
It’s completely ridiculous to think that humans could live on Mars - markmassie
http://qz.com/536483/why-its-compeltely-ridiculous-to-think-that-humans-could-live-on-mars/
======
ChuckMcM
Wow, that was a sad read. I general tone was "My god, our planet is on fire
and you want to spend time and resources going somewhere else?" Which I
understand, after all we're spoon fed that message every day, but if you think
critically about it you realize that the species as a whole will have to
figure out how to live on Mars or its doomed anyway.

I get the emotional angst, many people will remember that point where they
realized "Hey my parents aren't going to be here forever, if I don't get job
and stuff I'm dooooooomed." It's a scary thing because it involves doing
something you may have never done before or may have tried to do and failed a
couple of times. But once you internalize the fact that your parents are
mortal and of finite resources and you _can 't_ change that, you put that fear
aside and start figuring out life "for real."

The same thing is true with this planet. Our ability to monitor it and study
it has reached a point where we realize the environment we currently live in
is going to change, and change harshly. While we're currently the proximate
cause of that change we know there are many things that can cause that change
and have in the past. Perhaps not in the living memory of our species but
we've certainly seen the humans frozen in glaciers right? So at the end of the
day, _it doesn 't matter why_ the climate changes, we must evolve our thinking
so that we can live on an airless moon, or a chilly planet far from oceans and
abundant greenery.

And getting serious about it means picking a problem to solve and solving it.
If we can create a self sustaining colony on Mars for example I have no
trouble believing we can create cities on earth that survive what ever changes
come in the climate. And if we have self sustaining cities on Mars and Earth
then if one gets blasted by an asteroid (known to happen) the other one can
help out instead of everyone just dying.

Its the difference between moving forward into the future knowing what you
have to over come, and hiding in the past hoping to somehow prevent the future
you fear.

~~~
carapat_virulat
The thing is following a feasible set of milestones to actually achieve the
goal of reaching Mars and surviving there. The current romantic view of
stuffing a few people on a spaceship with vegetables and sending them there
doesn't seem to be anywhere in our current reach, seeing that we aren't able
to keep people alive in orbit or in the Moon without re-supplying them all the
time.

A better solution are robots, robots are way better at surviving in space than
we are, they have survived in Mars for years without any supply. So a more
feasible set of milestones could be:

\- Engineer self-replicant robots in Earth. We are still far from doing
something like that but it seems something that we should be able to achieve
at some point. Seeing that we humans are able to extract energy and resources
from Earth, and build robots, there's nothing indicating that robots shouldn't
be able to follow the same steps once they are advanced enough.

\- Modify those robots to be able to self-replicate in Mars. Seeing that
current robots are already able to survive in there, they have a much better
chance than we have to build a sustainable environment for themselves.

\- Once robots have a self-sustainable environment for themselves, put them to
burn resources to pave our way there so that once people get there they are
able to survive comfortably.

Yes, people made great discoveries by sea, but people had been surviving for
long periods of time on the sea, and they were great at it. The same can't be
said for space in current times.

~~~
mitchtbaum
When some humans claim that we need to send our species to colonize Mars and
beyond to preserve (Life?) mankind, while at the same time that we should be
overwhelmed with fear over General AI, I find that a self-contradictory
worldview. Self-replicating, self-aware robots fit this work environment best,
for sure. (Life's newest friends, possibly.)

And funny enough, I find that this view overlaps with those who want to live
out their dreams, like The Martian, to jump into a rocket ship... Yet, human
sperm and eggs can survive a long journey in cryostasis, needing far less
resources (this is a bit of a guess since I have yet to do any study on this,
but intuitively it fits)... So, I highly doubt any humans with names will
board any of our first few ships off this place we call Home.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryo_space_colonization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryo_space_colonization)

------
transfire
> But a colony on Mars would need to be a nearly perfectly self-contained,
> resource neutral system that harvests energy from the sun and is rarely or
> never re-supplied. That is currently beyond the reach of science and human
> ingenuity.

It is no where near the limits of our reach. We already have people living in
space year round without any local resources. What we do seem to lack however
is any faith in ourselves.

~~~
FreelanceX
It may not be beyond our reach, but it is beyond my tolerance as to what I am
willing to support as a taxpayer.

