Project Exodus: What’s behind the dream of colonizing Mars?

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/01/project-exodus-critic-at-large-kolbert

by sergeant3 • 11 years ago

36 53 11 years ago

api3• 11 years ago

As I expected, the article does not actually discuss any of the deeper or well thought out reasons behind why some thing settling another world is a good idea. It's incredibly one sided.

I balanced article would discuss the frontier thesis, among many other things.

Trombone122• 11 years ago

The article is essentially a book review of three books, if you must blame anyone, blame the pro-exodus authors for intellectual shallowness.

The "frontier thesis" is according to wikipedia a theory created by a historian in the 1890's, is that the one you talked about?

"Wherever we go, we’ll take ourselves with us. Either we’re capable of dealing with the challenges posed by our own intelligence or we’re not."

api3• 11 years ago

One consistent thing I've learned in life is that you do not grow by staying in your comfort zone. You grow by going outside it.

Take exercise for example. If you can run ten miles up hill, the ordinary physical exertion of climbing a flight of stairs becomes trivial. But go without exercise for a long time and walking from your front door to your car starts to feel tiresome.

If we can live on Mars, then we can fucking live on Mars. If we can actually thrive there? If we can get so good at living there that we actually can enjoy a decent standard of living on Mars?

At that point there would be no excuse. There'd be no problem here on Earth that we should have any trouble solving, because we are badass enough to live on Mars.

That alone is one reason I can think of to go. There are others, and some get into areas like evolutionary information theory. The short version would be to say that I think there are things that arise from contact with a novel environment that are necessary to stimulate innovation and invention, and I have doubts about whether it is possible to innovate without that contact. Can a brain in a vat think? Being without a frontier seems a bit like that at the species scale.

guard-of-terra2• 11 years ago

t;dr anyone? Because article seems to go on and on and on.

billforsternz• 11 years ago

That's because it's a good article, worthy of a little time and effort.

guard-of-terra2• 11 years ago

I scanned half of it and it failed to catch my attention. But maybe there's a hidden gem somewhere?

ourmandave• 11 years ago

I read the closing paragraphs. The take away I got was instead of trying to colonize Mars, let's use the same brain power and resources to fix our problems here on Earth.

infectoid• 11 years ago

Yeah. It's kind of unfortunate that some people still think that by simply focussing all resources on one problem you can solve that problem. Has that ever been the case? Or even possible?

Either way, we do things off Earth for the same reasons we do things out of our towns and countries. It has been working out pretty well for us so far.

This has probably be linked too many times on HN but here are Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger's words again. http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html

Falkon1313• 11 years ago

Most of it is just a lengthy belaboring of the obvious - we didn't evolve on Mars or in space, so it'll be difficult and dangerous to go there.

There appears to be a well-hidden point, however. If we're trying to get away from the beasts that are destroying our habitat, the ones killing off native life, the ones spewing pollution, the ones who invented nuclear weapons that might kill us all, the ones who slaughter humans by the millions over petty arguments, etc... Well, we are those beasts. We can't get away from ourselves by taking ourselves to another planet.

It's possible that an asteroid might take us out, but that's unlikely enough that it wasn't even worth mentioning in the article. More likely that we are the greatest threat to our survival, and "Wherever we go, we'll take ourselves with us."

That's what I got from it anyway.

nitrogen• 11 years ago

A colony can be selective in which ideologies it brings along. Pick the best, brightest, most level-headed colonists.

gnarmis10• 11 years ago

The point is to improve existential odds. What about non-human threats, like asteroid hits, pandemics, etc? And even with largely human-caused threats, a Mars colony would improve existential odds. An improvement by degrees is still an improvement.

If I have a Time Machine backup of my computer, it's still better for me to get another backup some other way, maybe another external drive I store in a different part of the house, or a web based service. The fact that the second backup is not a cure-all and instant-solution to all my data-security concerns is alright because it's still an improvement by degrees over the previous situation.

A backup of the biosphere is still better than not having it.

jcranmer• 11 years ago

Perhaps. But that misses the largest issue with extraplanetary colonization: we don't have the technology to make a self-sustaining Martian colony at present. If the colony isn't self-sustaining, then all it means is that in the case of extinction-level disaster, some humans get to die a few years later.

gridspy• 11 years ago

The best way to get a full featured anything is to start with a Minimum Viable Product and improve it by degrees.

It's much easier to start with a dependent colony and slowly solve the dependency problems until it is actually independent. The earlier you start, the earlier it becomes feature complete.

gnarmis10• 11 years ago

We don't at present, yeah. That's a challenge. But it makes sense to have a goal to create a self-sustaining colony of humans (and plants/microbes/etc) on a different planet. Imagine that it did exist. It would be valuable to have, right?

Having such a goal and working towards it and developing the technology along the way looks like a coherent and valuable activity to me. It's not that I'm denying that it can't be done on Wednesday or in the next 5 years.

But yeah, it looks challenging.

nickbauman2• 11 years ago

Considering our ability to terra-form earth has been consistently anti-successful (we only seem to be able to turn fertile parts of our own planet into that which more closely resembles Mars), perhaps we should focus on saving our own planet from ourselves first?

lugg• 11 years ago

Considering our 7 billion inhabitants, perhaps devoting a mere couple thousand of us to this pursuit isn't something to nitpick at?

