding, and I do not
| think I will be alone.
|
| (This is not to say I do not _also_ consider sapient
| alien trees worth preserving.)
| lisper wrote:
| > History is chock full of wrong pessimists
|
| You mean like the ones who were warning about how the
| world was woefully unprepared for a global pandemic? Or
| the ones who were warning about climate change?
| rbanffy wrote:
| > but they will not be one homogenous culture
|
| No, as Humanity is not a homogeneous culture here on Earth.
| We'll diverge as we make colonies a couple light-hours and
| we'll diverge a lot more when our worlds are separated by
| light-years and people and goods take centuries to go from
| one world to another. Hopefully we can invent some form of
| FTL travel or, at least, communication so we are less
| disconnected.
|
| OTOH, wars get really complicated when the fleet takes a
| century to arrive at its destination, carrying 100 year old
| weapons.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > Based on what I know about humans, the probability this
| happens approaches 1 as time moves forward.
|
| Wouldn't it be far cheaper for a Mars civilization to
| exploit the resources of the asteroids rather than bother
| earth? It'd be enormously uncomfortable for Mars adapted
| people to spend any time on earth. So if it's neither
| economic to exploit earth resources nor would it be
| possible to enjoy a conquered earth, why ever bother? I
| guess if it's possible for a 007 style mad scientist
| scenario to emerge it approaches 1 given enough time,
| however it could be so much time that the sun blows up or
| humanity spreads to other stars.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > Wouldn't it be far cheaper for a Mars civilization to
| exploit the resources of the asteroids rather than bother
| earth?
|
| Depends on the resource. If they want milk and chicken
| for example, it might be better to get that from Earth.
|
| > It'd be enormously uncomfortable for Mars adapted
| people to spend any time on earth.
|
| They could breed a race of human slaves to work on Earth.
|
| > I guess if it's possible for a 007 style mad scientist
| scenario
|
| I'm thinking more along the lines of a Martian Hitler
| scenario.
| qwytw wrote:
| > They could breed a race of human slaves to work on
| Earth.
|
| Wouldn't just buying stuff they need from Earth be much
| cheaper than exterminating all people on Earth and then
| repopulated with some new genetically engineered human
| species?
| ModernMech wrote:
| I didn't say anything about genetic engineering, they can
| be regular humans.
|
| Moreover, wars and conquest are not rational endeavors
| that are undertaken after a careful cost/benefit
| analysis. WWII wasn't exactly cost effective for anyone
| who started that war.
|
| Anyway, the way I see it playing out would be that Earth,
| realizing they are Mars' one and only lifeline, will do
| its best to squeeze Martians for everything they've got.
| It won't be a mutually beneficial trading relationship
| between peer nation/planets, but an exploitive one where
| one party has much more power than the other. Probably a
| lot like Africa's place in the world. Unfair and
| exploitive deals will be cut that reflect the power
| imbalance, which will brew resentment and envy, and
| ultimately conflict. This is how you start irrational
| wars.
| whelming_wave wrote:
| What's the probability that Martian-Terran humans will
| get frustrated by sending off Earth's vast and plentiful
| resources in 100 - 200 years, and they wage open nuclear
| and biological war on Mars to wipe out all Martian
| humans?
| iso1210 wrote:
| And that mad scientist could just as easilly be from
| Earth as from Mars.
|
| Once you have the ability for individuals to launch multi
| ton payloads on escape velocity, you have the ability for
| individuals to launch multi ton payloads at earth. While
| such an individual could target Mars and Earth, the
| implication of the technology level of a self sustaining
| mars base is that mankind will be spread throughout the
| solarsystem (at least the asteroids, venus clouds, mars,
| moon and earth), and at that stage wiping out the species
| becomes even harder.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| > Based on what I know about humans, the probability this
| happens approaches 1 as time moves forward.
|
| Yes given infinite time we know humans are extinct. We will
| not survive the heat death of the universe. But i don't
| think this truism says much about whether or not creating a
| self sustaining colony on Mars will increase the longevity
| of our species.
|
| The chances of some type of existential interplanetary war
| between Mars and earth is so much lower than than an
| existential earth war. It's really difficult to wage any
| type of meaningful war across planets. They're really far
| apart, and it's really expensive to leave Earth.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Earth post a super volcano would still be far more habitable
| than mars, same thing goes for a major impact event, nuclear
| winter and pretty much anything else that doesn't turn the
| atmosphere into a firestorm, boils the oceans and turns all
| land mass into lava...
|
| And if you get to the point in which you can terraform mars
| then fixing the earth would be again far easier unless all
| biomass somehow dies and there is no atmosphere left and
| earth somehow loses its magnetic field.
|
| At best mars might serve as a temporary lifeboat but even
| then if you have the technology to sustain life on mars you
| would be better off building protected habitats on earth.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Worrying about gamma ray bursts is silly when we're staring
| down the barrel of widescale planetary disaster within one or
| two lifetimes if we don't immediately start doing more about
| climate change.
|
| If the time it would take for a colony to not just self-sustain
| but grow is less than the time it will take before Earth's
| economy and industry become unstable, colonization doesn't help
| with single point of failure.
|
| Look at what COVID and a handful of bad weather events have
| done over the years to major economic sectors and industries.
| The chip shortage is in part due to water shortage in Taiwan.
| Flooding a while back caused huge hard drive shortages. Etc.
|
| Now imagine instead of the problem being "make enough pickup
| trucks", it's "put a bunch of electronics and equipment on a
| rocket and send it to a colony, or people start dying."
