Life on Mars
March 27, 2025 5:56 AM Subscribe
Because much of this book hinges on the idea that there is no urgent need to settle space, here we'll try to convince you that most of the pro-settlement arguments are wrong.
Some of these arguments may be unfamiliar to you, but all of them have at least some powerful advocates in government, military, or business settings.
Elon Musk is probably too busy wrecking the US to be colonizing Mars right now, which is a pity. On the other hand, Space-X is most likely just a monumental grift.
Kelly and Zach Wienersmith have made a book which looks like a graphic novel, but is a scientific explanation of the problem with space colonies. (Link to interview at the Times Radio YouTube channel)
Some of these arguments may be unfamiliar to you, but all of them have at least some powerful advocates in government, military, or business settings.
Elon Musk is probably too busy wrecking the US to be colonizing Mars right now, which is a pity. On the other hand, Space-X is most likely just a monumental grift.
Kelly and Zach Wienersmith have made a book which looks like a graphic novel, but is a scientific explanation of the problem with space colonies. (Link to interview at the Times Radio YouTube channel)
I loved this book, not least because the authors have a really amusing way of building in humor as they go.
posted by Well I never at 6:17 AM on March 27
posted by Well I never at 6:17 AM on March 27
I read this sometime in the last year, and I enjoyed it. But I went in with broad-strokes agreement that settling Mars would be more difficult and less useful than some space-fans have been suggesting. I wonder how persuasive this book could be for true-believer Mars-boosters.
One of the simpler and more striking problems: Long-term extraterrestrial settlement (anywhere) will absolutely require sealed, self-sufficient life-support / ecosystems. Which we have not demonstrated a capacity to create. There's really nothing stopping humanity from developing such things right now, here on Earth. But the biggest, most serious effort along those lines is now considered a punch-line, and supposedly serious engineers are all geeking out over rockets instead. A bullet train that only stops at a space latrine.
posted by Western Infidels at 6:39 AM on March 27 [19 favorites]
One of the simpler and more striking problems: Long-term extraterrestrial settlement (anywhere) will absolutely require sealed, self-sufficient life-support / ecosystems. Which we have not demonstrated a capacity to create. There's really nothing stopping humanity from developing such things right now, here on Earth. But the biggest, most serious effort along those lines is now considered a punch-line, and supposedly serious engineers are all geeking out over rockets instead. A bullet train that only stops at a space latrine.
posted by Western Infidels at 6:39 AM on March 27 [19 favorites]
This looks like fun. I'm a big fan of The Expanse and For All Mankind, but I've never been a "let's colonize Mars (or even the Moon)" guy, and any inkling I had in that direction was smothered several years ago when an astronomer friend of mine clued me in to the whole magnetosphere/radiation problem. This seems to support my current stance of "Sure, someone's probably going to try it, b/c humans do stupid things all the time, but whatever some asshole on TV/the Interwebz is trying to sell you is certainly wrong and it's almost definitely going to end in disaster." I'm just glad to know there are people out there who are actually thinking the practicalities of this through.
posted by Pedantzilla at 6:52 AM on March 27 [5 favorites]
posted by Pedantzilla at 6:52 AM on March 27 [5 favorites]
Humanity is large and time is long. There is plenty of opportunity to try a lot of stuff. You miss all the pitches you don’t swing at.
Unfortunately, most everyone on Metafilter hates Anal Husk and assumes any idea he has is automatically bad. Like all rules of thumb, it is sometimes wrong (bonus points to anyone who brings up Gödel).
Like the old saying goes: “even a blind pig finds an acorn sometimes.” I’ll pop back in in 3025 to see what happened with Mars (and the Earth, too). Hopefully the intelligent raccoons of the day are good archaeologists and willing to explain not-so-recent history to me.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 6:56 AM on March 27 [4 favorites]
Unfortunately, most everyone on Metafilter hates Anal Husk and assumes any idea he has is automatically bad. Like all rules of thumb, it is sometimes wrong (bonus points to anyone who brings up Gödel).
Like the old saying goes: “even a blind pig finds an acorn sometimes.” I’ll pop back in in 3025 to see what happened with Mars (and the Earth, too). Hopefully the intelligent raccoons of the day are good archaeologists and willing to explain not-so-recent history to me.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 6:56 AM on March 27 [4 favorites]
With everything that's going on, I honestly hope we just give crewed space exploration a rest for a few generations. The 60s space race wasn't without it's moral compromises, but those are beginning to pale in comparison to just how much power and influence we were willing to give to Elon Musk simply because we wanted cheap reusable rockets or a mars mission in our lifetimes.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:58 AM on March 27 [7 favorites]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:58 AM on March 27 [7 favorites]
We should be sending hearty robots to all corners of the solar system and beyond. We also should be learning how to have people go to some or all of these places safely. But if the rumors are true that the Science Mission Directorate at NASA is going to get a 50+% cut next year and all the money is gonna go to prestige crewed missions for Elon. Well, if that's the case we can expect a lot less science and a lot more dead astronauts. As infuriating as it may be to some people, NASA does crewed spaceflight slowly (and kinda expensively [but also remember NASA is the US's distant-third budgeted space program after NRO and DoD]) for one big reason. To not kill astronauts. And every time NASA has taken its eye off the ball, astronauts have died.
