Mars is an unbelievably hostile environment. People can’t live on Mars. And why would you even want to? Compared to earth it’s a dusty hell.
Do some research on how livable Mars is. It really isn’t.
Humans will never travel to the stars - that’s a hundred billion times less likely than traveling to Mars. Actually not even that…. interstellar travel is impossible.
I loved the science fiction of traveling to the stars until I understood that the nearest star is so far it would take hundreds of thousands of years to get there using technology even vaguely within our grasp - and really there’s no such technology.
If mega wealthy man boys like Musk want to waste money in boys own adventure science fiction instead of making real change here in earth well that’s their decision.
And if we indeed manage, we will jumper further and farther. Only 100 years ago, there were no planes. No planes are like ants. Unimaginable.
Indeed have to take care of our home. And we can do much better.
But it feels silly when people shame people for wild and excitement dreams. Are we not allowed to have fun? Everyone not working on cancer research should be shamed?
It might even serve some purpose one day, but for now it's just exciting and thats important in its own right.
> If mega wealthy man boys like Musk want to waste money in boys own adventure science fiction instead of making real change here in earth well that’s their decision.
If the really big problems here on Earth could be fixed by throwing a few tens of billions at them, they'd have been fixed already by governments.
- Distributed, low-scale production with high efficiency. So no need for high consumes to keep high production efficiency.
- Implementing renewable energy and the concepts listed above from the ground up in every aspect of life. That's scarcity, harsh environments and need for you together with bright minds.
- And many many things that we can't even imagine from here.
> “war is over, if you want it”
The problem is the "if you want it". That's for most of the unsolved problem we have on earth.
If you keep failing generation after generation maybe you need to change your point of view to understand how small we are and as we are not much different each other and from other living things.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
For a single example, the vertical farming movement branched out of "growing food on Mars" research. Vertical farming is a stupid idea, but determining all the surprising ways that crops can fail in a closed environment is likely to lead to better understanding of ecosystems and ways that our own might fail.
We're not going beyond our solar system. Ever. The nearest star is 4 light-years away. Assuming you could even travel at the speed of light, which you can't, it takes 1 year to reach the speed of light while accelerating at a comfortable 1G. But, as I said, we're not ever traveling at the speed of light. 20% of the speed of light is about the best we'll realistically ever be able to do - but that still makes the nearest star over 20 years of travel away!
How do you propose to travel for over 20 years?
It's clear then that robots will be exploring the solar system, not us. Even then it's going to take several centuries just to travel to, collect data from, and send back to earth just from the local stars we can see with the unaided eye.
Sorry, that simply isn't true. Multi-generation starships don't violate any laws of physics.
> How do you propose to travel for over 20 years?
By recognizing that you aren't coming back, and that even if you don't make it there, your children will.
I mean, we have examples of this even here on Earth. Moses and the Israelites supposedly wandered for 40 years. The pioneers who set out on the Oregon Trail largely knew it was a one-way trip. Other examples abound..
> Multi-generation starships don't violate any laws of physics.
That's true - but they do violate what we know about psychology. You're signing on your progeny to be imprisoned on a ship from birth to death, when you yourself never had to endure that. Think about the sentiment behind the "Okay, Boomer..." memes and magnify that generational hatred several-fold. Someone is going to sabotage the ship and its crew long before they ever reach their destination. That's just how people work. Remember, we're not rational.
Yet they yearned for adventure - and many, many people went on such adventures. Now we live in an age of mass transportation where people routinely leave their towns to venture elsewhere. They take airplanes to fly to different parts of the world, they take their cars to go on trips, they go on cruises: they travel. They may live in the same town in which they grew up, but they've travelled quite further.
How is that going to work for your population confined to a ship the size of a small town? It isn't. It's science fiction.
> Now we live in an age of mass transportation where people routinely leave their towns to venture elsewhere
Future generations may grow up in a world of much more limited travel, existing in small areas of '15-minute cities' without cars, minimal access to air travel, living in tiny apartments, and most likely spending most of their time in some sort of metaverse, with very limited food choices. We'll have stopped burning fossil fuels and given most of the planet back to nature, and can't allow the working-class masses the transport/freedoms to access/enjoy/ruin it again.
If that's what the world comes to, it'll be a lot closer to life on a generation ship than the world we're used to today.
That world you describe is a dystopia and it would probably be better for humanity to wink-out at that point. Then again, maybe by then we'll have bio-engineered ourselves to have a native port into VR working directly with our visual cortex. Then again, by the time we get to the point we need to be serious about getting out of the solar system (100 million years) we arguably wouldn't even be the same species as today - especially as we'll have been bioengineering ourselves for millions of years by that point.
Not that any of this solves the problem of humanity having nowhere to go. The trip is ultimately futile since the stars you're going to are also dying.
