Mars sucks(marssucks.com)

274 pointsby bocytron5 anni fa228 comments

https://www.marssucks.com/

242 comments

hetman5 anni fa

It's ironic (though by this stage I don't think anyone can say surprising) that the drive to reach Mars has been producing technology that will help Earth. For example, advancements in renewables energy in the short term. But also in the long term, once we can dig up our resources from space rocks, we won't have to dig the earth up to do it.

I've never understood this assumption that focusing on one thing must necessarily always be to the detriment of another.

johnchristopher5 anni fa

> the drive to reach Mars has been producing technology that will help Earth. For example, advancements in renewables energy in the short term.

What are you referring to ?

cecja5 anni fa

telesilla5 anni fa

People say the same thing about moon technology, and forget about all the advances gained. https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/feature/Going_to...

0024455 anni fa

There are 5 items on that list:

- Digital Flight Controls

- Food Safety

- Space Blankets

- Quake-Proofing

- Rechargeable Hearing Aids

This list does not impress me at all and I find it hard to believe we wouldn't have come up with those 5 items + a lot more without spending billions to go to the moon.

It's cool to go the moon but just like all things government is involved with, it could've been done a lot cheaper without involving bureaucrats.

jacobmischka5 anni fa

The space race literally made the semiconductors that currently run the world useful and affordable. Without it we might be using tiny vacuum tubes to this day.

7e5 anni fa

You forgot the /s.

jacobmischka5 anni fa

On my second sentence maybe, but not the first.

HenryBemis5 anni fa

I will just pick this one to set (some) record straight

> Rechargeable Hearing Aids

Apparently you don't have a family member that has hearing problems, making it difficult for them to have a 'normal life'. I have one. I remember buying a €4k (a few many years ago) pair of hearing aids and see the tears coming down when one was able to hear again.

I see this as a prosthetic leg. You lose a basic function, this technology helps go back to having a slightly better life. Some stats on the matter. DDG returned US statistics on the top results; I believe these can be proportional for all other countries.

https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick-statistics...

-About 28.8 million U.S. adults could benefit from using hearing aids. (HB Note: isn't that 9% of the population? - that's a big number - almost 29 million people??)

-Among adults aged 70 and older with hearing loss who could benefit from hearing aids, fewer than one in three (30 percent) has ever used them. Even fewer adults aged 20 to 69 (approximately 16 percent) who could benefit from wearing hearing aids have ever used them.

-As of December 2019, approximately 736,900 cochlear implants have been implanted worldwide. In the United States, roughly 118,100 devices have been implanted in adults and 65,000 in children.

0024455 anni fa

You are correct that my family members do not need hearing aids. But I am also not saying hearing aids are useless. I am just saying it is not worth going to the moon for.

Since it would've been cheaper to not go to the moon and let a private company step in to provide the need there would have been more resources to spend on improving more lives than were improved now.

onion2k5 anni fa

The research necessary to make a better hearing aid (improved batteries, noise cancelling circuitry, miniaturization of electronics, etc) cost billions. I imagine it was inevitable that the research would have happened eventually, but it would have taken longer and it would have been patented and expensive to license. It's very likely that the hearing aid industry wouldn't have had the resources to buy in the necessary tech to make a cost effective product until several decades later than it has. They might not even have done it by now if we hadn't reached the moon.

It's all speculation of course, but if you look at the rate of technological advancement pre-Moon landings compared to post-Moon landings, it does look a lot like the Apollo programme was an inflection point.

HenryBemis5 anni fa

You are reversing it. We didn't go to the moon to create/improve hearing aids.

But it was an effort that cost X amount of dollars, and since then it has helped 20-50-100 (?) million people globally to have a better life, go shopping, talk with friends and loved ones, listen to music, etc.

Not everything is about being profitable on day1. But if we do put a price tag to everything.. think of the jobs/profits/dividends/taxes created by the "hearing aids" industries. We now have 20-50-100 (?) million people that are 'more' integrated to society. That generates money to recover the 'losses' of the moon efforts.

https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/hea...

-The global hearing aids market size was $6.47bn in 2020.

If you run this number for the past 30-40-50 years, it adds up. And now add the $bn that the (hearing aids) users contribute to the global economy by integrating more/better to society.

I see this as a win-win. We explored the moon. We improved people's lives here on earth.

neatze5 anni fa

It is easy to look back in time and say what could have been done better, practically easy when you're not involved in process at all, what so ever.

0024455 anni fa

It is actually very easy to predict these things, if the people in charge are not the ones paying the bills it's not going to be worth the money.

neatze5 anni fa

Prove me wrong make a predication now here, nostradamus.

fho5 anni fa

I guess it is easy to make trivial predictions about the near future ... something like "computers will get faster", "batteries will become energy denser".

Something like "food will become safer" is trivial only in the most generic sense. It's entirely possible that something that we eat today will be found carcinogenic tomorrow and people will still take ages to accept and act on that new knowledge.

At least in my part of the ivory tower I see a strong shift away from meat, even my and my SOs parents (in their 60-70s) have (on their own behalf) cut out most of their meat consumption.

So if I had to make a Nostradamus prediction, I would bet on real meat becoming a pure luxurious item, something that only gets brought on the table for special occasions, over the next ... 50 years.

mgoetzke5 anni fa

It also inspired many engineers and software developers to become what they are, develop new methods etc.

stjohnswarts5 anni fa

Not really since r&d don't provide quarterly returns for years sometimes decades. Government funding science is a good thing and obviously there is some waste but the net positive is far greater. Capitalism is good, but so is working together as a society (aka government) to develop new tech is also good. It's not a zero sum game despite what libertarians would have us all think.

0024455 anni fa

Despite what you think about what Libertarians think, the term that is relevant here is opportunity cost. Not zero sum games.

woleium5 anni fa

Shhh, don't mention the PTFEs

reader_mode5 anni fa

>It's cool to go the moon but just like all things government is involved with, it could've been done a lot cheaper without involving bureaucrats.

This libertarian tilt is soo yesterday :)

Following the market and money signals alone leads to such amazing "innovations" as bitcoin and crypto -> people betting the next idiot will be left holding the bag and burning tons of energy and hardware while at it. Plus wasting a bunch of engineering hours on pointless endevours.

Or such amazing innovative endevours as Ad optimisation and network tracking.

Sorry but following money alone leads to some pretty pathological scenarios and results in a shitty society. I used to like libertarianism, the "don't touch me if I don't touch you" foundations and the logical framework is neat - but it just doesn't work out in reality - at least it doesn't lead to a world I'd like to live in.

0024455 anni fa

The surge of Bitcoin is a reaction to the endless money printing of the federal banks that has been started well over 10 years ago. This has put the interest rates to 0 or even -0% all over the world causing people to pull out their savings and putting it in anything that has a chance of beating the inflation rates.

It is not libertarian economics but keynesian economics that drive people to bitcoin and other bubbles.

Libertarian economics is not "soo yesterday", accepting bad policies from bureaucrats is.

Ps. if ads are the worst thing in your life then your life must be pretty good. Maybe install an ad blocker.

reader_mode5 anni fa

Ads are not the problem - harvesting the most talented CS people to work on ads is - this is the kind of innovation your ideal system leads to. Personally I'd rather live in a society that values going to mars. Subjective I know, but I only have one life to live, I don't live in the general case :)

Bitcoin is an extreeme example of something that's built in to markets - you're trying to guess how much someone will be willing to pay for an asset and this leads to natural bubles - it stops being about determining the value of something and it starts being about playing the market. You can spin whatever rationalizations you want arround it - bitcoin is the most degenerate manifestation of this. If you find a market full of idiots willing to buy bullshit and pump it's valuation, if the idiocy is strong enough that it wont easily go away, you have a really good incentive to join in and prosthelytize to grow the bubble more, even if you don't beleive it - just the fact you beleive there will be more idiots buying in makes it rational for you to get in.