~~~
Amorymeltzer
Why? NASA has paid HUGE dividends.

>Estimates of the return on investment in the spaaace program range from $7
for every $1 spent on the Apollo Program to $40 for every $1 spent on spaaace
development today. [1]

That money is generally spent in the US, on good, high-paying jobs.[2] The
products NASA has created are EVERYWHERE[3] — The general rule of thumb is if
it's wireless, fireproof, or small, it's using technology based off NASA work.

1:
[http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceresvol4/newspace3.ht...](http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceresvol4/newspace3.html)
2: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lauren-lyons/misconceptions-
na...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lauren-lyons/misconceptions-
nasa_b_3561205.html) 3: [http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0812/the-
roi-of-s...](http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0812/the-roi-of-space-
exploration.aspx)

~~~
yongjik
gp is not complaining about current state of NASA, but about a hypothetical
adventure with high chance of failure that would burn enough money to send a
dozen robotic probes to every planet in the solar system.

~~~
warfangle
> send a dozen robotic probes to every planet in the solar system.

And not have any dividends at all in terms of sustainable environmental
cycles....

~~~
yongjik
Why do you hate freedom, err, I mean, better robotics, batteries, and solar
panel technology? :P

~~~
warfangle
Sure!

But those don't have much to do with creating sustainable ecosystems (farming,
direct atmospheric management, etc). They help, to be sure! But most of the
innovations in robotics, batteries and solar panels aren't coming out of the
space program these days, AFAIK.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHGK96-WixU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHGK96-WixU)

------
rayiner
> Our 12-year-old daughter who, like us, is a big fan of The Martian by Andy
> Weir, said, “I can’t stand that people think we’re all going to live on Mars
> after we destroy our own planet. Even after we’ve made the Earth too hot and
> polluted for humans, it still won’t be as bad as Mars. At least there’s
> plenty of water here, and the atmosphere won’t make your head explode.”

Kid has a good head on her shoulders. She sounds like an engineer.

I grew up dreaming about humanity exploring space. I majored in aerospace
engineering in college. It was incredibly educational--it taught me we're not
going to Mars. Not in my lifetime, probably not in the lifetime of any of my
descendants who still remember my name. It would be fantastically expensive
and there would be no point. There are no resources out there that would
justify the kind of economic investment necessary. Committing that money here
on Earth would be transformative far beyond what it could be if spent on Mars.

Moreover, the technology has plateaued, leaving us with wildly unfavorable
physical realities. You know how progress in CPUs has stalled? How the last
several generations of Intel processors hasn't really gotten faster, and all
the focus is on making them cheaper and more power efficient? That happened to
aerospace technology around 1970. Now we spend billions of dollars to eke out
0.5% gains in efficiency.

~~~
michaelmrose
We have burned more money for less reason also make your head explode?

------
NickM
The author's main argument seems to be that nobody will want to do it. But
historically, there have been numerous cases of colonists giving up a safe,
easy life to go live somewhere inhospitable and dangerous.

When I think about the first settlers that sailed across the Atlantic to
colonize America, it seems amazing to me that people were willing to give up
so much and endure such risks and hardships, but there have always been people
that will go to great lengths to conquer new frontiers. I expect the first
Martians will be no different in this respect.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The first martians will be religious fundamentalists/social conservatives who
pool their last few dollars to buy transportation and initial supplies for
settlement of mars due to economic and social persecution on earth?

Other than economic ventures such as the Spanish stuff (pillaging) in south
America and Jamestown (where the wasn't actually any gold, but "hey, tobacco
grows pretty well") early colonization of the new world was basically driven
by persecution. The inquisition or some local form thereof was present in
pretty much all of western Europe at the time. England and other protestant
areas were equally tolerant of anyone that didn't pray the way they did.
Pooling your money to buy a one way ticket far as hell away and enough food to
hopefully last the winter was a pretty good option. Possibly starving because
you aren't a good farmer doesn't seem all that bad when a change of regime
could mean that everyone in your community was at risk of imprisonment/death.
At least you can kind of control whether or not you starve.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Driven by persecution - correlation and causation? Colonies were funded;
people volunteered to go. The volunteers were often persecuted people looking
for a new life. I'd say colonization was driven by money.

------
bane
One thing I think is important when considering colonizing another planet is
that we have to drop certain expectations for the first few waves of
colonists: e.g. the expectation that your lifespan will be as long as your
Earth brethren.

By all accounts, the first colonists to the New World lived short, miserable,
brutish lives and it was only well after sufficient infrastructure was
established and European style civilization was properly bootstrapped could
the average American expect to live as long as the average European.

Several early American colonies failed to last even a handful of years!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Colony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Colony)

------
GeorgeOrr
Think of all the great innovations that have come from people who realized
that doing hard stuff is hard so don't try.

