

Buzz Aldrin calls for humans to colonise Mars - MikeCapone
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22974301

======
sown
You know what's terrifying to me about colonization? The chance of failure. It
just seems...more probable. In the Americas there were numerous failed
colonies. The Virginia company's Jamestown had half the colonist die in the
first year, and 400 replacements came but by 1610 there were only 65 or so
left alive. On Mars, there isn't a blade of grass, a gasp of air, and perhaps
not many drinks of water waiting for us.

It'd be agonizing to read or watch daily reports (if we're allowed to see
them) about colonists dying of starvation, thirst or asphyxiation (or
something else!), one by one until the transmissions simply stopped. I know
these are the risks but that doesn't lessen the dread when it happens.

One thing that reminds me is The Lady Be Good, a WW2 plane crashed in the
Libyan desert. A few of the crew members wandered off. The co-pilot's last
diary entry is kind of chilling
([http://ladybegood.net/diaries/index.htm](http://ladybegood.net/diaries/index.htm)):
" No help yet, very (unreadable) cold nite."

~~~
melling
Do you agonize over the fact that 90 people died today in car accidents in the
US? About a 1/3 are related to drunk driving.

[http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impai...](http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-
drv_factsheet.html)

Someday when 90 people die on Mars, people will say we should never have gone.
The incredible loss of life...

There are 7 billion people on the planet and we're all going to be dead in
about 100 years. Stop being afraid.

~~~
zalzane
There's a lot of americans that have bad blood with the space program; deaths
in a colonization program would just fuel them.

I'm pretty sure the number of deaths doesn't matter either. Only a few people
died in the boston bombings and that didn't stop the entire country from
turning upside down over it for a few weeks.

~~~
stargazer-3
That's why I think that China, given time, might be in a better position for
Mars colonization. Democracy is afraid of bold moves in space, while the
Chinese regime will see it as a long-term chance to bolster it's position in
the eyes of common people.

~~~
Gormo
But democracy is just government. Americans might still take the initiative to
colonize Mars with or without the United States helping them along.

------
dreen
The colonisation of Mercury makes more sense, as discussed previously on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5734333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5734333)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Mercury](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Mercury)

~~~
michaelpinto
It would be very hard to terraform Mercury which makes it a bad candidate for
the long run. It would be very hard, but Mars would be the best planet to
terraform:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars)

~~~
stcredzero
I don't think terraforming is necessarily the best way to prioritize initial
colonization. Access to food, energy, and other resources are what should be
initially prioritized. This still means that Mars is an excellent candidate
for colonization, because of proximity to the asteroids.

------
dmoney
The cycler station is an interesting idea. Seems to me you'd still have to
accelerate the crew and supplies to an Earth-Mars orbit every time, but the
habitat would only have to be accelerated to that orbit once.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler)

------
genwin
When we can pay for it in rainy day cash and aren't borrowing $20 a day for
every taxpayer like we are now, dooming the kids, then I'll gladly support it.

~~~
bjz_
The budget for NASA is a tiny sliver of what the US spends on defense.

~~~
dagw
Indeed, but unless they're cutting the defense budget to fund the Mars
expedition, I don't see how that is relevant.

~~~
bjz_
That's exactly my point.

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stephengillie
Mr Aldrin is selling a book, so of course he has to say something ostentatious
to draw attention to it.

~~~
lloeki
If it was about anyone else on any other subject I'd agree.

Yet the select few that were lucky enough to get up there — and not even as
far as Aldrin — really have ulterior motives[0] quite different than selling a
few printed pages.

[0]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect)

~~~
itsybitsycoder
Is it really fair to call those motives ulterior? Pro-colonization people seem
to be very up-front about the importance of having a "backup planet" (to
ensure the human race continues if something were to happen to our own
"fragile ball of life").

~~~
andrewflnr
According to google, "ulterior" basically just means "hidden"[0], so I think
we can just say "ulterior motives, but in a good way".

[0]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=define+ulterior](https://www.google.com/search?q=define+ulterior)

------
6ren
Buzz testified against Elon Musk and SpaceX. I don't think he can have it both
ways.

For something this challenging, it has to be your primary goal. You can't be
picky about secondary issues.

~~~
schiffern
You're thinking Neil Armstrong. Buzz is pro-private spaceflight.

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1267759...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126775979)

[https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/14816351159848960](https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/14816351159848960)

~~~
infectoid
And I believe Musk was truly saddened by Armstrongs attitude.

...

"I was very sad to see that," Musk tells "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott
Pelley. "Those guys are heroes of mine, so it's really tough … I wish they
would come and visit … see the hard work that we're doing here and I think
that it would change their mind."

[http://www.space.com/14936-spacex-ceo-elon-
musk-60-minutes-i...](http://www.space.com/14936-spacex-ceo-elon-
musk-60-minutes-interview.html)

------
austinz
You know what I wouldn't mind seeing first? An unmanned base on the moon to
work through the kinks of in-situ fabrication and resource extraction in an
extraterrestrial environment. It wouldn't have to be too big and it could even
be semi-tele-operated (given a lag time of seconds, rather than minutes or
hours) by researchers and technicians on Earth.

If we're talking about sending people to Mars to live for long periods of
time, and worrying about whether in doing so we're consigning them to
miserable deaths, it seems like spending the money to work out the bugs in a
non life-and-death situation might be a prudent idea. We've sent people to
orbit the moon, we've landed people on the moon and robots on Mars, but we've
never had people spending time on another world without relying entirely upon
supplies they brought with them.

------
tsotha
He's been calling for Mars colonization for, what, 40 years?

------
RexRollman
I disagree. I can't think of a single place that was ever improved due to the
presence of humans.

~~~
api
Improved relative to what, and according to whom?

~~~
RexRollman
Human are destructive and lay waste to every area they inhabit; like a blight
on a tree.