And if you skip out on trading on it you'll be punished with below avarage returns.

0024455 anni fa

And your solution to "the problem" of other people freely choosing where and what to work on is what? You choose?

Let's agree to disagree on politics. Just let me know if you're ever about to be chosen as Supreme Chairman of the Party so I know what country to avoid.

reader_mode5 anni fa

It's better to realign the incentives to make sure you don't end up in pathological scenarios. The reason why tech companies find investing in this so lucrative is because these markets have so much winner-takes-all scenarios. You don't need to strawman it - governments are dealing with these kinds of secnarios, it's not ideal but better than doing nothing.

piokoch5 anni fa

In that case it makes much more sense to build a space station somewhere in asteroids belt between Mars and Jupiter, there is carbon, metals and, what's very important, water, so it is possible to make station self-sustained and easily retrieve whatever is needed.

Although I am not sure if it will be practical to move iron from that place to the Earth, without some significant break through in space travel, probably not.

inglor_cz5 anni fa

Mars is located conveniently between the Earth and the asteroid belt and people probably tolerate low gravity (0,3 G) better than zero gravity, at least for longer periods of time.

As a springboard towards the Outer Solar System, Mars makes a lot of sense. It is a lot more Earth-y than anything beyond, with the possible exception of Europa and Titan. So our contemporary technologies need less adjustment to work there.

HenryBemis5 anni fa

I see Mars as our "first convenient UAT". If we can make this work (get people to create a settlement and live there for 1-2-5-10 years), then we can identify and study the requirements and impact, and probably repeat the process to the next planet further out.

First you get to feel comfortable with lifting 20kg before you move to 30kg, 50kg, etc. improve your wrist angles, how you spread your toes on the groun, etc. Mars is our 20kg. We take it for a spin, iron out the wrinkles, repeat it perfectly, then move to the next target.

Meanwhile we 'studied' Mars for 'so long' that we know there are very few things that can surprise/wipe the effort with e.g. a single volcanic erruption/earthquake/mega-storm.

79525 anni fa

Building habitats that do not rely on a biosphere is exactly what we need on earth and exactly what will be built for mars. Perhaps if we learn to live on Mars we can one day learn to live on earth.

kaba05 anni fa

Even a post-ww3 Earth is orders of magnitude more habitable than Mars. And simply, it’s just so far into the future that we should not yet be doing that.

antisol5 anni fa

"it’s just so far into the future that we should not yet be doing that"

You're probably right. And 640K aught to be enough for anybody, too ;)

thombles5 anni fa

> I've never understood this assumption that focusing on one thing must necessarily always be to the detriment of another.

The Earth is a zero-sum game, possibly the most real example that exists. Every gallon of oil, every mineral that doesn't find its way back through recycling effectively disappears. Everybody reading this website has spent their life in an era of such excess, such profligacy, that this fact is easy to ignore: "we can just reallocate a little and do both!"

The trouble is we're moving towards the end of that era. We're moving onto oil fields with increasingly poor EROEI. Arable land is decreasing. We're going to have to make some choices very soon which will be to the detriment of something else.

As a species we have a high tolerance for wasteful nonsense—what is life without recreation and creativity after all? But it's perfectly reasonable to consider a very resource-intensive project like "life on mars" and decide that should be low on the priority list.

fighterpilot5 anni fa

  "resource-intensive project like life on Mars"

I don't take perspective this seriously for four reasons:

- its pursuit will lead to unintended tech advances

- it's such a small expenditure relative to other wasteful crap we engage in.

- there is a valid argument for diversifying life, the next gigantic asteroid isn't following your timetable

- it's private money and isn't negatively impacting you and doesn't have its hand in your pocket, as long as externalities are being taxed you're not worse off

I see so much hand wringing about this but I'm sitting here wondering why we are wasting so much money on movies and video games instead of these aspirational projects.

antisol5 anni fa

"resource-intensive project like life on Mars"

"I don't take this perspective seriously"

Yeah. They say "resource-intensive" like we're not spending many MANY more resources on making big sticks to shake at each other.

And they say this as if the resources on this planet were a significant fraction of what's available in the solar system.

They say things like "earth is a zero sum game" as if sunlight didn't exist and materials we mine from the asteroid belt won't fall down a gravity well.

Or as if the resources required to put life on mars are a significant fraction of any meaningful measure.

It's almost like they think earth is big. ;)

summm5 anni fa

Any possible Mars effort is dwarfed by the huge amount of bullshit we do otherwise. There are lots of very bright people working in the Finance industry. In another world they would be perfectly capable of doing physics, engineering etc. Even the people who are engineers right now mostly work on bullshit consumer crap. Don't get me started about ad tech. This list goes on and on. There's lots of people who would have been capable of a STEM jobs or even basic research, but landed in some other bullshit job for whatever reason. I refuse to believe that we are using our resources wisely. And about materials, there is no technical reason that one needs to replace a phone every two years. Unrepairable bluetooth headsets. IoT crap. Cars that let you browse twitter...

cookieswumchorr5 anni fa

do not underestimate consumer crap. One of the reasons the Soviet Union went down was the inability to provide its citizens with consumer crap. It had LOTS of stem jobs by the way

_hzrk5 anni fa

Your comment reminded me of Soviet Union or Communist Romania. They thought the same way that brilliant people shouldn't focus on finance and that the state should produce things that are not "crap" in the view of some academic or party member. It failed badly, the only good thing that we inherited today is that we have many engineers in Eastern Europe and that's pretty much it.

gnopgnip5 anni fa

> The Earth is a zero-sum game

No, it's not zero-sum. As you noted, "arable land decreasing" shows that. And similarly you can create arable land, you can enrich soil, use more drought tolerant crops, use tools and automation to harvest resources with less labor, at a lower cost. The allocation of resources is also not zero sum

antisol5 anni fa

Don't forget the stupendous amount of energy from that big ball of hydrogen that hits it every second.

arcanon5 anni fa

Arable land is outdated thinking. Its time to go vertical farming.

Baeocystin5 anni fa

>Every gallon of oil, every mineral that doesn't find its way back through recycling effectively disappears.

I realize this is a hell of a caveat, but if we ever get fusion running in a real way, our problems of resource scarcity are essentially solved. Like you said, the elements we have on Earth right now aren't actually consumed, they just get shuffled around. Make electricity cheap enough, and un-shuffling what is needed becomes economically viable in a way that energy-as-provided-by-oil could never achieve.

adrianN5 anni fa

There is no reason to believe that fusion will be a particularly cheap source of power.

CaptArmchair5 anni fa

This is a so-called 'wicked' problem. Choosing to go to Mars is not as clear cut as it seems on the surface.

Calling the project 'resource intensive' is one thing, but pointing out exactly where it consumes an unreasonable amount of resources is a totally different ball game.

Context matters, and things can look very different depending on what you compare against each other. Arguably, the actual rocket, astronauts and supplies send to Mars only count for a negligble fraction of what's available on Earth. But things change when you take a step back: there are many layers to the story. You need infrastructure and people here on Earth to actually assemble the mission: specialists, technicians, management, buildings, factories, supply chains,... And if you zoom out even more, you see that you need sturdy civic infrastructure to support all that: education, roads & bridges, domestic and foreign policies, international trade deals, defense and so on. And all the people involved to support all that have to attain a living standard above the poverty line which allows them to focus on all that. So, now you're looking at essential economic sectors which need to support all of that.

Turns out that the 'resource intensiveness' isn't concentrated on a specific point. It's diluted, it's hard to track, and there's a fuzzy line with questions like 'is this resource clear cut spend on an, arguably, wasteful Mars mission or something else?'

