
Colonizing other planets is not a good plan - cdvonstinkpot
https://www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2017/05/06/sorry-nerds-but-colonizing-other-planets-is-not-a-good-plan/amp/
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ravitation
The HN title is missing the rest of the actual title...

"Sorry Nerds, But Colonizing Other Planets Is Not A Good Plan"

Man, this article isn't even long enough to be considered a decent middle
school book report.

In response: We're not trying to "evacuate" Earth for Mars within 100 years,
obviously. Human life is important (which is clearly subjective, but doesn't
seem that controversial) regardless of the Drake equation.

Pure clickbait.

Addendum: I find his frequent use of Wikipedia links very amusing.

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dcd0101
Maybe there's an error in the authors assumption that we'd seriously try to
evacuate the planet. I've always assumed that the point of colonizing Mars is
just to have an off-world colony that's also like an ark. At least at first.

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putsteadywere
Agreed. I read a lot of science fiction and I can't even think of a novel for
adults where they would insinuate that something so stupid was possible.

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kseistrup
In Neal Stephenson's ‘Seveneves’ they actually do evacuate Earth and live in
space for thousands of years until Earth becomes habitable again ⌘
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves)

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pipio21
The article is so wrong that I don't know where to start...

First there is a whole spectrum of people interested on adventure, breaking
frontiers, understanding science from outside the conditions on Earth, not
just N-E-R-D-S.

It reminds me when I was in the US and two very prominent politicians were
arguing on TV against each other about who was less of a nerd, have no
relationship with them, like they were a pest or something.

It was like the stereotype of empty brain US football player who gets all the
chicks by downplaying all people smarter than them and caring only about
looks.

The challenges and adventure of not having water, facing problems like living
on Venus clouds, etc.. are exactly the main reasons to go there. Doing what no
other person has done ever has lots of advantages for the individuals doing it
and human society as a hole.

For example when the first vehicles were sent to the moon we were able to
discover that most rocks or sand were not affected by erosion or air pressure
so they had properties not seen on Earth.

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candiodari
> First there is a whole spectrum of people interested on adventure, breaking
> frontiers, understanding science from outside the conditions on Earth

That's also not what colonizing is about. Rocket energy costs mean we'll
never, ever lift more than at most a few thousand people out of earth gravity.
Never. Not even with reusable rockets. 99.99% of the human population, at
minimum, can never leave the earth.

> The challenges and adventure of not having water, facing problems like
> living on Venus clouds, etc.. are exactly the main reasons to go there.
> Doing what no other person has done ever has lots of advantages for the
> individuals doing it and human society as a hole.

The whole point of colonization is never coming back. It won't be about
science for at least a couple generations. It'll be about babies, food and
building extremely basic structures.

Those babies, incidentally, will be thoroughly fucked compared with babies on
earth : They'll be locked in a small structure that they can never leave. And
of course the project is dependent on them having at least 5-6 babies per
couple, preferably more. They can never go to earth, ever. Hell, they can't
ever so much as talk to anyone outside of their society that will be tens of
people for a generation (because of the delay).

> For example when the first vehicles were sent to the moon we were able to
> discover that most rocks or sand were not affected by erosion or air
> pressure so they had properties not seen on Earth.

We knew those properties long before humans ever set foot on the moon.

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putsteadywere
The more I read this the stupider it sounds.

"under almost no circumstances does is colonizing another planet the best way
to adapt to a problem on earth...

...Even if an asteroid were to strike earth it would remain more habitable
than mars. For example, consider the asteroid that struck the earth 66 million
years ago creating the Chicxulub crater and wiping out 75% of plant and animal
species on earth, including the dinosaurs. Well that disaster still left 25%
of species that survived, all of whom would die instantly on the surface of
Mars."

This insinuates that surviving the aftermath of a Chicxulub event is what
threatens us - but it isn't the aftermath, it is the event itself.

Best quote: "Even though I am not an expert on space, physical sciences, or
basically any relevant field, I can tell that this is obviously true. Maybe
just it takes an economist to see through the nerd fantasies."