~~~
mitchtbaum
And what of those men and women wise enough to work on what was good and
needed rather than what they had in their _wildest_ dreams?

~~~
darkmighty
Good and needed better mousetraps.

~~~
mitchtbaum
And a better Earth?

------
dsjoerg
Good points comparing colonizing Mars to colonizing places on Earth such as
Antarctica, the Sahara, or the bottom of the oceans.

~~~
nkrisc
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but I think it's a fair
comparison given that those Earth-based locations are easier to colonize, yet
haven't been.

~~~
Nadya
We have permanent bases in Antarctica. Could we establish a colony there? Very
likely. Given we have some people live there nearly year round, I'm sure we
could, actually. But why would we?

The "why?" for Mars is "What happens if Earth is fucked Completely, royally,
and absolutely fucked."

What happens when a catastrophic event wipes out _all life on Earth_?
Colonizing Antarctica or the Sahara does nothing to ensure human survival in
that case. But putting people on Mars and creating a self-sufficient colony?
As long as Mars isn't fucked too - humans might live on. There are plenty of
people who are interested in human survival.

------
DanielBMarkham
Every year, tens of thousands of people visit Antarctica, a place with nothing
besides cold deserts and penguins.[1]

We are not making the Earth less inhabitable. More people live on the planet
now than ever before. In fact, many really smart people over the years have
told us that the planet would never be able to support the current population.

There's an undercurrent in this article that's extremely dour, depressing, and
bleak. I take issue with that, but we can save that conversation for another
day.

People will visit Mars. In fact, for many decades it looks like tourism will
be the prominent industry.

Mars has water. Mars has CO2. We can make a breathable atmosphere and support
ourselves, although it looks like living mostly underground is our best option
for the foreseeable future. In my mind, what we need is cheap/free energy.

Nuclear batteries look like the best option, at least initially. Also a
modular, standardized deployment system where things plug into each other.
It'd be good if for a while we equip every piece of gear going to Mars with
power and an O2/water generator.

No matter how it plays out it'll be interesting to watch. Too bad it will
probably take a long time before we see a sizable population there.

[1] Tourism in Antarctica.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Antarctica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Antarctica)

------
luchadorvader
It is ridiculous but at the same time tackling a problem of this size will
provide so many new solutions to other problems as well innovations for new
things that we might have not thought of. What we can gain from trying might
be worth doing.

~~~
Retric
That depends on approach. If we try and use plants to supply most of the
oxygen then that's innovative and risky, just sending lots of oxygen tanks far
less so.

------
adrianN
Yeah, let's just sit here on our planet, posting cats on the internet and wait
for the next extinction event.

~~~
vectorpush
If your concern is the possible extinction of humanity, I don't see how an
arduous journey to a barren and inhospitable wasteland is of any use to the
cause. If we can manage to survive on Mars, certainly we can manage to survive
on the most life-friendly planet known to man.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> If your concern is the possible extinction of humanity, I don't see how an
> arduous journey to a barren and inhospitable wasteland is of any use to the
> cause.

I'm perplexed by this statement as the journey would be the exact opposite of
what you purport. Are you saying that, unless we can travel to someplace that
is very hospitable to life, that we shouldn't bother? How are we ever going to
develop the technology to go to such a theoretical place if we're not working
on the technology already and constantly iterating on it?