> As a species we

I always get skeptical whenever 'we' is used in an argument. Especially in reference to humanity as a species. Humanity isn't a collective consciousness able to think with a single mind. It's billions of individuals that all act on their own accord and any collective behaviors that can be observed are emerging dynamics.

Sure, you could argue that sovereign nations consists of millions of individuals rallying together and aligning their behavior towards common goals. But those are always informed by a complex interplay of trade-offs, incentives, benefits, external conditions, and so on. In the grand scheme of history, even nations aren't forever: they come and they go over time.

The hard reality is that either going to Mars, or curbing climate change aren't self-fulfilling prophecies simply because several vocal groups want them to become reality. They only become reality through complex dynamics over which individuals have far less control then we might assume about ourselves.

pjio5 anni fa

> I've never understood this assumption that focusing on one thing must necessarily always be to the detriment of another.

I totally agree with you, having a bright, exciting vision of the future is a huge motivator and technological driver to help with our problems on earth.

This website really gave me a good laugh in a positive way. I would say, space exploration made it again possible to look at our homeworld in a more appreciating way!

Jedd5 anni fa

> I've never understood this assumption that focusing on one thing must necessarily always be to the detriment of another.

Probably mostly because popular news / media has endeavoured to simplify things way beyond the point they should have been simplified -- nuance, rationality, critical thinking, are under-promoted.

https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

throwawayboise5 anni fa

Really, the production of technology that helps Earth has been the only benefit of our adventures in space since the 1960s. Nobody lives on the moon, and nobody will live on Mars either. But the exercise of getting there produced many benefits and advances in technology that are useful here on Earth.

Grustaf5 anni fa

It's a joke page, it's a way to get attention for environmental programs. Don't take it too literally.

chakhs5 anni fa

I'm indifferent about Mars but I kind of find this argument weird.

It assumes that these secondary advancements would not have been achieved if research into going to Mars was not done.

How about just doing research about renewable energy for earth instead of Mars? You could argue more could be achieved if this was done because we will not be distracted by Mars specific problems that won't apply to earth

7e5 anni fa

Yes, any large effort will shed some crumbs of technology that can be reused elsewhere, but resources are finite. I would prefer that the drive to help Earth produces technology that will help Earth. That's a more focused, direct goal.

sktrdie5 anni fa

When I hear these kind of "why go to space if we have people dying of hunger here on earth?" kind of arguments I always refer them to the amazing speech Robert Zubrin gave on the answer for "why go to Mars?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2Mu8qfVb5I

The idea is that:

"We’d get millions of scientists, engineers, and inventors, technological entrepreneurs, doctors, medical researchers out of that (going to mars), and the intellectual capital from that would enormously benefit us"

I do believe of course that all things should be done - we should do the best we can to first save our planet. But that doesn't mean we should stop doing the rest of the "pushing the envelope" kind of things.

koheripbal5 anni fa

There will always be haters to any ambitious project. It's best just to ignore them. They are looking for someone to pay attention to them.

koheripbal5 anni fa

tldr; The purpose of humanity is to gain knowledge.

Finding elements of past life on Mars, has major consequences on understanding the ourselves and the universe.

marc_io5 anni fa

> “The purpose of humanity is to gain knowledge.”

I think that “to expand awareness“ is a more fitting term for that.

Is what we DO with our knowledge that really matters.

[deleted]5 anni fa

diimdeep5 anni fa

Looks like people behind this site work in marketing and advertisement, and that what sucks here, not Mars.

spullara5 anni fa

Earth is doomed with or without humans. Everywhere is doomed to some cataclysmic events. Mars avoids some of these events that would affect Earth and doesn't avoid others. Ultimately we have to get out of the solar system. Think of an investment in Mars as an investment in humans.

Borrible5 anni fa

Extremely cheap money desperate for profit.

Escapism for the masses as the Desert grows.

New Pharaos building new Pyramids to be remembered in eternity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdQKUvv3bew

arcanon5 anni fa

Its not about mars. Its about the spaceships that get us there. The best thing for humanity is to live in spaceships.

More important than mars will be a space shipyard in space that has a renewable environment with vertical farms inside it capable of supporting a community.

jcun41285 anni fa

Don't disagree but... "billions" not as much of money in general and I like the idea of potentially being multiplanetary despite how long it might take. Plan B

Sucks to think if everything we've achieved gets erased because it's all here.

Why not both

raffraffraff5 anni fa

All life, that we know of, evolved on earth. Over billions of years. Life forms have complex interdependencies. You can't take one life form out of its environment and have it thrive. We can't even save threatened ecosystems here on earth most of the time. So why the does anyone think we can create functioning ecosystems on a barren planet that we can't transport more than a few tons of raw material to? It's a delusion.

throwawayfeaxcz5 anni fa

You are focusing on now, it's not about now and it's not about us, it's about the species, if our ancestors gave up in the face on every obstacle we would still number about 1000 in a small valley in Africa or most likely we would be extinct. Life expands and to quote Jurassic park life finds a way.

kaba05 anni fa

As I have already mentioned, even a nuclear warfare-ridden Earth is much much much more habitable than anything else in the Solar system. And frankly, with current tendencies we will simply not live to see the day where living on another planet becomes a possibility, that’s just fantasy.

Also, I don’t really see how “saving” the top 100 billionaires is a good thing. Unless the spacecraft explodes with them onboard or something...

throwawayfeaxcz5 anni fa

I think we can all agree that the resources on earth are finite, I think we can also all agree that our population is increasing in an exponential rate (not that it should, but that it is).

As long as we dismiss the possibility of using our technology to use resources outside of earth we will be stuck fighting for a greater share of the diminishing resources on earth.

No matter how much you recycle there is only a finite amount of everything on earth.

Living on mars is less of a fantasy now than going to the moon was just 90 years ago. We have people living for extended periods of time in orbit, we already have the technology, we just don't have the economic base.

We expand or we go extinct that's how it is, you might not like it but that's how it is.

As far as the billionaires, dude, the billionaires have it awesome here on earth i don't think they will be moving.

ryandrake5 anni fa

Even an Earth stripped of resources, with no fresh water or farmable land, hot and wrecked by global warming, and covered in radiation from nuclear fallout is more habitable than Mars. I'm a big fan of human space exploration, but let's not kid ourselves: Mars will not be even remotely habitable (without fully-enclosed structures and mostly dependent on resources shipped from Earth) for dozens of generations, best case scenario.

Let's try a test run first: Set up a fully independent and self-sustaining habitat of 100K people somewhere in the middle of Antarctica. If we can't even make that work, what makes us think we can inhabit Mars?

exporectomy5 anni fa

The risk is Earth being hit by a meteorite that kills all humans. It'll still be habitable but with nobody left to inhabit it if we don't have another colony.

exporectomy5 anni fa

Everything we've seen in nature is like this, so it's impossible for us to do anything different. That's so clearly wrong, you must be actively trying to invent any excuse that sounds superficially like logic. Even the facts are wrong. Hydroponic plants thrive in a very artificial environment.

harryf5 anni fa

Think the point of the website is implicit in the "Let's get to Mars" vision is that "Earth is an unsolvable mess and will be inevitably become uninhabitable". In other words we're failing to envision some kind of future for ourselves on Earth.

There's a great interview with Alan Moore (Watchmen, Walking Dead and much more) on YouTube that is highly underrated - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBc71ROdGxU - the whole thing is great but at 4m32s he puts it beautifully...