AndrewKemendo4• 11 years ago

The point is to improve existential odds.

Think about what you are saying. Something has to happen to the earth which completely wipes out the terrestrial atmosphere, changes our gravity significantly and makes the earth over 100 degrees cooler on average. Now you have the SAME atmosphere as Mars - but at least you already have a few tractors to work with.

I don't think there exists in theory a planetary event, short of the sun going supernova, that would make it cheaper to move to mars than to rebuild on earth.

The whole thing is lunacy in my opinion - and that's saying something as I am a transhumanist.

[1] http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/mars111.php

gnarmis10• 11 years ago

Well, what about things that are low-likelihood but have happened in the past? For example, the asteroid impact ~65 m. years ago. There's other relatively higher likelihood events that could cause modern civilization to collapse, like pandemics, runaway global warming, etc. You don't need an asteroid impact to destroy modern civilization, so the list of threats is longer -- any threat that kills billions, or causes critical failure of institutions (an extremely destructive global war), or destroys the ability to build large scale, stable civilizations. It isn't just about lives either, it's about protecting the institutions that are a critical part of modern civilization and that requires protecting lives plus other stuff, so it's even more fragile.

Anyway, it's not like I'm considering 'moving to Mars' against 'staying on Earth and rebuilding'. You could totally rebuild on Earth and also have a separate colony on Mars that's self sufficient and not affected by the same disaster. I'm saying you could gain an ability to survive threats that you couldn't otherwise if you stayed only on Earth. If something destroyed modern civilization on Earth, well guess what, if you have a self sufficient colony on Mars, modern civilization would not have been completely destroyed.

There's other benefits too. Developing tech to survive independently on another planet, ability to transport non-trivial materials to another planet, getting access to the nearby material wealth (autonomous asteroid mining perhaps? spit balling), and all that new science and technology and trade and opportunity for international collaboration. There's positive value in setting something like this up.

monsterix• 11 years ago

Seconded!

In fact among the various options available for an off-planet settlement, I find an enclosed pressurized habitat on the Moon the most plausible one. At least our orbit around the Sun doesn't change when it comes to our Moon. And we have some experience visiting it too.

FWIW, it's not about saving the species or terraforming at this stage. It's about setting up more space-stations first - which in my opinion would become transit/rescue points for longer hauls and hops at some point in time. A station on Moon sounds like a better proposition than throwing buzzwords like terraforming or considering ourselves capable enough to prevent extinction level event on Earth at this stage. Even the dumbest startup ideas have to go step by step.

anigbrowl2• 11 years ago

What you describe would wipe out all life on earth. It would require much less to wipe out all human life. Not that I think Mars is the best possible alternative (I'm more interested from a scientific and exploration standpoint in exploring Europa or Enceladus), but it is reasonably accessible, unless we come up with better ideas for how to colonize Venus.

7Figures2Commas• 11 years ago

tl;dr

What's behind the dream of colonizing Mars? Insane real estate prices on earth.

NovaS1X• 11 years ago

Living in Vancouver, BC, I can totally see this being an economically viable option.

tjradcliffe• 11 years ago

Living on Mars would be like having Vancouver's costs and Toronto's weather, so I'm not sure I see the advantage.

Roritharr• 11 years ago

Why is everybody always so excited about Mars?

I always found Venus more interesting in the short aswell as the long run.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/never-mind-mars-wha...

fweespeech• 11 years ago

Colonists to Venus would not build on the planet's surface; they would, in theory, set up a floating "cloud city" in Venus’s atmosphere. Of course, Venus-bound missions would "require big policy changes at NASA," writes Elizabeth Lopatto for The Verge. But two scientists, Dale Arney and Chris Jones, of NASA’s Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate at Langley Research Center in Virginia, point out that about 31 miles above the surface, the gravity and pressure is Earth-like, temperatures stay near the more manageable 167 degrees F and the colony would be more shielded from the Sun’s radiation than Mars.

It is easier to heat something than cool something. A permanently flying vessel [which is essentially what Venus requires] isn't safe except as a robotic design. It is a fatal mechanical failure waiting to happen.

There is a reason planes need so much maintenance and it isn't "saving money". A plane that would never have to land or need maintenance would be cheaper.

Sure, the ISS can manage it and you could probably set up something similar on Venus. But it wouldn't be a permanent, expandable settlement like you might be able to do on Mars.

neolefty• 11 years ago

Venus with a sun shield at L1! We're technologically far from being able to do it, but the physics seem straightforward. Venus has proven, at least, that it can hold onto an atmosphere.

From Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2312_%28novel%29.

TheLoneWolfling• 11 years ago

The L1 point is unstable, however. (Saddle point). Though you already have a solar sail...

Better hope your control loop is well and truly stable.

noonespecial• 11 years ago

Do we really need all of this advanced justification? How about "because that's the kind of stuff we do, dammit"?

No one had to explain to 12 yo me why we went to the moon. We landed spaceships on the moon!? AWESOME

Project Exodus: What’s behind the dream of colonizing Mars?

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