We're not going within my lifetime, but we don't know what currently-unimaginable technologies could be developed in the future (if we don't destroy our civilization within the next few decades)
Significantly extending the lifespan of humans seems inevitable at some point. Robotics and AI will continue to improve. We may master fusion, or discover new ways to store energy. We'll probably mine asteroids and master construction in space.
Robots will lead the way, but humans are unlikely to lose the urge to explore.
I'm sorry. We know physics very well. There's no "unimaginable technologies" that are going to be developed that gets us around the fact that we're not going to travel much faster than 20% of the speed of light - and that doesn't change the fact that the average star you see with your own eyes is 60-100 lightyears away and will by dying at roughly the same time as our sun.
The most important point to realize about science fiction is that it is fiction.
Our knowledge is incomplete, but we can put boundary boxes around what is possible. Just because our theories are incomplete doesn't mean that what we know is wrong. Our knowledge has been extensively tested over the past 100 years.
Newton was wrong, Einstein has provided us a better, more accurate, theory of gravity. Guess what? We still teach Newton in high school and college physics! Why? Because though it's wrong it's only wrong in the most extreme circumstances. Generally speaking it works quite well. The only observation we made contradicting Newton was Mercury's perihelion precession. But Einstein didn't change how fast apples fall to the ground.
Likewise, we know, or at least strongly suspect, Einstein is wrong. That doesn't mean everything we've observed the past 100 years corroborating General Relativity goes out the window with a new theory. No, instead that's what makes creating a new theory hard: you have to account for a century's worth of observations validating GR and reconcile with QFT (otherwise why bother).
But it wouldn't change anything about what we already know and what we've observed. That's why it's a boundary box. This is science, not magic.
I've read the article. It exposes a well-known point of view in philosophy of science that has been debated at least a hundred years. It doesn't begin to cover that question at all.
Notably, the idea that a new theory simply takes existing "observations" and adds to them is historically unfounded. Indeed, many theories start as thought experiments that contradict observation and later turn out to be better models, not the other way around.
You also may or may not be familiar with the concepts of theory-ladenness and the commensurability of theories. If not, I suggest doing some reading about that so you can appreciate why those questions aren't as straightforward as you seem to believe.
A new theory isn't going to contradict your observations. It may provide an alternate explanation and allow you to understand the phenomenon a different way, but the phenomenon leading to the observation is unchanged.
This is important in this discussion because we've never observed anything traveling faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. That would appear to rule-out faster-than-light travel, which for practical reasons would make traveling to other solar systems impossible.
There are people that will be willing to lose decades of subjective time getting iced.
Or if we can't do that (which would be weird since many complex mammals can hibernate already) then generation ships are possible. It'll probably be only done by culturally crazy groups, but hey! They're still counted as humans, and their expanding human habitats into new systems is still a win to us all.
Governments don't exist to "fix problems". Governments exist to perpetuate problems so that tax money can be funneled to cronies under the guise of "fixing" problems.
Bill Gates works full time in spending money on projects with social good like vaccinations and searching for solutions to things like mosquitoes, disease, clean water, education, poverty, woman’s health, energy, sewerage, reducing methane emissions from livestock.
We've already seen him banning accounts of people who were saying things he didn't agree with so I really don't think we can say he defends freedom of speech. What Musk seems to want to do is make money off of attracting and offering to signal boost what would be otherwise unpopular speech.
Freedom of speech hasn't been an issue in a long time. Even if it was, the likes of Musk would just replace the status quo with their own restrictions on what's allowed to be said.
This is such a boring take.
Musk could "defend free speech" (as if that is something that was ever substantially contested - Trump the shit talker par excellence has been president of the US of A), and still actually improve the world for everyone by funding medical research or the conservation of the rain forests.
But yeah, let's drink some more of the Kool aid that the super rich like Musk and Trump are sticking it to the man.
Tesla's impact on CO2, NOx and PM25 emissions have prevented a large number of premature deaths (at least 6 figures, likely).
Musk didn't start Tesla to save the world, he's not an environmentalist, he's a humanist. He started Tesla because he thought the world was running out of oil. But a lot of Tesla employees are environmentalists, and so are a lot of their customers.
Intentional or not, Elon Musk & Tesla will be responsible for a significant decrease in the global warming rise.
I don't know if he'll beat Gates or not in terms of global positive impact, but they can be compared.
Judges are more authoritative than legislatures, wikipedia and random internet comments.
If you have a point that is actually relevant to the original comment please make it. You're arguing semantics, not substance. Perhaps I shouldn't have said that Musk "started Tesla" because it's a contested point but removing that phrase has 0 impact on the rest of the comment.
Starship is immensely useful, even much closer to home. Financially, going to Mars is not the justification for Starship (no matter how often Musk says).