|
| Talk of colonization efforts right now is like building a
| garage for the Ferrari you're going to buy some day. You just
| have to convince the HOA in your trailer park to accept the
| plans, and figure out how to use your lawnmower to bring home
| the lumber from Lowes...
|
| Let's worry about colonization when we've sorted out how to
| live sustainably on this planet, and feeding/clothing/housing
| and medically caring for everyone who needs it...
| generalizations wrote:
| > Talk of colonization efforts right now is like building a
| garage for the Ferrari you're going to buy some day.
|
| Someone in a trailer park isn't likely to ever get that
| Ferrari, so your scenario kinda begs the question that we're
| never going to be in a position to reach Mars after fixing
| the earth.
|
| But I think your scenario is flawed anyway. We aren't living
| in a trailer park, we're in Holland and the dykes are
| breaking for the last time. Some of us (you, in my analogy)
| want to try and fix them again. Others (me, etc) want to
| build boats and send a colony elsewhere.
|
| The plans aren't mutually exclusive. But it's foolish to do
| only one.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| The problem with, "let's wait until Earth's problems are
| taken care of", is that Earth's problems are never going to
| be truly taken care of. Reduced yes, eliminated no, and there
| will always be someone arguing that we're not yet at the
| threshold at which settling other planets is ok.
|
| This is dangerous because we don't know how much of a window
| we have for doing these things. We have the capability to get
| into space and out of Earth's gravity well now, but there's
| no guarantee that we will continue to. It's not hard to
| imagine that as part of efforts to "solve Earth's problems",
| the launch industry becomes restricted to satellite launches
| only and atrophies to a point where taking a crew beyond
| Earth's orbit can't be done without a decade+ of relearning.
|
| Its better to continually develop these capabilities and make
| use of them so the field is always moving forward and more
| entities gain them, making them harder to lose.
|
| We have enough people and resources to do that alongside
| environmental disaster prevention efforts... it's just a
| matter of political will. If you ask me, the biggest problem
| that is in most dire need of solving at this particular
| moment is actually obstruction of environmental reform coming
| from powerful corporate entity superpolluters -- chiefly,
| manufacturers, ocean cargo shippers, airlines, and the the
| oil industry that feeds all of them.
| gdubs wrote:
| Right? Our worst problems here seem pretty mild compared with
| the expense of a meaningful human establishment on a far away
| rock. It would be massively cheaper to build settlements on
| the most hostile desert on earth.
|
| But more importantly, a Mars colony would require an
| incredibly stable society on earth. Because it would take
| decades and massive amounts of money -- and that ain't
| happening in the midst of societal collapse due to a failure
| to solve our problems here at home.
|
| I'm a fan of space exploration, and I don't think we should
| hit the breaks on it. But I don't think we should be
| delusional to think there's any realistic chance of it
| solving problems here on earth fast enough. Me must find a
| way to live sustainably here over the next few centuries.
| angelzen wrote:
| While Earth is technically a SPOF, it is also a very large
| place with a very long track record for successfully supporting
| complex life forms. We can even say that life forms as we know
| them are attractors (local minima) in the chemo-energetical
| ecological landscape provided by Earth. None of this holds for
| Mars. Even if we are successful in establishing a handful of
| outposts, they are likely to be short-lived because the
| ecological balance works against them.
| _Microft wrote:
| The thing that leads to _No life on Mars_ more certainly than
| trying to colonize and terraform it and maybe failing at it
| is not even trying to do it.
| mseepgood wrote:
| We should practice our terraforming skills on Earth first.
| When we are able to improve the atmosphere and climate of
| Earth (easy mode) we can try our skills on a remote and
| hostile planet like Mars (hard mode).
| Kon5ole wrote:
| I'd consider Earth to be hard mode too, since it's
| already in production and riddled with irrational users
| who run their entire business on the memory leaks you
| want to patch. ;-)
| gdubs wrote:
| Everyone is always seduced by the new -- the new idea,
| the rewrite. But often what one finds is that as
| development goes deeper, the same bugs resurface, the
| same challenges. Our society is full of grand, ambitious,
| "let's do it right from scratch" plans -- Le Corbusier,
| etc -- and they often fail. The blank page is seductive,
| but it begins the to fall apart with the first mark of
| the pen.
| sneak wrote:
| We can and should do both simultaneously. There are lots
| of humans.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Conversely, the unpredictable nature of our first big
| mistake as we transition Terraforming out of science
| fiction and into text books argues for having a backup
| planet in place before we try it here.
| cableshaft wrote:
| And humans are quickly and systematically extinguishing
| nearly all life on this planet, including themselves before
| too much longer at the rate we are going.
|
| As the legend George Carlin once said, "the planet is fine,
| the people are fucked". Although most animals and a bunch of
| plants are fucked too.
|
| Now that being said, I don't think that means we should start
| colonizing Mars or that things would be any better out there.
| politician wrote:
| Consider: The Earth cannot save itself from asteroids
| without humanity.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Earth has been hit by asteroids before and survived so
| far, but sure, it's possible it could be hit by enough,
| eventually, that it loses its atmosphere, as people think
| the Earth has already lost 60 percent of its atmosphere
| from an asteroid strike that they think created the
| moon[1].
|
| [1]: https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/earth-lost-60-per-
| cent-of-...
|
| I don't think humans will be around long enough to
| deflect an asteroid that's big enough to do this, as it
| could easily be hundred or thousands or tens of thousands
| of years before it might get hit by one big enough to do
| this again.