"We tend to think, at this juncture of the 21st century, that there are only two possibilities regarding the future. One is the future will be exactly the same as today, only with smaller radios and smaller cars. So if the future is going to be the same as today, why bother preparing for it? The other alternative is there isn't a future. That is all ends in some kind of massive environmental collapse or a series of mushroom clouds. In which case why bother preparing for the future, if there isn't going to be one? Neither of these mindsets are actually doing anything to prepare us for the world in which we will almost certainly be living. Or which our descendants will almost certainly be living in. If you don't imagine a future, there's a fair chance you're not going to have one."

Elon's whole argument for Mars is based on the belief we don't have a future on Earth and that some kind of Dark Age is coming - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/11/elon-musk...

"If there’s a third world war we want to make sure there’s enough of a seed of human civilisation somewhere else to bring it back and shorten the length of the dark ages"

Personally think we should regard it with the same level skepticism we have for door-to-door salesmen. It's a great pitch to sell SpaceX...

jcun41285 anni fa

Well even if life on Earth is all jolly I would still like to extend beyond/general science advancement... arguable "it's pointless" with regard to how massive space is. But that's my opinion

weare1385 anni fa

I don't think anyone is arguing against space exploration or developing technologies to aid us in that endeavor. It's the idea that it's a viable solution to our immediate problems here on Earth, problems we're currently experiencing. I'm all for space exploration and the advancement of science in general but I'm also pretty keen on this whole having food, water and breathable air thing too. I have to say I've grown somewhat accustom to it. Besides if we can't solve the sustainability problem here on Earth with all the natural resources we have what chance would we have someplace markedly worse? If we can't even figure out how to make our current situation work here we're not going to stand a chance anyplace else in our solar system.

chmod7755 anni fa

> Why not both

Because plan B takes way more effort than just avoiding the need for one.

cortesoft5 anni fa

We can avoid all possible extinction events?

flukus5 anni fa

We could build colonies underground, under the Antarctic ice sheet and under water, that would be far easier and cheaper and allow us to survive just about any extinction event the universe is likely to throw our way in the next billion years. Those environments would be paradise compared to mars.

athms5 anni fa

There won't be an ice sheet, it will melt within the next ten thousand years due to global warming. Sea levels are expected to rise four meters during this period.

Humans need to leave Earth long before the Sun turns into a red giant. We have about 300 million years to leave the planet or it is game over.

Many distinct areas of Earth such as the Grand Canyon will have eroded away in about 2-3 million years. Mountain ranges like the Rockies will be gone in 50 million years. The Hawaiian Islands will disappear into the ocean in 80 millions years as the Pacific Plate recycles its land mass.

In 300 millions years, the Sun will change its luminosity, increasing the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth. This will increase the mean solar temperature by 5C degrees.

A little over 300 million years, give or take a few million years, all the continents are going to merge into one super continent. On the plus side, it is expected this will bring a new glacial period: increasing oxygen levels, lowering global temperatures, create new sea ice, and lowering sea levels due to global cooling.

In 500 million years the Sun's luminosity will be so great that it will disrupt the carbonate–silicate cycle. The higher luminosity increases weathering of surface rocks, which traps carbon dioxide in the ground as carbonate. As water evaporates from the Earth's surface, rocks harden, causing plate tectonics to slow and eventually stop once the oceans evaporate completely. Without volcanoes to recycle carbon into the Earth's atmosphere, carbon dioxide levels fall to the point where photosynthesis is no longer possible.

Good luck in the bunker.

flukus5 anni fa

> Humans need to leave Earth long before the Sun turns into a red giant.

We have billions of years for that. Everything else we can deal with much easier here than we can on mars.

> Without volcanoes to recycle carbon into the Earth's atmosphere, carbon dioxide levels fall to the point where photosynthesis is no longer possible.

And after that the earth will still be more hospitable on mars.

> Good luck in the bunker.

We'd be living underground on mars, any sort of terraforming possibilities are in the far distant future, possibly never.

athms5 anni fa

>We have billions of years for that.

Did you not read what I wrote? Never mind, I am not going to waste a lengthy reply for a person that doesn't understand the end of life events coming to this planet.

chmod7755 anni fa

You can make any likely event and their aftermath survivable more easily than create a self-sustaining colony on mars. Yes.

If a colony on mars could ever be self-sustainable without earth. If it can't, your point is moot.

antisol5 anni fa

Nobody who had done even a small amount of research on the subject would make such an absurd statement.

teraku5 anni fa

I think OP means, why can't we try to thrive and achieve Mars colony, eventually evolving into its own culture. It might take building a Dyson sphere and whatnot and thousands of years. But it might be worth trying. But Mars is not a Planet B, where we go once we destroyed earth.

soperj5 anni fa

How many massive extinction events has the earth already gone through?

lend0005 anni fa

This is lacking in vision and short sighted. There are countless scenarios where humanity inevitably, eventually dies on Earth even if we abandoned technology and nuclear stockpiles (unrealistic), and went back to living in agricultural communes and getting in touch with nature.

In fact, Earth will be completely inhospitable to complex life as we know it in just a few hundred million years as the sun matures [0].

Other things that could wipe out the species at any time: - Gamma ray burst - Supernova - Meteors - Supervolcanic events

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth#:~:text=Once%2....

chmod7755 anni fa

Most of these are still more survivable than Mars, or would kill anything that lives anywhere in the solar system.

antisol5 anni fa

No.

When the sun expands and earth gets too hot, Mars will become just the right temperature for a period on the order of the millions of years. Assuming we haven't already terraformed it by then.

And even when the sun is in full Red Giant mode there will still be a habitable zone, it'll just be further out.

chmod7755 anni fa

What do you mean "No"?

Did you read and comprehend what you're replying to?

Edit: Removed the other half of my response. I don't event want to go down this route. Others in this tree of comments have done it better.

antisol5 anni fa

It's a negative response. As in "your statement is incorrect".

[deleted]5 anni fa

midasuni5 anni fa

Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu, Einstein, Morobuto, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes .. and all of this .. all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars."

kaba05 anni fa

We do know when will it happen, and definitely not anywhere close to reasonable care about it. We have much much much more urgent things to worry about. Hell, space invasion by aliens is a bigger threat than the goddamn Sun.

antisol5 anni fa

"not anywhere close to reasonable care about it"

I know right. And this whole climate change thing that everybody is freaking out about. It's probably like 50-100 years away! I won't live that long. It's definitely not anywhere close to reasonable to care about it.

kaba05 anni fa

This is a really bad take. Do you honestly compare something that WILL happen 1 BILLION years later to a slope on which we are already sliding down that will cause massive real catastrophes all around the Earth? Being so close that you will likely experience it, and your children will definitively.

antisol5 anni fa

"a slope on which we are already sliding down that will cause massive real catastrophes all around the Earth"

You're referring to the sun expanding into a red giant here, right?

I thought climate change was closer than a billion years away. But I guess I must have been wrong.

Thanks for letting me know, I'm much less concerned about it now.

"you will likely experience it, and your children will definitively"

I'm old, and not a breeder. By your own logic it's not reasonable for me to care about it.

(the actual point here, in case it's unclear, is that if you're rallying for action on climate change while simultaneously saying that other existential threats are not worth worrying about because they're "too far away", you're guilty of doing exactly the same thing as people who said 30 years ago that climate change was some distant far-off thing, and only speculative, and blah blah blah.

You know the people I'm talking about. They're the exact same people who you hold up as an example, saying "how will our kids forgive us?".

The same applies to our grandkids. And their great-great-great-great-(4 billion years worth)-grandkids.)

chmod7755 anni fa

> you're guilty of doing exactly the same thing as people who said 30 years ago that climate change was some distant far-off thing

Are you serious right now?

That's like berating someone who took a dive out of an airplane without a parachute about their smoking habit.

Actually it's not. I'm a liar. The time it'll take someone to fall 5km vs their smoking habit killing them is still about an order of magnitude from 100 years / 10 billion years.

