
A Planetary Scientist: 'I Do Not Want to Live on Mars' - jonah
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/10/16/555045041/confession-of-a-planetary-scientist-i-do-not-want-to-live-on-mars
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bwang29
This almost occurs to me as funny. Why does it need to be a confession? It
didn’t seem like Planetary Scientists have claimed as a group that they “want”
to live on Mars. The confession only makes sense if Planetary Scientists are
all presumed to want to live on Mars in the first place. And even that is
true, it’s not a particularly strong confession as the simple fact of not
wanting to live on Mars doesn’t imply a betrayal.

~~~
baddox
What’s really appalling is the complete silence of volcanologists.

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eesmith
If you peek at the <title> on the top of the page, rather than the title given
in the page itself, you'll see: "Saturn's Moon Titan Is More Compelling Than
Mars As A Long-Term Human Destination"

FWIW, the first book I read which proposed humans living on Titan was Clarke's
"Imperial Earth" (1976).

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ggambetta
Me neither, but I would _love_ to live there for, I don't know, a year. If
living in a foreign country for some time can have a profound impact on you,
imagine living in a foreign _planet_.

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slimsag
Living on a foreign planet would surely have a _much greater profound impact_
on you, but the profoundness isn't what is important. It's the type of a
profound impact that matters.

As an example, let's say you grew up only in the U.S. Visiting a foreign
European country might have a profound impact of the type that is very eye-
opening due to seeing and interacting with another culture. In contrast,
visiting an active war-zone like Syria will surely have a _greater profound
impact_ on you, but the type will be one that is very sad.

The same would go for a foreign planet, where the type of a profound impact it
would have on you would be one of loneliness, abandoned-ness, etc.

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timthelion
This is why, I, as an environmentalist hope humans will colonize Mars. I
firmly believe that a Mars colony is the best bet we have at forcing humans to
finally see how precious our trees and our green and blue earth is.

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samstave
Has there been a single person ever who has determined how to grow anything on
mars?

We have freaking rovers there for decades. Not a single seed planted, not a
single tiny green house or terrarium delivered to the surface.

We have spent billions putting robots on mars and we have literally nothing to
show for it. And by "something to show for it" that would mean an experiment
to literally show that we can sustain life on mars.

Have we even had a single person with the qualifications to state so,
commented on this?

Until then, mars is simply an expensive cemetery.

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tstactplsignore
>We have spent billions putting robots on mars and we have literally nothing
to show for it.

This kind of anti-intellectualism is really inexcusable. We've gained an
enormous amount of knowledge from the rover expeditions to Mars over the
years[1], and nobody should apologize that the previous expeditions didn't
meet your specific science fiction fantasies. We can agree that we'd both love
more funding for more missions to Mars, but your characterization of the
earlier missions as useless is outrageous and uninformed.

[1]
[https://marsmobile.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/science/results/](https://marsmobile.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/science/results/)

~~~
timthelion
I agree. When we sent the first rover we knew nothing, really. There might
even have been life there. We need more funding, but the caution of early
space explorers was actually rather wise.

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samstave
I may have stated my point poorly. I agree that the caution is wise... but I
guess I'm too hopeful that progress would be faster.

Look we went from not having the technology of flight to landing on the
freaking moon within 60 years.

Why would we have stopped that rate of progress?

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ogig
> A really fun (and potentially useful) thing is this: Thanks to the low
> gravity and thick atmosphere, people on Titan could easily fly under their
> own power if they strap wings to their arms!

I'm sold.

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saagarjha
That is until you realize that Titan is basically at the triple point of
methane which means you'd have to lug around a bunch of thermal-regulating
equipment.

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scandox
As someone who has always been fascinated by Space, reads a lot of SF and
generally feels quite positive about Space exploration, I nonetheless think
manned Space exploration and human colonisation of other planets is really not
a good goal. I know it's dramatic. I know many people concern themselves with
the long term viability of the human species (as something important).

Personally though it seems like robotic exploration is just much more sensible
and useful. Humans are not going to thrive in any of these environments:
they're absolutely horrific in every way. I mean maybe if we went down the
"Man Plus" route (or the more fanciful bio-engineering of Clifford Simak's
Desertion) then it would make some kind of sense. Also my feeling is that our
interminable survival as a species is not necessarily that big a deal AND I
don't really believe we have any viable strategy for keeping people out
there...