|
| When I was young I would assume we would be around that
| long, but I don't see a path to escaping our own
| destruction (possibly not total, but 90% or more of the
| total population, probably) within the next few hundred
| years at most, possibly sooner.
| sobkas wrote:
| And neither it can with humanity. I never heard of
| plausible plan to do it with technology we have or will
| have.
| politician wrote:
| We launched DART last week.
| kamarg wrote:
| That may have changed as of a week ago. NASA is testing a
| method of deflecting asteroids. See
| https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/nasa-launch-
| test-m....
| speedcoder wrote:
| Perhaps too many words can conflate Mars only being a small
| step toward us "Contact"ing who we are to become:
| https://youtu.be/sRPUO6gGSh8 ?
| koheripbal wrote:
| Correct, but obviously Martian populations would need to be
| completely independent of Earthly support.
| ravel-bar-foo wrote:
| In order for that to happen, one needs to have Martian
| populations. Necessity being the mother of invention.
| elvischidera wrote:
| How do you think this affect policy? Would we be likely to
| engage in more dangerous activities simply because we have a
| backup planet?
|
| E.g: 1. Maybe we would have carried on with more risky nuclear
| test in the past? 2. Maybe less people would care about global
| warming on earth?
|
| These questions came to mind while reading your comment. Not
| sure if they make sense.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| No, because continuity of civilization is nowhere in most
| people's decision making process. Everything they actually
| care about is on Earth and that doesn't change with a mars
| base.
| cronix wrote:
| > Everything they actually care about is on Earth and that
| doesn't change with a mars base.
|
| I can see what you're saying for the first generation of
| people who go from Earth to Mars. I don't see that scenario
| for the majority of people eventually born there, and
| subsequent generations. Just like how I know relatively
| little of my European ancestors who came to the US, and
| I've never been there, and that's on the same planet with
| international travel relatively cheap compared to the first
| ones over. Some people will be born there and never leave
| or know anything other than Martian life except what they
| read or view on some video. Some will be able to travel
| back and forth. I don't think most will.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| People on Earth will care about Earth, people on Mars
| will care about Mars.
|
| Do you give up on US problems just because you have lost
| relatives in Europe? No. Do your lost relatives in Europe
| give up on European problems because a lost relative
| moved to the US? No. Neither of us has ever met them, but
| I can still confidently say "no" because that's just not
| how people work. We have plenty of things to worry about,
| a mars colony altering basic psychology shouldn't be one
| of them.
| amichail wrote:
| Nuclear attacks could target all points of failure though.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Adding redundancy makes our civilization more resilient.
| Being more resilient is a good thing. The fact that this
| increased resilience doesn't make our civilization
| _invincible_ seems like a weird sticking point, since a) that
| goal is obviously beyond our capability right now, and b)
| redundancy is a necessary step in that direction.
| ModernMech wrote:
| If we send humans into space they won't be part of our
| civilization, they will be their own. They may depend on us
| at first, but that bond will lessen over time and they will
| likely eventually demand independence and autonomy from
| Earth over time. This will be denied to them, and a bloody
| interplanetary war between Martians and Earthlings will
| ensue. See: America v. Briton.
| Wiseacre wrote:
| Does anyone else get the feeling that HN readership is
| far too biased from sci-fi?
|
| With that logic, no country would have ever let explorers
| leave their country to begin with.
| ModernMech wrote:
| The logic of the host country is that they can quash any
| rebellion through the extreme application of violence
| against the rebels. It works out sometime for them, and
| other times it doesn't.
|
| Either way a lot of people end up dead on both sides.
| They are the poor, children, colonists, and indigenous
| peoples. Importantly, they are not members of the
| aristocracy, so no lessons are ever learned by elites as
| to why empire building is a bad idea.
| Wiseacre wrote:
| With that logic we would all still be living on the same
| continent and would never have spread across the Earth to
| begin with.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I mean, I think it's widely held that humans coming down
| from trees was a bad idea and should have never happened.
| addingnumbers wrote:
| Perfect is the enemy of good.
|
| There's a chance the data center where I host my offline
| backups could be destroyed at the same time as my house. Does
| this mean I should stop wasting my time and effort on off-
| site backups?
| koheripbal wrote:
| On both planets simultaneously?
| fedbook wrote:
| Exactly. This is why I am pro exploration but not colonization.
| At least not until we can terraform. Colonizing mars now would be
| a huge waste of resources.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| Depending on the definition of colonizing, however. Does
| sending 100 scientists there count as exploration or
| colonization? I'd be in favor because the discoveries they'd
| make about the history of life on Mars would radically weaken
| mythological stories of religion, it'd be a death-blow that
| would advance Enlightenment another notch, after the work of
| Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Einstein.
| jafo wrote:
| Addressed in Ray Bradbury's novel The Martian Chronicles (1950).
|
| In Bradbury's story, the vast majority of residents of the
| Martian colonies returned back to Earth when (atomic) war was
| imminent, leaving Mars all but deserted, and the Earth destroyed.
|
| I found this hard to believe, but this set up a really cool
| ending.
| belter wrote:
| You Inners have no idea how bad its going to be...
| aj7 wrote:
| 100 times worse than living on Mt. Everest. Maybe build a nuclear
| shelter on earth?
| sneak wrote:
| It's already been done.
| gus_massa wrote:
| The time to travel from Earth to Mars is about 8 month. They'll
| have plenty of time to launch some intercepting mission.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| For the Moon-Earth war, read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by
| Robert Heinlein.