Let's say we're going to be hit with an asteroid that will kill all / most
life on Earth. There is no way we can stop it. Having colonies on other
planets and moons within our solar system means all of those people, in their
self sustaining habitats, will live through the extinction event. Humans would
not go extinct.

> If we can manage to survive on Mars, certainly we can manage to survive on
> the most life-friendly planet known to man.

Are you saying there is no such thing as an extinct level event for humans
simply because we can live on Mars? I'm not sure what the point is that you're
trying to convey here.

~~~
Pinckney
The threat from asteroids is that years of perpetual winter shut down our
agriculture for years or even decades. But even in the case of a really
massive, Chicxulub sized impact, earth will remain more hospitable than mars.
The temperatures will be milder, sunlight at the surface will still be
stronger, the air will still be breathable.

If we can build a sealed habitat on mars capable of recycling water and
growing its own food, we can do the same here on earth. Just give it a
dedicated fission reactor to keep the greenhouses running, distribute half a
dozen of them around the world so that they can't all die to direct impacts,
and fortify them heavily to keep the starving masses out.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
If that is the asteroid I think it was, Earth surface temperatures reached
~600F for weeks. Not really hospitable.

~~~
Pinckney
You'll need to cite sources for Chicxulub or any other impact producing
temperatures like that globally.

It is thought that Chicxulub may have produced global firestorms, before a
period of global cooling. The point still stands: it's not hard to build
structures that can survive fire. Building out of concrete, with thick walls,
a self-contained air supply, and away from any vegetation (or simply
underground) should suffice, and will still be much easier than colonizing
Mars.

------
PaulHoule
If you ever want to go to Mars, establish a base on the Moon first and develop
the ability to mine water, rock, and metal from the moon and close asteroids.
If you can make propellant tanks and fill them up the trip to Mars will be a
snap and there will be a lot of human experience in deep space so the first
visitors won't be setting endurance records

------
crabasa
I don't buy the author's arguments in general, but I think the comparison to
Antarctica is probably the weakest. First of all, people have actually made a
point of traveling to and setting-up permanent base stations in Antarctica.
Second, although the raw temperatures might be similar it is the _weather_ in
Antarctica that is brutal. Bryd Station exists in blizzard-like conditions 65%
of the year [1]. Obviously this would not be a concern on Mars.

[1]: [http://antarcticconnection.com/information/storms-and-
blizza...](http://antarcticconnection.com/information/storms-and-blizzards/)

~~~
darkmighty
Overall however establishing a habitat on Antarctica is vastly easier than on
Mars, assuming we won't be able to source complex materials in situ or
fabricate for at least 50 yr. The atmospheric pressure, atmospheric
composition and water availability being the main advantages. If the snowfall
is particularly intense solar power might be troublesome, but it's still
vastly easier to settle. Proof: we reached the south pole in 1911 and have a
station there since 1956.

------
rndmize
No, its not ridiculous. What's ridiculous is our approach to the problem.
Reconstructing Earth's ecosystem away from Earth is a monumental task in any
situation, whether you want to terraform a planet, build a orbital colony or
just have a universe ship to send somewhere.

These are decades or centuries long efforts which are solely for the purpose
of catering to the current, Earth-optimized human form. If you want to head
out into the universe, develop a new form. Adapt humanity to the place you
want to colonize, rather than the place to humanity.

------
cryoshon
I agreed with the author somewhat, up until here:

"There is nothing wrong with being excited about exploring space. There’s
nothing wrong with dreaming about setting up colonies in space either. But a
colony on Mars would need to be a nearly perfectly self-contained, resource
neutral system that harvests energy from the sun and is rarely or never re-
supplied. That is currently beyond the reach of science and human ingenuity."

It's completely within our reach if we prioritize it over other things, namely
the financial cost.

There's also the "things sometimes don't make sense" aspect of space
exploration. Do we NEED a space station doing space research? No. Did we need
to go to the moon? Some would say yes, but if you look at the economic
incentives, the answer is no. Not everything can be boiled down to cash in
versus cash out.

I think space travel is worthwhile to invest in right now. To everyone
squabbling that the money could be used to help people here on earth: no, it
could not, because money does not flow around in the earth in a utilitarian
fashion, it flows based off of where people think they can make more money or
do something cool. The people investing their time and money in spaceflight
are not going to be buying rice for the hungry no matter how much of a
"moonshot" space projects are.