Starship will enable us to bring much more mass into orbit. Communication satellites mostly. The JWST would have been easier and cheaper to construct with the payload diameter of Starship. You could even launch much larger telescopes. Commercial space stations aren't really viable yet, and there's not that much to do for Humans in LEO. That's going to change. On top of all that, there are ideas to use Starship as a point-to-point transportation system for destinations on Earth.
Yes it is, but so much tech developed over the course of history that we rely on was developed by people trying to solve a “hostile environment” problem. I don’t buy the argument that we shouldn’t do it because it’s difficult. Everything is difficult at first. We need to do it because it’s difficult because the tech we develop to get and live there will also help here.
So is Southern California. Some of the early missions founded by the Spaniards starved to death. Modern life there is absolutely dependent on technology. Take away the electricity, gasoline, and water and millions would die in short order.
The same is true for the moon, yet we did that and it lead to important growth & discovery for humanity.
Your 100% right that living on Mars right now is going to suck. A lot. As the "man boy" said before, there is a good chance that the first people on Mars will just die.
If they don't die they will have a very hard life. If they manage to survive and get back they will probably have lasting health effects.
And the next several expeditions to Mars will likely be the same.
The _hope_ is that after X number of expeditions we will start to build something that resembles hospitability. Eventually that might even lead to growth.
Will we success? Who knows. But if we take your "man boy" approach then we'll for sure be stuck here forever until we get hit by an asteroid or something else.
The Moon though is 4 days away at any time. Bailout/emergency evac is much easier. And there are resources on the moon that may be viable for next gen tech(ie: Helium-3)
Mars is like 7-9 months away on the best pork chop plot. And even if you have something like an Aldrin cycler that may be able to cut that down at certain point to a few months, theres still a lot that can go wrong in that time. The average time to communicate to mars is something like 15 minutes as well. Its a totally different ballgame of "they are on their own". Even if you compare that to say....Christopher Columbus or others (that did similar for the time, but also knew there was a good chance they had the resources needed to survive)
Mars has some water and basic elements (O2, N2, H2O) but not much else otherwise. ANy food, probably drinks, shielding, and technology to make long term viability possible will have to be towed along.
Mars does seem like an option for expansion at some point. I am just not sure it will be in any of our lifetimes though.
Why don't we try living on the moon before attempting to live on Mars? The moon isn't any more hostile than Mars, but has the advantage it's only a few days away from Earth. You can go back and forth. We can learn about long-term consequences of living away from Earth. There are a lot of important minerals we can mine from the moon. We can start to work on creating feasible low-gravity manufacturing - which can spur other advances.
To me this whole "let's rush to Mars" without even having a moon base is just insane.
In fact, the moon is a lot more hostile than Mars. Off the top of my head: very little water, hardly any useful minerals, lunar night is long, temperature differences more intense, no air to stop micro meteorites, moon dust not weathered, so basically made of tiny shards of glass that sticks to everything electrostatically.
The moon may have more water than you think and it has several useful minerals - in particular titanium. The moon certainly has drawbacks, but it doesn't suffer from months-long sand storms and it is much closer to earth.
They're both quite hostile really! Given the choice (and no hope of a rescue mission) I still think I'd prefer Mars. Also gravity is 1/3rd rather than 1/6th.
Your chances of a rescue mission is much greater on the moon if we have multiple space stations with shuttles flying to the moon, and multiple moon bases in close enough proximity where one base can help out another if some crises were to occur.
We could potentially build this sort of earth-moon infrastructure out over the next few decades.
I don't think the conditions on Mars will kill the first few people going there. The transportation, including the landing, is much more dangerous. And those people won't even stay there. A couple of years at most for any one person. Then with time the stays will be extended.
> If mega wealthy man boys like Musk want to waste money in boys own adventure science fiction instead of making real change here in earth well that’s their decision.
The problem is that the space boys aren't bankrolling this Mars delusion personally. They're counting on incredibly lucratice US federal and later international governmental contracts. Basically, whether we make it to Mars or not, there's going to be a lot of money going to Musk et al during the process and I don't think that's by accident.
This interview mentions that Starlink’s user agreement includes a clause that says that Mars is “a free planet” and “that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities.” This is actually true. Once on Mars, disputes are to be settled according to good faith placed in Musk:
12. GOVERNING LAW.
… For Services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.
Technologists are as prone to flights of fantasy and mysticism as anyone else:
Example: AI is a threat to humanity --- as soon as it learns how to differentiate fact from fiction on the internet.
But equating technologist with "science" or "scientist" is a fallacy. Technologists may employ science as a tool but they have no obligation to justify or offer proof of their work.
Example: Musk may *believe* that a colony of some sort can be built on Mars --- but there is no proof that it will ever be self sustaining over time or that significant numbers of sane people would ever willingly choose to try and live there.
So sorry --- science and religion are not the same.
Humanity will have no choice but to try to escape the solar system at some point. If it makes you feel better about it, think of humans as natives of this galaxy.
