would you live on Mars?

Elon Musk gives me such a brain-boost! It only suprises me that most of us aren’t so bold and inventive. Do you think humans are naturally timid? ‘Safer’ to to stay in a groove even if it’s an eventually destructive/poisonos groove? (See 100+ years of fossil-fuels/combustion-engine dependency)

I love this stuff. Reminds me of reading my father’s old Eagle annuals. Anything seemed possible.

But would I want to live on Mars? Being in close quarters with the same people all of the time? Nowhere to walk or bike. A mouse on a wheel? No birds in the sky, no babbling brook. No ocean in which to surf and swim or fish. No anything, unless we first create it?

Why would giving everything up and going to Mars be better than, say, giving it all up and backpacking around the Earth? Posterity? Life quality? Vanity? Wonder? Danger? Would the momentousness (!) of it outweigh all of the (not inconsiderable) downsides?

No, I prefer some atmosphere.

Whilst I think we need visionaries I can’t see the point of having anything but a small research colony on Mars for a long long time and even then I can’t see that we’re going to learn a whole lot. Most of the technical development will come in the space flight itself but once you’re on Mars, given they aren’t look at terraforming, what are you actually going to learn that you couldn’t in a sealed environment on Earth?

This just goes to show that corporate taxation rates are way too low, and that quantitative easing has gone beyond a joke.

If I was single or widowed and old then yes I would

I’m a geologist and would love to go there

Do they have chair lifts?

THIS

Its just billionaire with a child like dream he can indulge due to his obscene levels of wealth.

No way,it’s full of protomolecule hybrids.

Yes. Well maybe not now because I have a family and responsibilities, but discounting that then yes.

Life only exists on this one fragile planet, we need to do something to fix that – this is the first step.

Musks vision has to applauded, don’t you think?

It’s not like anyone else has thought of living on Mars, so clearly the guy is a visionary and should be held in high regard amongst scientists and philosophers alike.

I see two major flaws in his thesis, he’s one and the other is Mars.

If, and that’s a massive IF , humans were inventive enough to leave this planet before its inevitable demise surely a planet with similar conditions to promote human habitation would be a better option?

Quite what the fascination with Mars is I’m not actually sure, if it’s a fascination grown out of reading 1950’s sci-fi books then surely it’s time to grow up and smell the roses. The Planet has been proven not to become habitable by humans, why is Musk wasting his time? Is it a distraction in the form of the Earth raw materials he’s raping to build a transportation systems conducive to human singularity, or is it he has too much money being thrown at his he feels the need to get his team to write a presentation to promote an improbable dream whilst secretly underpinning his vehicle manufacturing plant..

You can tell I’m not just sceptical, but completely dismissive of much of what this bloke says.

Could I sneak the odd Snickers every now and again, to break the monotony?

I reckon I’d be bored within about 48 hrs

Any fit birds going?

I like the idea of fathering a martian

It would have to be some kind of Saudi type deal. If they could get the transportation time down to say a month then work for two years and come back with a tax free million quid then yes.

Bikebouy has it.

So what’s next? WWYD? How do we stop the ‘raping’?

I’m guessing smaller self-sustaining communities, networked by a simple transit system and a move away from our obsession with cities and single-occupant commutes/supermarket runs?

Or is it mega-farms, bigger cities, taller towers and faster cars all the way-down?

The whole concept to me is intriguing so i’d be up for leaving Earth. The tech invented to get there would be a big boost to future tech on earth and vice versa.

It only suprises me that most of us aren’t so bold and inventive. Do you think humans are naturally timid?

It’s pretty easy to make these big lightly-considered plans. The reason most proper engineers and scientists don’t is that they are looking at all the risks and down-sides. But since it’s all his money, he can try it if he likes. Plans will fail, people will die, but at best we’ll end up with a pretty miserable place to live.

A character almost entirely based on Musk appears in the Neal Stephenson book Seveneves. I reckon it’s a pretty thoughtful and fair assessment of his kind of approach. Not entirely negative either.

The tech invented to get there would be a big boost to future tech on earth and vice versa

Really? We’ve had this debate before, but I’m sceptical. I can’t think of a major tech challenge on Earth that would be helped by figuring out how to get to Mars.

Of course I **** wouldn’t.

Its just billionaire with a child like dream he can indulge due to his obscene levels of wealth.

Very well put.

Only if they put in an Olympus Mons uplift service. 😀

Why? What is the attraction? We’ve proved we can keep people alive in space, it is hugely expensive, dangerous and unpleasant, but it can be done more or less indefinitely given a large enough budget. Now we’ve done that, perhaps it would be better to turn our collective attention – and investment – to addressing some of the real problems that we face.

what would be the point?

Keeping people alive on mars is a much less difficult problem than keeping them alive in space: zero g is very bad for you, on the whole, and makes many small challenges *really* hard.

Not saying it would be easy on mars, just easier-than-in-micro-gravity

Answer to Q: No
Why : red has never been my colour

thecaptain – Member
Why? What is the attraction? We’ve proved we can keep people alive in space, it is hugely expensive, dangerous and unpleasant, but it can be done more or less indefinitely given a large enough budget. Now we’ve done that, perhaps it would be better to turn our collective attention – and investment – to addressing some of the real problems that we face.

Bit of a defeatist attitude innit captain?

“We were wanderers from the beginning…”

Basketball would be awesome on Mars.