You're either not hearing yourself or having a laugh.

antisol5 anni fa

As a counter, and to re-use your own metaphor, this position of "let's forget about mars and only deal with climate change" is equivalent to saying to the man without a parachute "you'll be totally fine if you just put on a parachute". Despite the fact that he's a smoker, has a missile locked onto him, and is busily aiming himself at the lava pool of an erupting volcano as he falls.

You seem to misunderstand that nobody here said climate change isn't urgent, or that it should be less urgent than getting to mars. Or that it's not worthy of more resources at the moment than getting to mars. The point being made is that we can and should be doing both at the same time.

JohnJamesRambo5 anni fa

I often wonder what would happen if Elon put all the energy he is into going to Mars into something that would radically change earth, like fusion energy.

The timescale where we need to leave earth is probably many zeroes from now. But earth needs help now.

sto_hristo5 anni fa

I often wonder what could happen if you mind your own business and let Elon mind his own business. Everyone mind their own business. Then if have the ability to mind your own business, you can choose to do something that would radically change earth, like fusion energy.

It's so easy to spend other people's money on your behalf.

antisol5 anni fa

"The timescale where we need to leave earth is probably many zeroes from now"

...he said on the day before the huge and previously undetected asteroid struck, ending all life on the planet.

People had tried to set up detection networks to find asteroids like this one in advance, but they had been told "the timescale for an asteroid strike is probably many zeroes from now, we have more important priorities" and their few million bucks in funding didn't get approved.

Meanwhile, the factories continued pumping out billion-dollar nuclear submarines that could only be used to make the planet less habitable.

drew-y5 anni fa

I think a new space era could radically change the earth too. Nuclear Fusion is very hard, Elon isn't a magician.

akie5 anni fa

He's already put in significant energy into making gasoline cars go away. Isn't that enough for one man?

JohnJamesRambo5 anni fa

I just bought a Tesla so I’ll give you this one haha.

I think electric cars are great, I just feel like they are more an iterative change than the radical one that fusion energy would have on moving us somewhere on the Kardashev scale and eliminating poverty and hunger on Earth. I know I’m being greedy, I don’t even know if fusion as an energy source outside the sun is possible or if the whole SpaceX budget and effort and minds would budge the needle. I do know that Mars is a pretty miserable place to try and live. What would make it easier and nicer is fusion energy. :)

colordrops5 anni fa

No good deed goes unpunished.

notimetorelax5 anni fa

Tesla pretty much spearheaded the switch to electric. A few years back all manufacturers treated electric as a gimmick.

adrianN5 anni fa

The help Earth needs is political, there is not much a single rich person can do. We already have the technology to radically improve our environmental impact.

rvz5 anni fa

> We already have the technology to radically improve our environmental impact.

And its time we use it for this purpose. It appears that the activists (especially the alarmists) have already forgotten about the technological shifts and solutions that already address their concerns.

To most of us here, where interested in practical, realistic and actual solutions backed by empirical studies and strong evidence. To some, it is all political melodrama, the game of blame, extreme rage and fury at the past offenders who are already gone and later saying 'it's too late' or 'it's over'.

I would rather listen to the technologists that have built these solutions and are advancing them than a screeching activist telling everyone 'just do better' which doesn't change minds or get us closer to the goal.

adrianN5 anni fa

We only have a couple of years of emissions left to roll out the necessary technology if we want a fighting chance to stay below 2° of warming. We're not doing anywhere near enough to achieve that goal. I think some panic is quite justified.

dmingod6665 anni fa

I want to know if there is a single source where people's predictions regarding climate change are tracked, proven correct and proven false - that would be a huge credibility boost.

I don't follow this so I won't know enough to have an opinion. but it's always been the case that we have only 12-15 years to solve this climate crisis. I'm reaching my 40s and this has been the case since I was a teenager. I remember, we'd be rallying around marches with, 'save the world, make it a better place, for you..'

People are making confident assertions of what is going to happen in the future like it's nothing.. I mean 'predict the future' - is there any other context other than climate change where you can confidently predict the future and be taken seriously?

I'm fairly ignorant on this subject, but, I really want to see a non-biased place where these predictions are shown correct and wrong..

adrianN5 anni fa

"Solve the climate crisis" has moved goalposts several times in the last decade, which is why it always seems to be a few years in the future. In the 90s "stop climate change" meant staying well below 1° of warming. This ship has sailed. Until recently "stop climate change" meant staying below 1.5° (the Paris Accord), but that is basically unachievable now without heroic effort, so goalposts in Realpolitik have moved to staying below 2°, but even here essentially no government implements the necessary policy to achieve this goal.

yoz-y5 anni fa

Having a literal moonshot as a goal does bring in useful technology on the road. Reusable rockets are one example.

kolinko5 anni fa

Elon is the single person who had the biggest impact on the electric car market. If not him, it might”ve taken years more to get where we are today.

Plus, his space project make astro mining a real possibility - and that in turn will have a huge impact on ecology in a decade or so.

holler5 anni fa

What about electric cars or a constellation of low orbit satellites to bring internet to many more people? I think it’s important for us to continue to push the bounds of exploration for practical and emotional reasons. It gives humanity something to believe in that transcends all societies and cultures, even if it’s just a cold, barren, hostile world.

postingawayonhn5 anni fa

He's working on plenty of earth problems too. Electric transport, solar, carbon capture, etc.

steve_taylor5 anni fa

Will fusion power magically erase the threat of extinction-level events such as comet strike?

JohnJamesRambo5 anni fa

Yes, almost infinite energy could be quite useful against a comet strike.

adrianN5 anni fa

Fusion power is not free. It's probably quite expensive compared to other power sources.

88840-88555 anni fa

thank God we humans can do more than one thing at a time: keep earth loveable AND explore space.

FeepingCreature5 anni fa

yeah imagine we colonize another planet for nothing

drew-y5 anni fa

Going to mars and making the earth a better place are not mutually exclusive.

bertrandpp5 anni fa

They're not, but sadly, one is terribly more urgent than the other

fighterpilot5 anni fa

Do you say the same thing when someone wants to make a movie, produce a video game, buy a sports team, start a social network, and so on?

Why does this criticism always get levied against the Mars vision, which at least will have positive side effects like new tech, a lower risk of being exterminated by an asteroid, and something aspirational that we can look up to.

I feel as though the anti-Mars thing is a meme that has gone around social media and people are just uncritically buying into that frame. Where's the anti-movies movement or the anti-sports teams movement?

bertrandpp5 anni fa

I definitely want to do all the things you mention, but these things can only be done on a viable planet, which is less and less the case for the earth.

antisol5 anni fa

"one is terribly more urgent than the other"

I completely agree. We need to get off this rock ASAP.

mclightning5 anni fa

you don't understand what it means to be "not mutually exclusive".

tibbydudeza5 anni fa

When the sun becomes a red giant it will suck just as much.

garmaine5 anni fa

That the human reaction to achieving success is to stir up so much hatred, makes me want to leave this planet even sooner.

senkora5 anni fa

Counterpoint: 37 extra minutes of sleep every night.

inglor_cz5 anni fa

And your location is so remote that your employers cannot deny you home office. Imagine the commute.

ellimilial5 anni fa

You misspelt 'work in an office with a bad atmosphere', you're welcome.

mathisonturing5 anni fa

Or 37 extra minutes of work

dapids5 anni fa

The focus should be to support both initiatives, not bring the other down, or to make it seem like an otherwise undesirable endeavour. At least that's the way the site made me feel. Mars might suck, but we are going somewhere, regardless.

kaba05 anni fa

> Mars might suck, but we are going somewhere, regardless.

On the extinct animals list, most likely

jbay8085 anni fa

Hey Earth, guess how your scientists learned about the risk that CFCs posed to your ozone layer, just in time to solve it before it was totally destroyed?