Actually, in about 500 million, there won't be enough CO2 left for photosynthesis[0].
The shelf life of complex life on Earth is probably closer the end than to the beginning. Still a lot of time left from our perspective, but we have to save ourselves -- and the legacy of complex life on Earth -- sometime.
And go where? All the stars we can see with the naked eye are going to be dying around the same time as our sun. And we won't ever be able to travel to them, let alone beyond.
Things will improve here on Earth once we realize we're stuck in this solar system. Forever.
3/4 of stars are red dwarfs which can last for *trillions* of years. Our Sun is in the 1/4 that lasts for mere billions.
I don't think this bleak defeatism is warranted at all. It feels like a projection of hopelessness about local affairs.
Surface-wise, planets are actually non-ideal. Habitats are where it's at, baby. (E.g., O'Neill cylinders or, more fancifully, ringworlds.) But we probably can't ever build those cuz we suck! T_T Waaaah!!
> Space exploration is bad because it's unregulated.
> Who does Elon think he is?
Is this suppose to be a hit piece? I'm sure there was someone whining about Christopher Columbus as well, but discovering the americas was a pivotal moment in human history.
What race to Mars? At best three entities are even aiming to send people to Mars, and all of them at a quite leisurely pace: NASA, ESA and SpaceX. And by all accounts, they are cooperating more rather than competing.
Some people take Elon Musk too seriously. His timelines are always overambitious. Starship will not be going to Mars (even unmanned) any time soon. Even though Musk says it's necessary for interplanetary travel, at least the first dozen or "Starships" or so will have much less ambitious tasks: Launching Starlink satellites, maybe other commercial payloads and of course going to the moon. All of those missions require multiple prototypes. I'd be surprised if any Starship makes its way to Mars in the next five years. More like ten years, even for the first unmanned mission.
I actually meant the author. She is taking Musk too seriously. There may be people in the general public, who are unrelated to SpaceX or anything space related, who are crazy about Mars. But my point is that even SpaceX has plenty to do besides going to Mars, and nobody in government or private industry is pushing for Mars colonization with any kind of religious fervor.
Ambitions are a good thing. I do believe it is a good idea to have a permanent settlement on Mars, mostly for scientific reasons. But there's no "race" toward this goal, not even a forceful push. Progress is slow but steady now.
> There may be people in the general public, who are unrelated to SpaceX or anything space related, who are crazy about Mars.
There may be? This seems almost deliberately obtuse.
The only reason the author takes Musk seriously is that Musk has hordes of followers and worshippers. You can see it here on HN. You can see it on Twitter.
The only plausible way to ‘colonize space’ is to set to space stations .. the idea was proposed decades ago..like the Stanford Torus. Star Trek life. Sign me up!
Those are only protected against solar radiation though. They use big mirrors in order to not be directly exposed to the sun. Moon regolith protects the space station from the other side. But dangerous interstellar radiation comes from all directions. I don't see a solution to this.
“Because sciences tend to think of themselves as something as far away as possible from religion, as having freed themselves from God. To an extent that’s true. But in the process, they tend to generate these big stories, big mythologies, about the origins and the ends of the world. And conjure characters who are heroes, gods, and monsters. I started tracking the way that the natural sciences themselves generate new ways of understanding the world that, a couple centuries ago, we would have called religion.”
This aspect of the interview, to me, was far more interesting than anything to do with Elon Musk. I also was not aware that Nietzsche had called scientists "priests of the modern world." So it seems that even in the realm of space exploration--and I can hardly think of an area that seems to have been more insulated from religion--humans just don't seem to be able to help themselves but to keep reintroducing the religious and the supernatural (whether it be the Apollo 8 astronauts reading from Genesis or current NASA advisors checking to make sure they account for beings on other planets that might communicate through "shamanic states").
A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won’t create nightmares, both for settlers and the people they leave behind. In the process, the Weinersmiths answer every question about space you’ve ever wondered about, and many you’ve never considered.
"And in fact, if you get your internet through Elon Musk’s satellite constellation, Starlink, you have agreed in the fine print—which you probably didn’t read—to recognize Mars as a “free planet,” subject to no Earth-based regulation at all. "
Mars is an unbelievably hostile environment. People can’t live on Mars. And why would you even want to? Compared to earth it’s a dusty hell.
Do some research on how livable Mars is. It really isn’t.
Humans will never travel to the stars - that’s a hundred billion times less likely than traveling to Mars. Actually not even that…. interstellar travel is impossible.
I loved the science fiction of traveling to the stars until I understood that the nearest star is so far it would take hundreds of thousands of years to get there using technology even vaguely within our grasp - and really there’s no such technology.
If mega wealthy man boys like Musk want to waste money in boys own adventure science fiction instead of making real change here in earth well that’s their decision.