|
| For the Earth, Mars, and Asteroid belt conflict, watch "The
| Expanse".
| vertnerd wrote:
| All this effort to avoid the collapse of human civilization seems
| misplaced. Protecting humanity from calamity is only necessary if
| humanity serves a purpose. Would you back up computer data that
| is of no use to anyone? Of course not. The fact that something
| exists does not justify going to extraordinary lengths to
| preserve it.
|
| Uniqueness does not make something useful or worth preserving,
| either.
|
| As individuals, we all expire at some point. Is there a reason to
| think that humanity should be any different?
| slibhb wrote:
| > As individuals, we all expire at some point. Is there a
| reason to think that humanity should be any different?
|
| It's not a question of living forever. It's a question of
| living as long as possible. Individuals certainly try to do
| that.
|
| I think your post is playing a game. You think your life has
| value. Claiming otherwise is meaningless verbiage unless you,
| um, follow through. It's difficult (maybe impossible) to
| rationally ground that belief but that doesn't stop us from
| holding it.
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| Just because you think that humans aren't special doesn't
| mean that you should commit suicide, though.
|
| I'm personally not against humans reaching for the stars,
| heck I think we should do everything we can to succeed in
| that, but for the purposes of acquiring knowledge and not
| first and foremost self-preservation. I mean, if we're
| disagreeing with this comment because we think we are special
| and have the moral obligation to survive, there's a ton of
| work that we need to and _can_ do here on Earth before trying
| to settle in another planet, right? If we can think of
| terraforming Mars, heck we should be able to stop all kinds
| of pollution right now, but that's not even the kind of
| rhetoric that I'm seeing here in HN.
| slibhb wrote:
| > Just because you think that humans aren't special doesn't
| mean that you should commit suicide, though.
|
| No but it implies there's nothing wrong with suicide.
|
| > If we can think of terraforming Mars, heck we should be
| able to stop all kinds of pollution right now, but that's
| not even the kind of rhetoric that I'm seeing here in HN.
|
| Really? I see it all over HN. Lots of posters are very
| concerned about global warming and pollution and those
| posts are often highly upvoted.
|
| But I don't think we have to choose between colonizing Mars
| and treating the Earth better. We can do both. (Well I'm
| not optimistic about the Mars colony but I certainly think
| we should try).
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| Acknowledging the fact that everything perishes,
| including humans, because we are not special, does not
| imply that there is nothing wrong with suicide (though
| I'd like to see you successfully argue that point--but
| that's a separate discussion). You're making a huge leap
| here.
|
| I mean, sure, we can do both, but I do maintain that
| since, right now, the only success that we can guarantee
| from exploring space with our current tools is to gather
| knowledge, anybody who genuinely believes and is
| committed to the idea that we have a moral obligation to
| prolong the life of our species should be trying to save
| Earth right now.
| slibhb wrote:
| > Acknowledging the fact that everything perishes,
| including humans, because we are not special, does not
| imply that there is nothing wrong with suicide
|
| Suicide remark aside, my overall argument was that "human
| life has no special value" is a pose. People value human
| life in a special way, including their own, for whatever
| reason, rational or not, and we know this by observing
| human behavior, including our own.
|
| > I mean, sure, we can do both, but I do maintain that
| since, right now, the only success that we can guarantee
| from exploring space with our current tools is to gather
| knowledge, anybody who genuinely believes and is
| committed to the idea that we have a moral obligation to
| prolong the life of our species should be trying to save
| Earth right now.
|
| Not only can we do both but we are. I'm not a Musk fanboy
| but I am glad that battery tech, solar, electric cars,
| and rockets are all being built.
|
| Also, due to politics, fixing problems on Earth is in
| some sense a harder problem than colonizing Mars. Whether
| or not a Mars colony survives, if we have the technology
| to try it, we can give it the old college try. Meanwhile,
| something as simple as a carbon tax is politically
| impossible.
| [deleted]
| addingnumbers wrote:
| This sounds like bare nihilism to me. Why do anything, if
| nothing matters?
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| You believe there's nothing worth preserving in human
| civilization, that's there no purpose to anything humanity
| does? I'd argue we are biological beings with consciousness, we
| have the capability of experiencing wonderful things. As our
| ancestors did before us, isn't on us to keep the ball rolling,
| to allow future descendants to experience the joys of life and
| thought?
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| Trace up our ancestry far enough and you'll realize that the
| earliest humans didn't mean to bear us to experience the joys
| of life and thought but, really, they were just performing
| their natural, animalistic urges to hump each other.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| It's not procreation that's our sole purpose on Earth,
| however. Yes, Darwinian evolution posits that ability to
| procreate successfully shaped every species. However, I'd
| argue due to our consciousness, our ability to generate
| culture via language and history and tradition, our ability
| to manipulate the environment via tools and learning, these
| move beyond Darwinian evolution. Our culture and language
| and toolsets are extremely powerful and wonderful
| collective objects that are worth preserving and
| cultivating evermore.