@molgrips

How about getting past the apparent radiation belt somewhere outside of Earth? If nukes start a flying we might need something to combat radiation better here. I love Fallout but don’t fancy playing it in real life :p

Perhaps I believe a future where the human race has multiple planets colonized and isn’t dependent on this little rock we are slowly taking apart

You’ve got to start somewhere.

I’ll give it a miss, I think we’ve done a good enough job making a mess on this planet without abusing another.

It’s not about being defeatist, it’s about not seeing the point. Why not live on the top of everest, or at the bottom of the ocean, or up a tree, on in a hot air balloon? It could all be done, it would cost varying amounts of money and serve no useful purpose. I’ve certainly got better things to do with my life than just survive for the sake of it. Like posting on STW, for example 🙂

The “colonising multiple planets” stuff is just fantasy bullshit. We are here, we are stuck here, and the planet is plenty big enough even if we make our best efforts to **** it up.

You’ve got to start somewhere.

We know most of the planets in our solar system and most would be grim places to live. Outside our solar system the elephant in the room is the sheer distance involved. Scifi readers seem quite confident that the invention of the hyperdrive is just around the corner, if we could only start shipping people onto barren lifeless rocks today. I’m far more sceptical that it is even possible. Without that, we’ve got five rocky planets and a handful of moons, and that’s it.

Living on Mars would be like living in an Antarctic base. And people don’t seem to want to do that their whole lives.

There are many reas Me for going to mars. First and foremost to develop the technology to do it and practice. Also in many millions of years as true story n starts to warm and expand mars will move into eu Goldilocks zone so could be more habitable than it is now. It will never be earth like as lack of molten core and therefore magnetic field means it can never hold onto an atmosphere, but we could live deep within its canyons or burrow into the mountains. Also there is water ice on mars which can b used as a source of fuel to harvest for a deep space ship. We be colonising mars and the moon in a few hundred years.

Governments can no longer do this as there is not the will of the people behind he ventures bso we’re left to billionair s to firstly make a business case out of space true. Once here is a business case then the big corporations will move in.

Fantasies about colonising Mars are the defeatist option, when our own lovely planet is in such a mess.

^ I want some of whatever he’s having

I’d rather Musk prioritised his hyperloop so I don’t have to sit in a plane for hours on end.

what would be the point?

The point I guess is to prove it can be done. I doubt there’s much practical point to moving of putting humans on Mars, they simply get to hold the tools to study it rather than mount it on another Mars rover.

Visit, yes but I wouldn’t want to live on mars. It would like being in prison but with worse food, no courtyard time, horrific storms and added health issues.

but as noted we could live on mars like we could live on everest or under the sea the point is its not economical or practical to do it.

thecaptain – Member
It’s not about being defeatist, it’s about not seeing the point. Why not live on the top of everest, or at the bottom of the ocean, or up a tree, on in a hot air balloon? It could all be done, it would cost varying amounts of money and serve no useful purpose. I’ve certainly got better things to do with my life than just survive for the sake of it. Like posting on STW, for example

The “colonising multiple planets” stuff is just fantasy bullshit. We are here, we are stuck here, and the planet is plenty big enough even if we make our best efforts to **** it up.

Probably one of the most depressing posts I’ve ever read.

You could go back through history and say the same thing at so many points and about so many things.

Why explore Europe? Africa’s big enough

When invent agriculture when you can forage?

Why invent the bicycle when you can run?

Why develop fusion power when you have coal?

And the thing about fixing the problems on Earth instead is a bizarre one too. It’s like saying “why work on psoriasis treatments when people have cancer”. These two things are not mutually exclusive, and who knows? Working on psoriasis may yield results which help treat cancer anyway.

retro83 – Member

You could go back through history and say the same thing at so many points and about so many things.

Why explore Europe? Africa’s big enough

When our ancestors left Africa, they didn’t really ‘leave Africa’, with bold exploratory plans, they just moved along the beach a bit to get away from their annoying parents. everyone was happy. a few hundred generations later and you’ll find yourself in Finland.

When invent agriculture when you can forage?

Why invent the bicycle when you can run?

Why develop fusion power when you have coal?

because all of those things are an improvement.

living in a shipping container on mars? no thanks.

I have no idea what Musk’s plan is but I bet I have a fully formed opinion on it and can usefully contribute to any discussion about it.

Starting a new colony on Mars is an appealing problem (particularly for engineers) because it doesn’t come with all the messy political and historical baggage that bogs down any attempt to fix Earth-based problems. You can start from a clean sheet, so it’s just a case of applying money and brains. And because it’s so revolutionary it sort-of makes its own case as to why, if you don’t think about it too deeply and compare it to e.g. colonising uninhabitable parts of Earth

The ‘we need a lifeboat if Earth gets destroyed’ argument is pretty weak in my opinion – even after a meteor strike, Earth would STILL be more habitable than Mars (correct gravity, radiation shielding, abundant oxygen and water). And what would a Mars colony do if Earth was destroyed anyway? What would be the point? Live on until enough things broke that couldn’t be fixed without Earth resources and then perish?

Sure, we could work on the Mars colony problem alongside working on our Earth problems. But the more people think ‘Meh, we don’t need to save Earth, we can just move to Mars’, the less effort will be made. An impractical but tempting Plan B is a very big danger to properly investing in Plan A (which is really all we have)

If there’s a timescale of tens of thousands of years to think about, sure, but we face serious threats to human civilisation on Earth right now. We should be concentrating on them, not giving people an excuse to think there is an easy out…

(Having said all that I think we’re screwed anyway)