
Manned mission to Mars would be 'stupid' (Bill Anders - Apollo 8) - lifeisstillgood
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/30jysbppnRJ0CV5Ng1lt34c/manned-mission-to-mars-would-be-stupid
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LinuxBender
This comes up a lot and most here at HN don't agree with me. I am still
waiting for anyone to give me a practical reason why we spend trillions going
to these places.

It would almost make sense to me if Mars was originally "earth" and we are
trying to do a root cause analysis on what went wrong because our escape ships
didn't have enough historical data or the data was damaged.

Terra-forming Mars or the Moon to be habitable would be so expensive and
impractical compared to improving our existing earth, I would really like to
see more realistic answers and less "because we should..."

~~~
ColinWright
The world needs clever people to work together to strive to create break-
through solutions to big problems. The thing is, people don't do that unless
they have some sort of Quixotic Challenge to bring them together.

Many, many things that we now take for granted have come directly or
indirectly from Grand Challenges, and human nature is such that without Grand
Challenges, clever people will keep their heads down and find better ways to
layout pixels on screens, and darker ways to get people to click on ads.

Humankind needs these impossible, visionary efforts to pull itself forwards.
The money isn't wasted - it gets spent on allowing people to do amazing things
and to create technologies, many of which will only come into their own in the
future.

~~~
LinuxBender
I understand and appreciate what you are saying and I agree with many
situations this logic applies to.

I do not agree that it applies to this specific example however. As far as I
can see, this grand challenge should be classified as low priority and low
benefit unless data can be provided to raise the priority and importance to a
higher level. There are a myriad of grand challenges here on earth that would
be significantly more cost effective and would provide substantial gains with
much lower overhead, risk and loss. I am not seeing the value in spending
trillions on doing very minimal and limited scientific research on a planet
that is not habitable and not applicable to a majority of people here on
earth.

What am I getting for the trillions being spent on these efforts?

~~~
ColinWright
> _What am I getting for the trillions being spent on these efforts?_

You don't know, won't know, and possibly can't know. That's the point - the
payoffs are broad, ubiquitous, almost insidious, might not happen for many
many decades, and there's every chance they won't be recognised as being a
product of these venture.

In essence it's research : "If we knew what we were doing then it wouldn't be
research."

We don't know what the benefits will be, we can only trust that having tens,
perhaps hundreds of thousands of people working on projects like this will
have long-term benefits.

Perhaps I'm more optimistic than you, and perhaps you might choose not to
believe that there will be long-term benefits that out-weigh the short term
costs.

I believe there will be.

~~~
LinuxBender
Perhaps the issue here is that I just look at this much differently than a
scientist.

Let's assume I am the captain of the USS Enterprise and my goal is to explore
new life and new civilizations. Our ship will be passing up tens of thousands
of planets that may be teaming with life and fascinating things that could
lead to new discoveries and scientific breakthroughs. The science officers on
my ship would certainly love to stop and visit every single one of those
planets. I have to make some decisions that they may not like however. I have
other officers that must analyze the cost of visiting each planet, weigh the
risks of each one. There is a cost benefit analysis that must occur each time.
Without following this protocol, I am endangering the lives of my crew for
what may be little to no gain. There has to be enough evidence that the planet
in question offers something worth risking life and limb before I even
consider sending down an away party, otherwise at most I will send down a
probe. In the fantasy concept of Star Trek, a probe is minimal cost and risk.
Today, that probe is a very large sum of money, some of which is paid by tax
payers.

So while I agree with you that there is certainly reason to believe something
can be gained, I expect to see some quantifiable scientific data that suggests
these gains are worth spending money there verses here.

~~~
ColinWright
> _... data that suggests these gains are worth spending money there verses
> here._

But the money _is_ spent here. The money circulates in the economy, it's used
to fund people doing interesting things here on Earth, developing things that
might be useful here on Earth, and supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs in
collateral industries. We might be flinging things into space, but all the the
expertise remains here.

The money is used to develop new knowledge, skills, and materials here. That
knowledge, and those skills and materials, are then available here for other
projects.