|
| Just ask yourself, wouldn't it be a shame if there was no
| one around to listen to Beethoven or Mozart, to look at
| Monet or Van Gogh Paintings, or to appreciate the sound of
| poetry or the movement of a dancer? I think denying that
| humans are social beings in a massive social network is
| easy, that way nothing we do really "matters" to the
| universe, even though it matters intensely to other humans.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > wouldn't it be a shame if there was no one around to
| listen to Beethoven or Mozart, to look at Monet or Van
| Gogh Painting
|
| I notice the specific examples you list here are part of
| the western canon, which I assume is part of your culture
| and therefore important to you. But you didn't list any
| artists from other cultures. Why do you think people
| living in another planet some time in the distant future
| would miss the artists from your culture? Wouldn't they
| have their own art and music unique to them that they
| would care about more than the things you care about?
|
| I get that it's sad to think about these artists dying
| for good (as in their art being wiped from collective
| memory) but it's something that happens all the time to
| artists throughout history, and I really don't think it's
| a great shame on a cosmic scale that the artists you
| mention might be forgotten in the future. I think as much
| as you would want to share Mozart with the Martians, they
| will care about him just as much as you care about
| artists from South America in the year 900. That is to
| say, not at all.
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| To whom would it be a shame that no one is around to
| listen to the likes of Beethoven and Mozart when your
| premise is, exactly, that no one is around?
| awb wrote:
| Yet we don't abandon our young, or even our elders, we look
| to find meaning beyond procreation and survival. Look at
| song, dance, storytelling, love, rituals, writing, art,
| mentoring, etc. We invest tons of time not procreating.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| It's just survival instinct that is built in our DNA. It
| operates at the species level too, probably to a lesser extent,
| since we don't seem equipped to prevent the collapse.
|
| But overall, this is how I make peace with my mind with the
| announced decline. On the grand scheme of things, it doesn't
| really matter, and we're bound to disappear anyway. So maybe
| Bill Gates is right: having fun burning as much fuel as
| possible with his jet and super yacht while it lasts, and
| hoping that something comes up from innovation.
| adventured wrote:
| > The fact that something exists does not justify going to
| extraordinary lengths to preserve it.
|
| The flaw in your premise is that you're dropping context on the
| individual. If you pretend humans are a mere non-thinking, non-
| individual collective, then what you're saying is correct.
| That's false. Each person will strive to exist, to persist, for
| their own reasons (with each life being different, literally;
| with each reasoning pathway being unique, literally).
|
| > As individuals, we all expire at some point. Is there a
| reason to think that humanity should be any different?
|
| That something ceases to exist, that it expires, doesn't
| automatically determine whether it has value. By your premise
| all entities have no value. That I exist and place value on at
| least one entity acts to prove you wrong (ie you're wrong).
|
| > Uniqueness does not make something useful or worth
| preserving, either.
|
| You've got the premise entirely formulated incorrectly. I'm not
| asking your permission to exist. I'm not asking to be granted
| value by you. I exist. I decide if my life has value, you do
| not (more precisely: your input has essentially zero value in
| that calculation; my input has enormous consequence/value in
| the calculation). I decide how great of a value to place on my
| existence. I decide if I think my life is useful, in other
| words, and whether it's worth preserving - your input is not
| necessary and is in fact meaningless. I decide with my own
| reasoning what purpose my life has, what value my life has, and
| can change my thinking on the matter at any time I see fit; my
| thinking on the matter is the extreme primary, and by
| comparison your thinking on the matter is irrelevant. That is
| to say, it doesn't matter what you think, when it comes to
| whether you think my existence is worth preserving or of value.
| This is a simple demonstration of how you dropped context on
| value determination as it pertains to the fact that humans are
| individual actors.
|
| That should all be quite easy to grasp.
|
| Yeah, but why does that matter? It matters because Elon Musk is
| an individual and has decided to go to Mars. How do you plan to
| stop him and his SpaceX party of happy Mars bound radicals? You
| can't, most likely - they're acting on their individual value
| systems, aligning with other like-minded persons, to achieve
| something greater than they could accomplish alone. They have
| decided their goal matters, that it is has value, they're not
| waiting for the permission of 7.8 billion other people to go;
| they're not waiting for a billion other people to tell them
| that what they're doing has value, that their existence
| matters, they're going regardless of what most people think:
| they decide if what they're doing with their lives has value or
| not (and yes, of course, there are some very powerful forces
| that could potentially stop them, such as the US Government;
| some amount of permission is usually required for such a
| considerable undertaking when operating within a society;
| although to be clear, the government still doesn't dictate
| whether their goals have value, those people can still value
| their goals even if denied permission by the government to
| pursue them).
| awb wrote:
| Well some of us think we serve a purpose and that's as good as
| we'll probably get because there is no absolute truth or
| definitive objective to measure against.
|
| Even you posting a comment shows some purpose. In that sense
| humanity is worth saving to preserve your comment / thought
| process alone.
|
| Or, if we save humanity as a reminder to ourselves and others
| that our humanity exists absent of any purpose, that sounds
| like plenty of purpose to me.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| On that same scale, your life is insignificant, but you try to
| preserve that no?. Do you have kids? Family? Their lives are
| also insignificant in the same way. If you're invested in your
| own life, or the lives of loved ones, but not in the lives of
| your fellow man, you're not enlightened to our insignificance,
| you're selfish.
|
| I want the next generation to have the opportunities I've had,
| if not more, and I'm sure they'll want the same for the next.
| Given that, it only makes sense to try and preserve a future
| for humans in general.
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| I don't see how this is a rational response to the question
| that the commenter posited. It's all assumptions on top of
| assumptions about his/her personhood.
|
| What do you mean by "preservation" here--is it just attending
| to our most basic physiological needs? Is doing that really
| even an active choice? What about the things that we do for
| our loved ones--is that on the same scale as trying to
| preserve our species from mass extinction? What if the
| commenter contributes to charity or puts out excellent work
| which improves people's lives--does that not count as caring
| for the lives of one's fellow man?
