The article is however spot on that terraforming Mars looked easier 30 years ago than it looks now, with all the new knowledge we have from Mars rovers. Now any "realistic" plan would be millions of people living in pressurized habitats and venturing out in suits, not billions walking on the surface in t-shirts. Closer to what we see in The Expanse than to what we dreamed up in the 80s and 90s
Because right now we're not investing in fixing Earth but seriously investing in an infeasible Mars mission.
If it's possible to call me back to the SF office for a client meeting the day after tomorrow I'm not going
But I agree with the author, and I am starting to wonder if the same thing could be applied if we find earth like planets around other stars.
I almost think on those planets there could be something in the air or water or dirt that could harm or even kill us if we fond a way there.
And we are curious about alternative biochemistries, I think that drives a huge amount of curiosity toward Jupiter's Galilean moons especially Europa. My worry is that people say "well there might be other biochemistries" as a deepity that kind of checks out from looking at any specifics, unfocusing conversations that were actually more focused prior to the emergence of the deepity.
so we then need to sterilise the planet before terraforming it. There just doesnt seem to be a need for expansion to other planets. Short of our star going supernova everything else is cheaper to fix here.
Which is a fair point, but the other points (about soil toxicity, cosmic rays and lower gravity) are all things that can be mitigated. Yes, it would be extravagantly expensive in per-human terms to house people on Mars. But the main reason for doing so -- that should something cataclysmic happen to the Earth it would behoove us to have a credible backup plan -- stands.
Mars is so bad that you have to turn all of the Earth's surface to lava before it's worse than Mars, basically.
The technology & social systems capable of doing this would be incredibly valuable long before any permanent mars settlement became feasible so if we can do it we should and then we can see.
No, it is not a relevant point, at all. There are close to 9 billion people on Earth, more than enough for some of them to focus on expanding human life out into the solar system no matter how small the chance of success. Others can work on the problems 'we created here'. If our predecessors thought like that we'd never have explored the oceans, found new continents, developed industry, took to the skies, made the first tentative jumps into space. Let those who have the means and capabilities to do so explore and 'conquer' those 'new frontiers'. If you insist on solving problems here on earth I'd say get crackin'. If you succeed we'll raise a statue for you and place it next to the ones we made for those who conquered Mars or built that giant wheel in the sky or whatever.
The day after the asteroid hit Earth would still be better than the best day on Mars.
But the second sentence there is unwarranted. Someone can lament their hopes and dreams dying while still caring about the realistic needs of the world around them.
But, I think in relation to what you're talking about, I'm more "melancholic" about the concept that something like Star Fleet will never exist. Not that I want to fly around between planets in garishly colored uniforms, but the broader vision of the pursuit of truth, self-betterment, and diplomacy. Not having space travel be a regular thing doesn't have to prevent that, but it does kind of underscore that our society is unlikely to ever develop that :(
Arguably that's how people 300 years ago felt as science proved unicorns and fairies don't exist.
Why is improving life on earth for the billions here in poverty not a worthwhile fantasy? Why does that noble goal not sustain you in the way space operas do?
I can be glad to have a truth but also dislike that truth.
Whatever the Y2K bug was suppose to be never happened and we're stuck in the general era of 2003.
We've should had "LLMs" back in 2006 but we had war instead.
We now have all the digital technology but none of the hardware to build it with.
Second we couldn't have LLMs in 2006. In fact I'm not sure we could've had them without the massive amount of user-generated content that came from Web 2.0, including Facebook. Reddit, Wikipedia, and StackOverflow are big sources of training data.
The only currently feasible solution currently is to ride a wave of sequential nuclear bomb explosions, but that is far from ideal.
So the possibility still exists, current physics is a big obstacle to challenge, but is not a solid barrier preventing our expansion in the far future.
There is no scientific or economic case to even go to Mars, much less colonize it. And with the current advances in robotics and automation there is nothing astronauts could do that a sophisticated robot team would not do better.
Many interesting Scifi stories show, that really advanced civilizations quickly lose interest in extended Space travel, and we should take the hint...
There's cheaper ways to doom a dozen people to a slow, inevitable death.
without an eye on advancing things for the future, & keeping the wheel spinning with activity & forward movement, with optimism that things can get better, all we're looking at is a controlled demolition of what has been built up.
I agree with you on this, but I guess I disagree on the specifics of what "forward movement" means; to me, launching a crewed, multi-generational mission to Mars now would be a huge waste of money.