- Your friends, Mars and Venus.

weare1385 anni fa

We didn't need to live on either of those planets to figure that out, not that you would live for very long on Venus or Mars.

antisol5 anni fa

That's true, but the argument "why bother going there" is exactly the same argument as "why bother making a (telescope|space probe|satellite|rover|deep space network|apollo program|radio telescope|neutrino telescope|particle accelerator|submarine|etc etc etc etc etc ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC)".

When Galileo built his telescope, he didn't do it because he was looking for greenhouse gases on Venus.

That's what a lot of people don't seem to get: that science and discovery is not linear or predictable. Advances in one area have unexpected uses in other areas, and it's all cumulative and feeds back on itself.

You build a telescope to look up at the sky because it's pretty, and hey presto! Next thing you know you've got a heliocentric model and a theory of universal gravitation.

You build a radio telescope because you're interested in long-range communications, and wham! Cosmic Microwave Background and deep insight into the origin of the universe.

You decide to study the distances to a bunch of galaxies, and pow! Looks like we'll have to throw out that steady state theory.

There are so many examples.

nikonyrh5 anni fa

According to Neil deGrasse Tyson Galileo got funding for his project due to its high utility in the context of war. This puts telescopes to the same category as airplanes, rockets, satellites, nuclear powerplants, submarines and lots of other tech which has found its civilian usage as well. Isn't metallurgy in this category as well, you can either make stronger swords or plows.

But I strongly agree with you that what new tech you'll discover from fundamental research.

Ge0l5 anni fa

Hey passo-aggro pseudo-friends Mars and Venus, mind your own fucking business please, k?

- Earth

holoduke5 anni fa

Sounds like this message is made by a really frustrated person. I find it super awesome that we set foot on another desolate planet.

joshsyn5 anni fa

It's a free world. Mars rocks if we can capitalise it.

lastgeniusua5 anni fa

you can't save the planet with 'billions'. capitalism is by definition based on endlessly self-valorizing value

Heliosmaster5 anni fa

I think the US government should start by reallocating their military budget. And end world hunger, while we're at it.

metrodorus5 anni fa

Why not do both. We need to work on becoming a multiplanetary species too.

zhte4155 anni fa

Send Arnold to Mars and have him pull the lever.

saithound5 anni fa

Designed purely to pit people against one another, this is one of the most intentionally cynically, manipulative campaign against climate change that I've ever seen.

You can help discourage further such campaigns by making sure that they don't achieve their stated goals. E.g. to offset people who might be convinced by this drivel, I just went to the EnergyAustralia website, and opted my home and my business premises out of PureEnergy.

Fordec5 anni fa

It's got a link to Greenpeace at the bottom. I wouldn't expect any less.

harryf5 anni fa

I don't think the link has anything to do with people that created the website which is these guys - https://www.activistalosangeles.com/copy-of-who - there's more about them here - https://www.forbes.com/sites/afdhelaziz/2019/04/11/the-power... - doesn't seem to be any direct affiliation with Greenpeace

somesortofsystm5 anni fa

"Never tell Australians that their coal industry is killing the world, even if it is."

I mean, really?

GianFabien5 anni fa

Actually they are shutting down coal fired power stations in Australia.

Most of the coal is being burnt in obsolete plants in rapidly industrialising countries.

79525 anni fa

They are political activists doing politics. What did you expect them to do? It seems to me that environmentalists are held to a higher standard and that seems unreasonable.

Also, isn't it meant with a sense of humor? I thought it was funny and effective at getting towards a different audience. Why get offended?

koheripbal5 anni fa

Am I the only one who thinks the site was made for humor? Isn't it supposed to be funny, not serious?

[deleted]5 anni fa

tittenfick5 anni fa

ArkanExplorer5 anni fa

Earth also has oppressive Governments and regulations, difficult established social and demographic limitations, areas of protected natural landscape, and a deep gravity well.

Its also all pretty much 'owned' by someone already.

Mars, and the moon, make reasonable bases of operation for asteroid mining and off-Earth manufacturing. Whoever gets there first can lay claim to and do whatever they want.

For a tiny fraction of the amount of wealth we dedicate to the pensions and healthcare of baby boomers (typically 50% of Government budgets in most Western countries), we can easily support private companies like SpaceX to colonise the solar system.

Establishing ourselves on harsh planets will help us to appreciate Earth more, and provide a motivation for us to continue developing new technologies and techniques - to conquer 'the frontier'.

kaba05 anni fa

So let me get this straight. A private company getting there first from tax-payed money can get ultimately rich and own the discovered places? How is it a good thing at all?!

Fortunately, I highly doubt it to happen in the next century (the asteroid mining)

throwawayboise5 anni fa

We have been able to go to the moon for 50 years, but nobody has created a base of operations for any activity there.

paxys5 anni fa

People caused all these problems on Earth, and we will inevitably take them with us to Mars and everywhere else.

ArkanExplorer5 anni fa

Its reasonable to imagine that a planet founded by scientists and engineers, and populated only by scientists and engineers, will not have the problems found on Earth.

You would probably have a society composed solely of people with 120+ IQs, for example, which would present an amazing gene pool for further population expansion.

lacker5 anni fa

To me the great irony is, this is superficially an attack on people like Elon Musk, saying "hey why don't you help Earth instead of trying to get to Mars". But if you look at what SpaceX is actually doing... the vast majority of their effort is spent on helping life on Earth. Satellite launches, providing internet, almost all of their business is from making life better on Earth!

SpaceX already is a scheme to take people who are really excited about Mars, and funnel 99% of their energy into making life better on Earth. So it's just ironic to me that SpaceX is already achieving what this website wishes it could do.

reader_mode5 anni fa

Put it this way - if you figure out a way to make Mars habitable - you can figure out disaster handling scenarios for any cataclism caused by global warming.

The scales are different since Mars wouldn't start with 7-8B people but conceptual breakthroughs are the first step before scaling.

Solving Mars habitation is basically taking all the existential threats we're facing and bumping them up by several orders of magnitude (well maybe not all but the major issues at least, Mars doesn't have tsunamis for eg.). If you make that work anything that happens on Earth is a happy path.

koheripbal5 anni fa

The big difference on Earth is that you have to convince a whole bunch of bad actors to act good, whereas on Mars, the small community can act in unison under one government.

teachrdan5 anni fa

The "small community" would be run by the billionaires who could afford to move to Mars by choice.

koheripbal5 anni fa

Billionaires are the ones who can remain on Earth and able to buy paradise here, even if the rest of the world is burning. They'll be the last to go to Mars.

pron5 anni fa

> if you figure out a way to make Mars habitable - you can figure out disaster handling scenarios for any cataclysm caused by global warming.

If a cataclysm on Earth ever makes inhabiting it even remotely as hard as making Mars habitable, then we've already lost. Besides, the challenges are so different that I don't see what one has to do with the other.

reader_mode5 anni fa

>then we've already lost

Lost what ? Extinction events happen without human intervention, reliance on a fragile ecosystem is not a long term survival strategy.

antisol5 anni fa

"If a cataclysm on Earth ever makes inhabiting it even remotely as hard as making Mars habitable, then we've already lost."

Damn. That's disappointing. Here I was thinking that 4 billion years before the sun enters its red giant phase was plenty of time to get our shit together.

Guess I was wrong.

Or are you saying you have a plan to prevent stellar evolution?

imtringued5 anni fa

If we are willing to lose 7 billion people we might as well forget about climate change entirely.

edoceo5 anni fa

but why go to mars when the problems are here?

reader_mode5 anni fa

Going straight at the problem is valuable, but the beutifull thing about our society is that all of us don't have to do the same thing - finding solutions isn't always invest X into Y to solve it.