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > What do you mean by "preservation" here
|
| Preserve, as in, to maintain. Like, not let it disappear.
| That should be obvious from the context, so I have a hard
| time believing this was a good faith attempt at poking
| holes in what I said.
|
| > Is doing that really even an active choice?
|
| Mostly no, but only because choosing not to preserve your
| own life is such a startlingly rare occurrence we don't
| really think of it as an option. How is chosing to preserve
| humanity as a whole not a similar 'non-choice' in that
| case?
|
| > What about the things that we do for our loved ones--is
| that on the same scale as trying to preserve our species
| from mass extinction?
|
| It doesn't need to be on the same scale to be driven by the
| same factors.
|
| > What if the commenter contributes to charity or puts out
| excellent work which improves people's lives--does that not
| count as caring for the lives of one's fellow man?
|
| It certainly would, and would make the cognitive dissonance
| of thinking humanity is itself not worth preserving pretty
| stark.
|
| > I don't see how this is a rational response to the
| question that the commenter posited.
|
| I am likewise confused how you thought any of this was a
| rational rebuttal to my own statements.
| gooseus wrote:
| The human mind is the most complex and entropy-reducing machine
| the Universe has ever produced (to our knowledge).
|
| If you look around the rest of the Universe you may find thing
| of interest and beauty, but those concepts of "interesting" and
| "beautiful" are entirely constructs of that human mind. The
| only way anything in the Universe is "beautiful" or
| "interesting" is because minds exist which can appreciate other
| parts of the Universe as such.
|
| Protecting humanity isn't about protecting individuals or
| anything specific, it's about preserving a process that can
| make new and interesting things happen in the Universe.
|
| One of the most interesting things that humans can do is
| conceptualize something like "purpose", just like "beauty" one
| could make the case that the Universe has no purpose without an
| intelligence embedded inside which can articulate one and that
| we are in the process of deciding a Purpose for the Universe
| through our philosophical/theological discussions.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Imagine the cosmos without a single solitary observer.
| Populated with automata which simply act out their genetic
| instructions, never seeing beyond the next meal or the next
| opportunity to couple. Imagine the cosmos without one single
| sentient being that could look up at the sky and think, "Wow!".
|
| It would be a shame for all of this to go on, just existing,
| unappreciated. The cosmos deserves to be loved.
| cableshaft wrote:
| So you're saying is this is all about to become Conway's Game
| of Life without an observer? Interesting thought.
| toss1 wrote:
| Of course we all expire at some point, individually and
| collectively.
|
| However, we almost all make efforts to push that point as far
| into the future as possible (the main exception being when doom
| is near and assured, and only increasing misery is foreseen on
| the way).
|
| So, why would we not try to extend the expiration date,
| individually and collectively? It's a big universe, so much to
| explore!
| BasilPH wrote:
| This is a theme in the Mars Trilogy series. Without spoiling
| anything, I think the timeline can make a difference. If
| Armageddon happens far enough into the future on earth, Mars
| might have become independent. The population of Mars might also
| feel detached from the events, just like we in the West don't
| care too much about military coups in smaller countries.
| GDC7 wrote:
| It's not about saving humanity or saving consciousness or all
| that BS.
|
| It's about a very selfish 1st world problem:
|
| Seeking thrill and also not to be discounted the willingness to
| feel special. Everyday we see and interact with so many people,
| we have also internalized the concept of being one unit in a 8B
| sample and that hurts our ego as we want to feel unique and
| irreplacable.
|
| People hope to find that in a small Mars community, feeling
| irreplaceable both on a conceptual level as well as a practical
| level (meaning for the operation of the colony).
| User23 wrote:
| If it were a self-sustaining colony, within a couple generations
| basically everyone would be everyone else's cousin. That would
| probably reduce the impetus for major war as opposed to family
| drama.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| The royal families in Europe were closely connected with each
| other but that didn't stop them from starting World War 1 and
| many other wars.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Before to colonize mars there is a thing that we as species
| could, or should probably do (in my arrogant opinion), and is to
| put a copy of security of the human species in the moon, in form
| of a few boxes full of frozen reproductive cells. Maybe also
| copies from a few animals that are really essential to us as
| wolves, red jungle fowl or horses. If we can put it in the moon,
| we can put it in Mars, and that would be the cheaper way to put a
| significant amount of people in the planet Mars. This will be
| needed either to replace the people that will die in accidents in
| a such hostile environment, or to replace fast people killed in a
| massive catastrophic event in the earth, like a nuclear winter
| period and to alleviate the effect of bottle neck genetic periods
| in humans. We had some in the past.
|
| The problem is that would grant like 30 years of safety. Maybe.
| Not much more, but could be enough.
| everdrive wrote:
| I feel like I've missed some context here. Currently we do not
| have a city on Mars, nor have we developed nuclear missiles which
| can deliver a payload to Mars. I'm sure that such a thing is
| within our grasp, but a military still has to be incentivized to
| build an interplanetary nuclear weapon stead of spending that
| defense budget elsewhere. If the martian cities cannot strike
| _from_ Mars, then there is little incentive to building the
| capability to destroy them.
|
| Anyhow, what are we talking about here? Why did the topic of Mars
| and avoiding nuclear armageddon come up?
| cletus wrote:
| This question presupposes a lot and it's a deep topic so I don't
| want to get lost in the weeds.