What else I am missing? Why do we spend so much energy on putting people into
space?

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Nomentatus
More available solar energy. More available minerals. Few pollution worries
(sortofa problem just now on earth.) Supports a far larger population in time.
Freeman Dyson's explanation (pre-Musk), that it gives us redundancy because
humans make mistakes, is of course unappealing if you think that civilization
and the earth's ecosystem is indestructible, but many don't think that
anymore, and the number of ways we could put an end to ourselves or our
civilization seems to be growing. There are whole books on this, of course.

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dheera
One of my biggest concerns for habitation on other worlds is not what the
author mentions, but rather interplanetary communication.

The mean distance between Earth and Mars is about 1338 light-seconds, or about
22 minutes. You wouldn't be able to have a meaningful phone call with your
friends or relatives at Earth -- you'd be stuck with writing long e-mails or
voice messages. That would suck.

Building a CDN between Earth and Mars would also be a technical nightmare.
Especially for whatever data-hungry VR and other content we'll have at that
time.

Everything else about making Mars habitable -- climate control, resources,
food, water, medical, cultural, job opportunities, transportation, recreation,
entertainment -- seems approachable to me in the next few thousand years of
technological development.

The speed of light will suck. Unless Einstein is wrong in some way we don't
yet understand.

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BurningFrog
What you're describing is what moving to another continent was like until a
few decades ago. Or moving to another city was like until 1-2 centuries ago.

Plenty of people moved anyway.

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dheera
Sure. But it's very hard for humans to go back to that once they are used to
being able to have real-time communication as we have today.

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Nomentatus
You'd have all the recorded entertainment you could possibly want. My
grandparents liked electric stoves and telephones well enough, but also griped
that thoughtful letters and coal stoves had advantages they missed, too. I
don't think they would have batted an eye if they were told things were going
back to the old ways. It would be like living in a small town, mostly, and
many prefer that; to be part of a tight group, not lonely in an endless mass
of very loosely connected people.

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mr_monkeywrench
A Mars mission — even if you ignore the radiation danger has a massive
engineering hurdles.

How does one land — decelerate to a safe landing. The amount of fuel required
to fire a mars retro rocket is many times that on earth. Then you need to lift
off.

Getting to mars is not the issue — landing and taking off is the major
challenge.

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nbarbettini
I think you have that backwards? Taking off from Mars is significantly easier
than earth because of lower gravity and a less-dense atmosphere.

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lawpoop
How do you fuel the rocket on Mars?

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yellowapple
All you need is oxygen and hydrogen. Both of those are actually plentiful on
Mars.

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leksak
And the machinery to gather them etcetera etcetera... Just because the raw
material is there doesn't rocket fuel make. And I'd be hard pressed to say
that oxygen is plentiful on Mars. There is some oxygen.

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yellowapple
"And the machinery to gather them"

That machinery can be sent gradually and ahead-of-time.

"Just because the raw material is there doesn't rocket fuel make"

No, but it means that such fuel is at least possible.

"I'd be hard pressed to say that oxygen is plentiful on Mars"

The current understanding is that there's millions of cubic meters of water
ice on or near the Martian surface (with even more suspected further beneath
the surface). Sounds pretty plentiful to me.

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btrask
If you just think about it in terms of real estate values, Earth has all these
great amenities that Mars doesn't (and won't for a long time, if ever).

* Breathable atmosphere

* Full gravity

* Low radiation

* Decent temperatures

In a world of "location, location, location," Mars is going to be cheap beyond
imagination. Perhaps it will be where all the poor people end up, after
they're gentrified off Earth.

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fareesh
Title seems like it was written for clickbait

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lsaferite
As someone else pointed out, the <title> element for the post is "Saturn's
Moon Titan Is More Compelling Than Mars As A Long-Term Human Destination"

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marcell
> since the gravity is 14 percent of Earth's gravity, just a little less than
> at the moon

Isn't this a non-starter? Low gravity can be harmful to humans over long time
periods, due to it's effect on your bones and muscles.

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Animats
Time for a Titan rover.

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jagger27
Rover, flyer, and submersible.

