
Elon Musk: How We're Going to Colonize Mars - phonos
http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/the-elon-musk-interview-on-mars
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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8388156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8388156)

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jpatokal
Now _this_ is what I call a mission statement:

 _' I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness, to make
sure it continues into the future.’_

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CapitalistCartr
The key to space is to be there. Permanently. We can't lift everything from
Earth; it's too far down our gravity well. Once we mine the bulk of the raw
materials from The Moon and asteroids, space won't seem nearly so daunting.
Until then, everything is an extreme effort.

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melling
Yes, and until we build robots that can do most of the work, it's not going to
happen either. We need to build the "tech tree" in the right order.

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foobarqux
There's an interesting talk by Robin Hanson that argues that the absence of
observed alien life should make us think human civilization is likely to go
extinct and therefore that interplanetary colonization is either harder than
believed or insufficient to propagate life long term.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8804856](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8804856)

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ende
This assumes that we should expect to observe alien life with any meaningful
probability at all, which may not be a reasonable expectation and completely
independent of the difficulty of interplanetary expansion.

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drawkbox
It is great to have long term goals this massive as it makes the other big
problem steps in getting there seem smaller relatively and more attainable.
Not even settling for just getting there but putting 1 million people on Mars.

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kristianp
I'd prefer to orbit Saturn than to live on Mars, but the technology to make
that affordable would be made available by Musk's Mars colony.

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agumonkey
We're exhausting this planet, what's the point of going to Mars to repeat the
same mistakes ?

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krapp
Not going out like the dinosaurs?

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agumonkey
You mean the ability to escape in case of planet wide catastrophe or just
running away from the potential ecological mess we started ?

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krapp
Either. Both. Whatever.

Having a backup planet opens up, literally, a world of possibilities. In the
end, either we survive as a species or we don't. The universe doesn't care
either way, but we're capable of caring, so we should continue to live.

Edit: Actually, I suppose either way, we don't survive in the end. But might
as well die out later than sooner, if possible.