LOL!

~~~
candiodari
> This insinuates that surviving the aftermath of a Chicxulub event is what
> threatens us - but it isn't the aftermath, it is the event itself.

We have plenty of ways that a small group of humans could be isolated and fed
for the time it would take to make humans survive. Humans would not go extinct
due to an asteroid impact, rest assured.

There's even a few places that would have natural protection from most of the
phenomena. And of course, there'd be a few weeks where, starting 500km from
the impact site or so, there would be essentially nothing wrong on other than
a stripe in the sky. That time can be used to prepare for what's coming, and
as long as you only try to save 0.1% of the population, you could do that just
fine.

And there's plenty of calamities that would affect mars just as much as they'd
affect earth. A supernova within 50 lightyears or so of earth (depending on
size can be a bit more) is not survivable. That would destroy the atmosphere
in a matter of seconds and kill the power grid, and there would be no warning
at all (it's like an earthquake, we would "know it's coming" give or take
100000 years or so, and yes, there's one "ready to blow" within that range).
Within 20 light years or so and we'd see wind speeds on the surface would go
absolutely insane within a few minutes, lasting a few hours (there'd be a VERY
hot wind with speeds that'll probably exceed the speed of sound for a few
minutes). Anything above the surface is gone. Hell, this will erode the
himalayas by several hundred meters at least, maybe kilometers. Ocean water
levels will drop dozens of meters and there'll be zero water left on land.

But, on earth, some installations would probably survive even this. It won't
be pleasant, because life on earth will take decades to centuries to come back
to the point that the planet is covered in green (depending on what it does to
the soil, might even be hundreds of thousands of years).

For all these calamities, the same thing keeps coming back. What you need is

a) a huge, huge mass surrounding you (the earth counts as "surrounding" us
since there's always 50% of the surface that's protected by the mass of the
earth), preferably with lots of metal inside of it.

b) an energy source that isn't dependent on anything (which means: a nuclear
reactor). Obviously solar panels won't do.

c) a way to grow food and scrub co2 directly using just energy.

d) we'll need to do this using extremely well established technology. For
instance, we can probably use computers from, say, a 50nm process, but we
can't really go higher than that as we wouldn't be able to replace them.
Because these events would wipe industry from the earth that means we can only
depend on technology that can be made within whatever base we use.

That will let us have large amounts of survivors on our planet. The biggest
problem seems to me to be C. We can do it, sort of, but not very efficiently.

Also, once we leave earth, we shouldn't go to Mars. Once we escape Earth's
gravity we'd be wise never to dive into a gravity well again. We should
migrate populations into asteroids and use them with ion engines as
spaceships. With the people living deep into the interior. They will be far,
far safer than Mars or any planet.

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Pica_soO
That whole thing will wane like that electricity fad did. You will see - in a
100 years, nobody will have a use for all that modern hokus-pokus.

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johnchristopher
The real title is « Sorry Nerds, But Colonizing Other Planets Is Not A Good
Plan ».

I don't know what the article deals with because the first two words put me
off.

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fugusaurus
Three minutes we won't get back.

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theDuffKnight
Gamma Rays

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simonh
What about them? A GRB that takes out Earth would cook Mars even more
thoroughly due to its smaller size.

I think in practice we will colonise mas but no more than we are colonising
Antarctica. The ITS will make going to a Mars affordable and there are good
scientific reasons for wanting to do so. But my most optimistic scenario is
that we'll have small bases on Mars for at least a generation testing out
technology before well even begin to be able to dream about making such a
station in any way self sustaining, even just in food, air and water let alone
anything more complex.

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sliken
Yes, but what percentage of human life on earth is under 2 meters or more of
soil?

Human life on mars is likely to be underground to avoid the extreme cold,
vacuum, and radiation. So I could see a GRB taking out a hugely larger
fraction of life on earth (with no warning) than mars (assuming a colony
there).