I'm sure framing the problem in terms of colonising Mars is going to change so many fundamental assumptions. When you give people the task to solve X they go with what's already there and try to improve, and then they get stuck in a local minimum - software engineers should be able to appriciate this considering most of our industry is built on legacy design decisions from 70s and 80s.

Project like Mars let's you go back to square one on a lot of implicit assumptions and see what comes out of it.

Not to mention that it's going to be inspiring for a lot of smart people, both because of the difficulty and the scifi aspect.

If they invested serious money into it I would be shocked if it didn't result in widespread real world innovations.

koheripbal5 anni fa

Why would I want to live where there are problems? Do we have a duty to solve Earth's problems if we cannot convince other Earthers to help solve them?

If might literally be easier to live sustainably on Mars under a single government made of non-idiots.

Baeocystin5 anni fa

Planetary RAID 1.

voqv5 anni fa

Good luck to humanity trying to resilver from that barren, desolate, wasteland.

neatze5 anni fa

imagination.

kaba05 anni fa

We can already not unfuck our planet, let alone play on hard mode...

austhrow7435 anni fa

Who is "we" in that scenario?

nexuist5 anni fa

> hey why don't you help Earth instead of trying to get to Mars

Maybe he could work on an electric car company or something like that which would actually be useful to us.

animal5315 anni fa

I agree, but on the other hand feel that we need a mission to some other body again, instead of yet another lander for Mars. There's Venus and Mercury that's close by and for a tougher challenge there's four Jovian moons that may harbour life.

kaba05 anni fa

(3)

op035 anni fa

Doesn't change the fact that Mars is boring as hell.

I'd rather they chase the giant squid or something and find a giant undiscovered continent of plastic or thrash under the sea.

ivandenysov5 anni fa

Colonising Mars is not about the destination. It's about the journey.

Martians will be forced to lead a more sustainable lifestyle. Technologies that they will develop and hone will become available on Earth.

fighterpilot5 anni fa

It's also about the destination. People seem to forget that an asteroid could kill us at any moment. Of course, climate change is more pressing, but that doesn't mean we should invest 0 percent of our energy into the asteroid risk.

throwawayboise5 anni fa

It's just as likely that an asteroid could kill Mars. And the worst climate change we could imagine is still a picnic compared to the climate on Mars.

fighterpilot5 anni fa

That's missing the point. Our probability of going extinct by asteroid just got approximately squared (in practice, that's the upper bound) if we have a self sustaining colony outside of Earth.

That's a dramatic reduction in that specific existential risk.

If we remain only on Earth then we have the unsquared probability to face which isn't all that small.

throwawayboise5 anni fa

I think the probabilty that humans can live on Mars long-term without support or resupply missions from Earth is effectively zero, certainly won't happen within the lifetime of anyone alive today. Don't misunderstand, I'm not against space exploration, I think it benefits us here on Earth. It's like F1 racing with a much bigger scope: little direct benefit to anyone, but many indirect benefits resulting from the effort.

fighterpilot5 anni fa

  "certainly won't happen within the lifetime of anyone alive today"

Agreed, but even two lifetimes isn't that long if we're talking about a low probability but ever-present existential risk.

yread5 anni fa

But then you should compare to other ways how to minimize that risk. Multiple lifetimes of trying to estabilish a self-sustaining colony on Mars sounds more difficult than mapping all rocks in solar system larger than ~ 10km in diameter, monitoring their orbits and developing a technology to nudge them away/break them down.

And it's also something that sci-fi nerds would enjoy.

EDIT: it seems that we're quite well on our way to the first step, there are about 1000 near Earth asteroids larger than 1km, much less than previously thought

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/aa8036#...

fighterpilot5 anni fa

> But then you should compare to other ways how to minimize that risk

Agreed with this as well. I'm all for comparing those alternatives and weighing up costs and benefits. Just don't like the offhand dismissal we so often see (I'm not accusing the above poster of that) before that analysis has been done.

ivandenysov5 anni fa

You are right. I meant to say "... is not just about the destination ..."

colordrops5 anni fa

This is such a narrow minded attitude. The amount of resources used working on getting to mars is tiny and negligible compared to so many other less valuable and more resource intensive endeavours. What about warfare? video games? Bitcoin mining? Actual gold and gem mining? Amusement parks, junk food, lawns, jet skis etc.

This is obviously a dig at Elon Musk, who ironically just today offered a 100 million X Prize for carbon sequestration:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-musk-prize...

dave_sullivan5 anni fa

If humanity fails on earth, I'm going down with the ship. Being trapped in a bunker with the same 10 people on a planet that resembles popular conceptions of Hell for the rest of my days is a fate worse than death.

Also, something something, human nature. If we actually do fail on earth, we will definitely fail on mars.

young_unixer5 anni fa

> If we actually do fail on earth, we will definitely fail on mars.

Not if you change the "we".

If you select people from only the the top 5% of the smartest, most productive, and respectful/empathetic people, then it probably won't fail.

Earth failed because some of us (say, the lower half) are dragging the rest down.

dave_sullivan5 anni fa

You know there's a popular school of thought that basically says, "Thinking you are better than people leads to bad things", or at the very least people thinking you are an asshole and not wanting to be around you?

[deleted]5 anni fa

young_unixer5 anni fa

Yeah. I'm trying to do better.

In my defense: I'm not an asshole IRL, just on the Internet (I think).

kaba05 anni fa

You mean the inbred billionaires that can pay for that?

young_unixer5 anni fa

No, I mean that the first people that colonize mars won't be selected randomly from our earth population. They will be selected because they have some useful ability and psychologically stable character, which will create a whole different culture on the planet.

kaba05 anni fa

And you base it on what?

young_unixer5 anni fa

On the fact that astronauts go through a lot of filters before being selected to go to space.

fighterpilot5 anni fa

Unless we fail on earth because of an asteroid impact.

varjag5 anni fa

Not that I was going to Mars but fine. I'll dedicate my time to demotivational websites instead.

Gehinnn5 anni fa

I guess the entire entertainment industry burns much more money every year than all space missions combined. I would definitely prefer to see mankind visiting another planet over some stupid reality show.

qw5 anni fa

Mars One estimates the cost of bringing the first four people to Mars at US$ 6 billion.

In comparison, the Tokyo Olympics will cost $15.4 billion...

nowherebeen5 anni fa

Mars does suck but people aren’t trying to reach it because it’s awesome. Being a interplanetary species allows us to survive a world-ending event say like another huge asteroid. It’s insurance.

I can’t help but think these people are entirely missing the point. It reminds me of people that argue cities don’t need parks and should just build more buildings.

[deleted]5 anni fa

somesortofsystm5 anni fa

We can save the Earth by leaving it. We put all our industry up there, and turn Earth into a garden.

Totally possible. Feasible, even. We have the technology.

Just not the free will.

steve_taylor5 anni fa

This is a false dichotomy. Caring for the Earth and going to Mars are not mutually exclusive.

Whoever made this is really stupid or pretending to be really stupid.

[deleted]5 anni fa

caseyavila5 anni fa

As true as it is to say that missions to Mars and helping Earth can be done at the same time, this website does resonate with me. Even if we stopped all emissions right this second, climate change would not end instantly due a positive feedback loop. The fact that emissions are still widespread today really shows how desperate of a situation we are in, without many realizing it. To undo what we have done requires more than simply switching to electric cars and solar panels, but actively UNdoing our previous environmental effects through new technology and developments. Although these efforts can be carried out simultaneously, I do think it would help if everyone looked at Earth (trees, wood, biodegradable products) the same way they do Mars.

koheripbal5 anni fa

Global warming on Earth is happening - there is no stopping it. Unless you cut the global population in half, their economic development requires CO2 emissions.

fredsted5 anni fa

Whenever this argument arises, I can't help but just think, why can't we have both?