~~~
carapat_virulat
Even if we ignore the financial cost, we are nowhere near being technically
able to build a self-contained environment. We have never done it in Earth's
orbit, or in the Moon, or in Earth.

So the problem with sending people to Mars is that it is not just a huge one
time money sink. It is a permanent money sink, that would have to be
constantly re-supplied.

People didn't just get in a boat one day and suddenly discovered America. They
had been able to survive in a boat for months or years for a long time before
they even got there. Nobody is saying that we should never get to Mars, just
that there are previous technological goals that we are nowhere near solving
yet.

Solve those goals one by one, and at some point you'll be able to get to Mars.
But don't expect to stuff some people in a ship with a few lettuces and some
water and send them to Mars without having worked out first all the boring
little details of what such a travel would actually entail.

------
nabla9
I think the article is not fully exploring the economic argument.

Triumph of the city/network effect argument: Networking and connectedness into
other people and increasingly into computer services around the world provide
more intellectual satisfaction than surviving in the desert does. Mass of
humanity produces more variety when it clumps together physically.
Urbanization on the earth is driven by productivity growth from cities.
Immigration to distant colonies could be justified with farmland and resources
in pre-industrial society and industrial society. If post-industrial society
with deceasing population builds distant colonies, it wastes resources.

After the thrill of interplanetary space travel wears off, Mars may have small
outpost for geologists, geochemists etc. I think colonizing moon will be far
more likely when technology allows it. You can have access to Earth and
communication lag is acceptable. Moon colony may be economically profitable.

------
sebringj
Its entertaining and has some truth in it but arguments about "we should be
focusing on [blah] instead..." miss out on the benefits of the tech that
exploration will bring. Going to Mars will help solve issues here and issues
being solved here will help us succeed in living at Mars, eventually.

~~~
mitchtbaum
I agree with your point in a sense; we can focus on multiple aims and plan
according to their overlapping and synergistic benefits.. Yet, and if this
irritates some please forgive me for prodding, what might happen if we work on
what we want out of order, out of sequence?

~~??~~

imho, to assure a good future for what we already have (and hope to have), to
make sure we will even have a launchpad so to speak, we need to preserve our
treasure here and set it on a good path beforehand.

------
ChicagoBoy11
RemindeMe! 50 years

------
btkramer9
The idea is not to abandon Earth for Mars, rather it is to ensure that human
life does not cease to exist. It's very unlikely for a meteor or nuclear war
to kill us all, but why risk it when we are capable of starting a colony now?

Everything I've said is much better summed up in this article.
[http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-
coloni...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize-
mars.html)

------
JoeAltmaier
tl;dr: Its hard, and most folks wouldn't want to do it.

~~~
baking
Of course, that doesn't rule out that some folks might.

------
nkrisc
I agree with the title; for now. In the near term, perhaps even the next
couple hundred years, it is likely that a colony on Mars would make zero sense
aside from scientific research (even that could be done without people on the
surface themselves).

Beyond that, I won't try to predict what will and won't make sense 500 years
from now, 1000 years from now. Mars may not have a lot of resources, but it
does have one thing that could be useful to a much larger and much more space-
capable human population in the future: room. There's a lot of room there for
people. We can argue all day whether that's realistic or not, but we should
never assume that it will never make sense in the future based solely on the
resources and problems of today.

------
JoeAltmaier
They threw in the usual one-or-the-other red herring. We can go to Mars, _and_
learn to treat our own planet better.

------
WildUtah
Interesting usage here. "Alphabet's (formerly Google's)" calls back to the
headline yesterday about Alphabet's Google's search engine. Some speculated
that soon we'd be talking about Alphabet's Google's Youtube's Youtube Red.

Now we can talk about Alphabet's (formerly Google's) Google's Youtube's
Youtube Red.

------
drvortex
It has always been ridiculous to think about something ambitious, until it
gets done.

Ref: History of Humanity.

------
wwwdonohue
And yet Google has invested almost a billion dollars in SpaceX.

------
krapp
You have to die somewhere, why not die on Mars?