|
| Your question, I assume, is based on the idea that humans may
| well colonize Mars and one of reasons for doing so is to increase
| humanity's chance of survival an otherwise extinction-level
| event.
|
| It's worth pointing out that nuclear war is just one of many
| potential extinction level events. Even then, nuclear war in
| particular is unlikely to exterminate the entire species. Another
| where colonizing Mars would help is, say, a massive body
| impacting Earth.
|
| But stepping back, colonizing Mars is largely a romantic notion,
| not a logical one. People imagine themselves walking on Mars but
| there are severe problems with this:
|
| 1. Gravity is much lower than Earth. It's roughly similar to the
| Moon. It's unclear how we'd deal with living in low-gee like this
| on an indefinite basis;
|
| 2. Mars has an atmosphere but it's actually worse than no
| atmosphere in many ways. It's barely above vacuum so you can't
| breathe it, even if it was the right gas mix (which of course it
| isn't). All it really does is stir up dust to cover all your
| above-ground installations. Solar panels are likely to be one of
| these so you can't really avoid it. Dirt and dust on Earth have
| been eroded by eons of wind and water. Not so on Mars. Martian
| dust is jagged and "sticky" as a result. So it's more annoying.
|
| 3. Mars has no protection from solar radiation unlike Earth (ie
| the Van Allen belt / magnetosphere); and
|
| 4. Even though gravity is lower, getting into and out of the
| gravity well is still a considerable issue, particularly given
| the lower atmosphere doesn't have the same potential for
| aerobraking as Earth's atmosphere does.
|
| For nuclear war in particular, a political entity may well also
| exist on Mars that will make a nuclear strike. You'd likely get
| more warning since Earth's superpowers have quick strike
| capability from nuclear attack submarines that can be positioned
| off the coast of major cities. Mars of course has no oceans so
| you're talking air or ground vehicles or ground installations.
|
| Nuclear missiles could come from Earth but you'd get a lot of
| warning for this (weeks to months) and this wouldn't be cheap.
|
| Personally I'm convinced the future of spacefaring humans is in
| orbitals not on other moons or worlds.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| If we are on Mars likely we'll be in space habitats very shortly
| thereafter.
|
| So it's more a signifier of diaspora on space than about a single
| Mars city
| GistNoesis wrote:
| How likely is it that a life-destroying Gamma Ray Burst hitting
| Earth would spare Mars ?
| spodek wrote:
| To propose we go to Mars to protect the species is backward.
| People with the means want to go to Mars to show off or other
| personal reasons. Then they drum up some humanitarian-sounding
| reason for government and popular support.
|
| If we could prove beyond shadow of a doubt that no dangerous
| asteroids would hit Earth for a million years and that pursuing
| Mars accelerated our environmental problems here, I don't doubt
| that the same people would come up with new justifications and
| keep going, even if counterproductive.
| api wrote:
| I don't think "a backup copy of humanity" is the best argument
| for space settlement. It's not necessarily wrong, but it's not
| the strongest and you are correct that it's not foolproof.
|
| The best argument is that frontiers are where innovation happens,
| and where outsiders can migrate as a "pressure valve" for
| civilization. Without a frontier there is nowhere to try new
| things and it's impossible to challenge existing norms without
| fighting. No frontier means either eternal stagnation or eternal
| war. (War can take the form of either overt violence or constant
| political turmoil.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_thesis
|
| I don't think it's a coincidence that sci-fi that posits a
| frontier (generally space but sometimes others) is usually more
| optimistic than sci-fi that posits a humanity confined to Earth's
| gravity well. Writers and artists see this.
|
| We are rapidly approaching a state in which the entire planet is
| settled, surveilled, and regulated. This is unprecedented in
| human history, and I think it's going to be fairly dystopian. I
| can only see two possible outcomes: absolutely total global
| surveillance state or a global "failed state" resembling a
| dystopian cyberpunk anarchy like Stephenson's Snow Crash. They're
| not mutually exclusive; the first could lead to the second.
|
| I don't think it's feasible to reverse this trend. It's a natural
| outcome of humanity's growth and technological advancement.
| Pushing out to a new frontier is really the only option.
| koheripbal wrote:
| If you imagine humanity as the first single celled organism of
| the galaxy, diversification and evolution goes hand in hand
| with spreading out.
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| Earth still has vast oceans and polar deserts which are
| virtually unclaimed and uninhabitable, yet still offer a more
| inviting environment than mars: ample water, protection from
| radiation, in some cases more available solar power, low-
| latency communication with other inhabited areas, etc. There's
| an opportunity to work toward the kinds of radical self-
| sufficiency that would be needed on Mars without leaving the
| planet.
| api wrote:
| I see this brought up often and I think it glosses over a lot
| of things.
|
| Antarctica is a common red herring in these discussions. It's
| illegal to settle there, otherwise there already would be
| settlements likely bootstrapped through mining. The entire
| continent is locked down by treaty.
|
| Seasteading is technically possible but there are many issues
| once it gets to the point of declaring oneself a nation
| state. It's also worse in certain respects than Mars. The
| climate is obviously far better, but you can't mine anything
| and land in the form of floating platforms is vastly more
| costly.
|
| Lastly though, I really think space as a frontier is
| qualitatively different and people know it. Compared to the
| scale of current or even foreseeable future human
| civilization, it's infinite and near inexhaustible even
| without positing any kind of FTL or near-light-speed travel.