[deleted]5 anni fa

yongjik5 anni fa

It could have said "People who consider Mars as our backup planet in case we trash the Earth's environment even further, are deluding themselves," I'd be 100% behind that.

Instead... we get this childish nonsense. I mean... sunsets are blue? So?

This is what a goofy fifth grader would make for an Earth's day poster, if they had the budget for a web designer. I'll give that "Mars Sucks" is a good sound bite.

babesh5 anni fa

It is not enough for the haters to dislike what you do. They have to prevent you from doing it. It doesn’t matter if you take none of their money nor government money to do so.

quonn5 anni fa

There‘s a lot of negativity in the comments, but the message here is not that there cannot be Mars missions as we already have. The message is that there should not be (completely impractical) ideas of being able to live there and that it can wait. Some people suggest this is possible and it distracts from the urgency of saving Earth right now - in the next 50-100 years.

So it‘s a matter of psychological energy. The whole question of whether measures to address climate change will succeed is mostly a question of psychological energy, of setting the right priorities at the right time, of not hoping for a magical solution, of not hedging bets and of getting enough mindshare.

kaba05 anni fa

Thanks, I could not really articulate what was my problem with Mars, but you did a great job! Of course NASA and the like should definitely not shut down, but this marketing scam around Mars being habitable is hurtful to Earth and climate change.

antisol5 anni fa

It tickles me when people say things like "completely impractical".

Reminds me of a man named Columbus something who once went on a trip that was totally, completely, utterly impractical.

And as we all know, he died en-route and was never heard from again.

[deleted]5 anni fa

paxys5 anni fa

Do people really think we are investing any significant amount of resources into Mars today?

A few national space agencies have launched flyby or rover missions, with a total cost of maybe $10-$20 billion combined over many decades. You could even argue that we have recovered some chunk of that in scientific knowledge.

There are ~5 private companies with any plans involving Mars, and I'd say all but one are scams.

SpaceX has Mars as a long term mission, but everything they are doing at present (mainly satellite launches) firmly involves Earth. All their Mars talk right now is marketing and PR, nothing more. Their total spending to date is also in the single digit billions.

All this money put together is a rounding error compared to the sums involved on every side of the global warming debate. The total number of people who have any portion of their productive work involve Mars is probably in the hundreds or low thousands.

Say we did get rid of all these NASA missions and even SpaceX entirely, how would that help Earth?

People scroll through Twitter and are convinced that we are just about to set up a Mars base, when the reality is that none of us will likely see a human step on Mars in our lifetime.

Seb-C5 anni fa

If we had invested in space exploration the same amount of resources we are investing in ads, tracking, finance and bitcoin, we would already have tourists in the asteroid belt, the climate/energy issue would be solved, and we would probably enjoy many other incredible health and food-related technologies.

Complaining about the ridiculously small amounts of resources currently invested in space exploration is really short minded.

koheripbal5 anni fa

This is a poor argument - especially if you include finance.

Finance makes large scale project possible by providing developers access to capital via the bond market.

antisol5 anni fa

And what role does finance play in a society where money isn't a thing?

Finance is only a drain on actual resources. Think of all the accountants that could have been out there creating things and doing useful stuff rather than playing make-believe with numbers.

That genius who invented that finance thing you like might possibly have come up with a grand unified theory thing if he had focused on something useful rather than finance.

koheripbal5 anni fa

Finance was invented out of necessity. People in ancient Egypt needed finance to feed people. It's not some esoteric concept. Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it holds no value.

antisol5 anni fa

No, people in ancient Egypt needed food to feed people.

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA5 anni fa

Similarly they needed crops, and not the mathematics to accurately determine the area of farm plots.

antisol5 anni fa

"they needed crops"

They did?

The Ancient Egyptions were obligate herbivores?

Huh. I guess you really do learn something new every day.

pron5 anni fa

While you are correct, I don't think that's at all the point the website is making. I don't know if the point the site is trying to make is an effective one, but it's about focusing attention and inspiration, not direct financial resources.

paxys5 anni fa

Even then, in my experience the set of people who are enthusiastic about Mars/space exploration fully overlaps with those who strongly care about climate change and the environment in general. It has never been about picking one over the other.

They should instead invest the time and money in reaching out to people and corporations who don't give a shit about either one.

midasuni5 anni fa

You know what really sucks? People.

mclightning5 anni fa

It is not a zero-sum game, they're not mutually-exclusive. Space exploration has not moved an inch over decades, and in that period, many other sectors including wasteful ones have been negatively effecting climate. You complain just now, about this stagnated sector?

All that aside, this mentality of "stop fixing that! we have something else to fix" is mother of all toxic thoughts recently. Just do it yourself! Do something about it yourself.

Besides, if you care at all about sentient life. Becoming multi-planetary is an absolute must. As far as we can observe, there isn't any other sentient life in vicinity. It is an existential risk for humanity, just as the global warming. To some, it might sound like a distant scifi risk, but we are one thermonuclear war away from such an existential risk.

ldb5 anni fa

An open letter from Mars.

“Dear Earth,

it came to my attention that you are running a website called “marssucks.com” where you state some not so nice things about me. While I think that I understand why you are doing this it still hurts me to read that e.g. I am so terrible that “Matt Damon ate his own feces just to leave me”.

So I kindly ask you to take down the “marssucks.com” site. For a planet as rich and lush as you there should be other ways then making derogatory remarks about me to convince your inhabitants to treat you in a good way.

Love from your brother Mars”

tonfreed5 anni fa

I mean, funny, but idiot activists that spew stuff like this unironically are just missing the forest for the trees. Earth will never be perfect, but we shouldn't let that distract us from something way bigger than ourselves

antisol5 anni fa

Dear "Earth",

> Mars can wait. I can’t.

When you say things this ignorant, it almost makes me want another theia-sized object to slam into you at a relative velocity of kilometers per second to teach you a lesson.

How many extinction events do you need to witness before you accept the reality that any life that stays on you is doomed in the long term? I'm interested in long term survival more than quick-fixes. I can somewhat appreciate your little short-term viewpoint, but you're completely missing my long-term one.

We love you. You're great. I think that the puppies were an especially nice touch. Echidnas are pretty cool, too. And you can absolutely count on me taking bacon with me when I leave. But I'm afraid we are going to have to leave sooner or later. Or did you have some plan for how to stop the sun expanding into its red giant phase and swallowing you whole? Didn't think so.

You talk about going to Mars as if we're spending a significant amount of resources on it. I'd like to point you to the relative sizes of every Mars program in existence and the US Navy's toilet paper budget to point out just how ludicrous that idea is.

I feel like maybe you should do some more research, and also realise that it's possible for humanity to do more than one thing at a time. Especially if we can reduce that toilet paper budget - those sailors can't be eating that much curry, surely?

Mars is awesome. 0.3g will be heaps more fun than this horrible 9.8m/s/s garbage that you force on us. Also that horrible bright thing that's in the sky half the time won't be nearly as bothersome - when I'm walking home from parties at 7am it'll be much more tolerable. Mars is going to give me an extra half hour's sleep-in every single day. How many sleep-ins have you ever given me? Zero.

And Mars isn't going to bitch and moan if we pump greenhouse gases into it's atmosphere. In fact, it'll reward us for that by giving itself a nice thick atmosphere that we can then pump oxygen into, and nicer temperatures.

Also, Mars never beset us with any rats and floods and poison monkeys, did it? Sounds a whole lot like you've started the fight for survival, but now you want to quit because you're losing!

Well I say hard cheese!

yc-kraln5 anni fa

96% CO2. That's the atmospheric composition of Mars.

[deleted]5 anni fa