Will a Colony on Mars Save Us Humans from Extinction?

http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2008/04/will-a-colony-on-mars-save-us-humans-from-extinction.html

by epi0Bauqu • 18 years ago

6 20 18 years ago

gabrielweinberg.com

Readmore2• 18 years ago

"Pick your poison. Nuclear holocaust. Disease. The death of our Sun. It doesn't matter. "

I would suggest it does matter. The death of our Sun could not be avoided by living on Mars.

epi0Bauqu4• 18 years ago

Well, I was suggesting a colony on Mars would "start the process..." I think it would be wise to colonize Mars before going extra-solar.

Readmore2• 18 years ago

Okay fair enough, I'll agree to that.

scott_s4• 18 years ago

Us trying to colonize Mars now would be like the British trying to colonize the Americas with nothing but canoes. It's impractical with our current technology; too long and too risky.

kirubakaran2• 18 years ago

+1 but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try anyway.

scott_s4• 18 years ago

I actually think that in this case, "too long and too risky" is prohibitive. This analysis explains why: http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q2811.html

We're not doing it now because our technology is not good enough. It's less likely to fail if we first improve our technology.

epi0Bauqu4• 18 years ago

I think that underestimates the state of our technology and its potential for growth by orders of magnitude.

Hexstream• 18 years ago

Be careful, Moore's Law doesn't apply to everything.

mechanical_fish3• 18 years ago

That is the understatement of the millennium. The Polynesians actually did colonize the remote islands of the Pacific with nothing but canoes. No problem.

The difference is that they found fresh water and air on, e.g., Easter Island. To say nothing of the edible plants and the fish. And it took them at least several hundred years to cut down all the trees. By contrast, I estimate that the Martian forests will take approximately 0 years to be totally harvested -- which is just as well, because the Martian lumberjacks will be scared to take out an axe lest they accidentally slice open their pressurized suits.

scott_s4• 18 years ago

I read National Geographic this month, too. Which is why I chose the Atlantic, because island-hopping is not possible.

aaco2• 18 years ago

This reminds me of Google on April Fools' Day, creating a project willing to do exactly that.

http://www.google.com/virgle/

epi0Bauqu4• 18 years ago

That's funny, but it is also a shame Mars colonization has become a butt of jokes instead of a reality. Or perhaps it means it is getting closer to reality in peoples' minds if it is an April Fools Joke (in the sense those jokes are often supposed to trick people)?

jcl• 18 years ago

Google's previous April Fool's caper -- a sewer-based ISP -- wasn't too different from some real-life proposals:

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2007/Apr/01/goog...

aaco2• 18 years ago

Or perhaps it means it is getting closer to reality in peoples' minds if it is an April Fools Joke

I think that's true, but I don't see it as a shame to be a joke in any way. I mean, in Google case, the joke is more in the application form and other subtle things, like the last FAQ question (http://www.google.com/virgle/faq.html#11) and the error page (http://www.google.com/virgle/error.html), which says, amongst other things:

  "... Virgle isn't real.
  
  Yet."

sayhello• 18 years ago

Terra-forming Mars would be pretty hard.

According to Dan Simmons in the novel Hyperion, we will need to develop artificial intelligence to the point of singularity. Their gift to us from the AI's evolved beyind singularity will be space/time singularities which will allow us to travel and prosper in other worlds.

Will a Colony on Mars Save Us Humans from Extinction?

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