| The solar system alone is just monstrous. It's called space
| for a reason.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > Lastly though, I really think space as a frontier is
| qualitatively different and people know it. Compared to the
| scale of current or even foreseeable future human
| civilization, it's infinite and near inexhaustible even
| without positing any kind of FTL or near-light-speed
| travel. The solar system alone is just monstrous. It's
| called space for a reason.
|
| This is really key. Once the cat is out of the bag with
| spacefaring being democratized and relatively cheap, the
| frontier is truly endless. It won't peter out like all of
| Earth's frontiers have -- space will always have more
| wilderness than we have people.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > democratized and relatively cheap
|
| This is not and is unlikely to ever be a thing. Every
| human surviving off Earth needs to carry a minimum amount
| of infrastructure with them at all times. They need air,
| heat, water, and food (roughly in that order). None of
| those things can be found in usable quantities off Earth.
| They also can't be easily fashioned out of local
| materials.
|
| So even your cheapest most democratized scrap yard rocket
| needs reliable life support. It also needs a lot of fuel
| to actually get to a "frontier". Willpower and desire
| don't have enough mass to provide propulsion. Like with
| life support fuel for any given rocket is not easily
| synthesized from local materials.
|
| Doing anything in space requires expensive infrastructure
| and complicated supply chains. Promises of 3D printed
| rockets from Mars rocks are as realistic and practical as
| rockets constructed of unicorn bone and powered by dragon
| farts.
|
| The cheapest and most democratized things you can send
| into space _currently_ are CubeSats. They are several
| orders of magnitude away from "cheap and democratized"
| manned spaceflight.
| NateEag wrote:
| > I don't think it's a coincidence that sci-fi that posits a
| frontier (generally space but sometimes others) is usually more
| optimistic than sci-fi that posits a humanity confined to
| Earth's gravity well. Writers and artists see this.
|
| But see The Expanse for a strong contradiction of this pattern.
|
| It has frontiers but human nature has not suddenly gone through
| a transmutation that makes it natively good.
|
| ...and I'll argue The Expanse is actually way better than most
| of those optimistic shows. Especially any of the Star Trek
| series. (Season 1 of Picard was an improvement on most ST, I'll
| happily grant)
| api wrote:
| It's not that human nature will get better with a frontier.
| It's that it gets worse without one.
|
| The best scenario I can think of for a closed Earth is
| Singapore but with more surveillance and a much more stagnant
| culture. Oh, and a very high rate of suicide and mental
| illness.
| ModernMech wrote:
| The problem with frontiers is that one culture's "frontier" is
| another culture's homeland. Look what happens to native
| populations every time they encounter a more technologically
| advanced civilization.
|
| My worry about a lawless infinite frontier is that it will
| encourage lawless exponential exploitation. What happens when
| one of these spacefaring humanoids innovates a planet-eating or
| sun-eating machine. Just a vessel that consumes an entire
| planet. Or a death star type weapon?
|
| Now you have a civilization of innovating planet eating humans
| roaming and multiplying throughout the universe like a virus.
| Does life exist on the planets they eat? Who knows or cares?
| Who would stop them if it did? I wouldn't leave it past the
| human mind to implement this.
| api wrote:
| There are no guarantees of course, but I am fond of saying
| "it's called space for a reason." There is so damn much of
| it. Go find one of those "solar system to scale" models.
|
| Anyone with interstellar capability could definitely go
| somewhere else. That doesn't guarantee they won't be assholes
| but it means it's unlikely that future spacefaring
| intelligences will be pushed into an aggressive position by
| scarcity of land or resources. They will at least have the
| option of just going elsewhere.
|
| Personally I think large scale space conflict for rational
| reasons is unlikely both because of how costly it could be
| (any spacefaring being has ludicrously overpowered WMDs) and
| the optionality. So if it does happen I would predict it
| occurring for irrational reasons. That happens of course.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I wonder to which extent our current Western re-orientation
| towards introspection and a crusade against psychological harm
| stems from a lack of space for physical expansion, and the
| exhaustion of the IT revolution. The Zeitgeist tends to
| concentrate on one or two things only. Maybe a rebooted Space
| Race could make us again look towards the sky.
| api wrote:
| Absolutely. The Internet was for a short while a proxy
| frontier, but now it's largely "settled" at least as far as
| the average person is concerned.
|
| The endless culture war shitshow is a preview of what happens
| when there is nothing to do and nowhere to go. Anyone with
| children knows what bored isolated kids are like. Adults are
| just grown up children; our psychology is not that different.
| We go fucking nuts. Our cultural and political insanity will
| only get worse from here on out unless there is some
| frontier, some unknown, some mystery somewhere.
|
| Again I feel like I should stress that this condition is
| unprecedented in human history. One has always been able to
| walk off in some random direction and go elsewhere, and
| contrary to what some people think there was quite a lot of
| travel in the ancient world. Otzi the ice mummy was found
| carrying copper tools with copper that likely came from quite
| far away:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otzi#Tools_and_equipment
|
| Edit: total tangent but: I use the term settlement instead of
| colonization because I think the European colonial era is
| kind of a bad model of what this will be like. The best model
| I see in history for what space migration will be like is the
| Polynesian settlement period.
|
| https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1586/polynesian-
| navigat...
|
| SpaceX is building our equivalent of the Polynesian multi-
| hulled canoe.
| legrande wrote:
| Forget nuclear war. If Mars was used to test bio-weapons or
| nanotech weapons then it could leak onto earth by accident.
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