Even if they manage to survive the three or four generations, and keep education up to make sure old systems can run, how does that help anyone? They're effectively trapped there, and we're effectively trapped here.
It seems reasonable to argue that giving up on a planet where everyone but a handful of people will be for the long-term future is the cowardly path.
How important is this to you? Are you willing to personally act as executioner and press the button than sends these people to their deaths, knowing we could just stop being able to send food and replacement equipment in a few years?
We can't even keep our society stable and our people taken care and our home world clean. You think we are even close to terraforming or creating a society on Mars? Other than as some token of nerd approval, what does this extremely expensive and dangerous mission accomplish?
Nonsense. Just going to Mars with humans creates economic activity, and the R&D to do so, adds to scientific knowledge.
If you want to argue against going into further debt to do so, well, that's a different argument. One I agree with.
Ok layout here your scientific or economic case...please. Because so far, the only trickle economic effects, where geriatric billionaires creating sub 100 km space rides to impress their Silicone Sally girlfriends...
One terrible thing wrought by billionaire Mars fantasies is a backlash that I think has become too sweeping. It's wrongheaded for a million reasons, but it's nevertheless true that hedging against terrestrial existential risks is something we should have an interest in.
Therefore it is a non-issue as given that LLMs have only gotten exponentially more impressive, in [current_year+n] you will be able to prompt Claude to materialize a fast terraforming machine and FTL it over to mars.
So if the version of the idea that you're engaging with is one that doomed to fail, doesn't have the resources or technology or population to succeed... maybe assume that's not the version I'm talking about?
There are contexts where I love to get into these kinds of details (There was an amazing converation on HN from a few months ago about what would be involved in sending a bunch of voyager-style space probes to alpha centauri), but you have to want to try.
[1] - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20205009350/downloads/03...
What? The unmanned space program has been beyond the edges of our solar system. Meanwhile humans have been day tourists in space. I don't know how you can come to this conclusion that "humans > robots" when humans have never even been close to the surface of Mars.
>> Even just a tiny temporarily occupied Mars science outpost would be a tremendous boost to our understanding of the planet
How many robots could we land with the equivalent resources, or telescope satellites, or autonomous probes?
Until we do better we should treat other planets more like a park than fresh real estate.
IMHO the biggest tell that Elon has never been serious about Mars is that he has been completely focused on the rocket and has severely neglected the actual hard part of the problem: The self sustained habitat for the people to live in. There should be experimental habitats dotting the SpaceX campus with engineers and researchers working hand in hand to solve the problem of scaling up a terrarium to people size. It is not easy. Previous attempts have ended in expensive failures. And those efforts didn't have to be launched on a rocket and landed on a low gravity planet with a very thin atmosphere. Until Elon starts to tackle this problem I know that all of the talk of Mars habitats is just blowing smoke up the asses of investors.
If we ever do actually colonize Mars, the progression would look something like: 1. Experimental missions 2. Small but permanent settlement made out of Starships cobbled together 3. New construction with increasing proportion of in-situ resources until fully independent
How can he confidently use that argument when we don't have any data between 0g and 1g, other than 12 Apollo astronauts, that spend less than 3 days on the moon?
It might very well be that the 0.38g on Mars are sufficient to make many problems go away. The two simple facts of your blood being pulled downward and moving your body around taking effort could already fix a lot of the medical issues astronauts face in 0g.
Earth is a jewel, but we have to expand and explore. It's our destiny.
Ultimately you need to live underground on the Mars to avoid radiation.
If anything KSR is not giving himself as much credit as he deserves, as personal AIs show up in ways that are remarkably salient and similar to what we're currently seeing. And he talks about advances in genetics that parallel what we're figuring out with CRISPR at least to some degrees.
If any ambitious and aspiring science novelists are reading this, I would love for someone to be the Kim Stanley Robinson of Venus and tell the story of colonization there, aspiring to the same bar of technical specificity that KSR had for Red Mars.
I feel like I should like it, I’ve read everything my Neal Stephenson so I’m not averse to hefty books
dsr_•1h ago
KaiserPro•35m ago
celticninja•25m ago
hagbard_c•35m ago
Those fat cats took their billions to create their own colony on planet X while we're left here on a dying Earth
Why should those greedy capitalists get their own planet? They should open it up to refugees from Earth!
Mars wasn't built by Musk & Co., it was built by $(insert_favourite_group) and belongs to them
Etcetera. Same old story, same old song. Quite a tiring one at that. I'd say let them have a go at creating a Mars colony and if they succeed - which is rather unlikely - they get to decide what to do with their settlement.