NASA is not a move fast and break things organization and I like it that way.
posted by tclark at 7:00 AM on March 27 [34 favorites]
NASA is not a move fast and break things organization and I like it that way.
posted by tclark at 7:00 AM on March 27 [34 favorites]
People (and I include my younger self) are blinded to the hostile nature of the Martian environment because they still unconsciously subscribe to the narrative of colonialism, and with those distorting glasses on Mars looks like the new America.
posted by Phanx at 7:00 AM on March 27 [31 favorites]
posted by Phanx at 7:00 AM on March 27 [31 favorites]
By the way, if we are going to set up human habitation on a off-Earth body, I'm absolutely 1000% of the opinion we need to do it on the Moon first. We will learn everything we need to learn about how to keep people safe there, and an abort means a three day trip home any day of the year.
posted by tclark at 7:03 AM on March 27 [30 favorites]
posted by tclark at 7:03 AM on March 27 [30 favorites]
We could learn an awful lot by firing rich people into space and the sooner we get that started the better
posted by lescour at 7:06 AM on March 27 [51 favorites]
posted by lescour at 7:06 AM on March 27 [51 favorites]
Unfortunately, most everyone on Metafilter hates Anal Husk and assumes any idea he has is automatically bad. Like all rules of thumb, it is sometimes wrong (bonus points to anyone who brings up Gödel).
Are you talking about Elon Musk? Are you giving him credit for the idea of colonizing Mars? While also insulting him by calling him names? All while conceding that 1000 years is a more realistic timeline than 10? But somehow "Metafilter" is the confused party here?
posted by grog at 7:09 AM on March 27 [48 favorites]
Are you talking about Elon Musk? Are you giving him credit for the idea of colonizing Mars? While also insulting him by calling him names? All while conceding that 1000 years is a more realistic timeline than 10? But somehow "Metafilter" is the confused party here?
posted by grog at 7:09 AM on March 27 [48 favorites]
I am huge fan of crewed exploration and think it's fine to spend billions on it, even as just an ongoing experiment to get better at it.
But the human body and possibly mind, ain't built for that shit, so we'll need to go slow and carefully. Probably best to set up a truly self sufficient base here on Earth before we start placing bets on doing it in space.
We should definitely be putting uncrewed orbiters and rovers everywhere we can (LOOKING AT YOU PLUTO). If that means the crewed program has to be a little smaller, that's fine.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:14 AM on March 27 [7 favorites]
But the human body and possibly mind, ain't built for that shit, so we'll need to go slow and carefully. Probably best to set up a truly self sufficient base here on Earth before we start placing bets on doing it in space.
We should definitely be putting uncrewed orbiters and rovers everywhere we can (LOOKING AT YOU PLUTO). If that means the crewed program has to be a little smaller, that's fine.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:14 AM on March 27 [7 favorites]
Same here, Pedantzilla: I loved For All Mankind. But I never gave The Expanse a try. I did try to read the book but gave up about half-way through. One book/movie that highlighted nearly all of the ways Mars will try to kill you is The Martian. The book version tried to kill the main character every chapter in new and interesting ways.
posted by MrNoodlePants at 7:17 AM on March 27 [6 favorites]
posted by MrNoodlePants at 7:17 AM on March 27 [6 favorites]
The Expanse tv show is very good and highly recommended!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:26 AM on March 27 [9 favorites]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:26 AM on March 27 [9 favorites]
But somehow "Metafilter" is the confused party here?
No, they're right. In recent years the concept of Mars colonization (or space settlement in general) has become so closely tied to Musk that it does tend to distort discussions on MetaFilter into becoming personal referendums about him.
posted by star gentle uterus at 7:31 AM on March 27 [2 favorites]
No, they're right. In recent years the concept of Mars colonization (or space settlement in general) has become so closely tied to Musk that it does tend to distort discussions on MetaFilter into becoming personal referendums about him.
posted by star gentle uterus at 7:31 AM on March 27 [2 favorites]
Far as I'm concerned, earth life is on a timer, followed by a much longer one for all life. We got less than 5 billion years to get out of this solar system, and then some percentage of the rest of time to figure out how to reverse entropy. Otherwise it ll seems a bit pointless in the long run. To that end, not really concerned with anyone living on Mars. Doesn't even seem like the best alternate rock in this system to live on. First goal has to be surviving on Earth and we are not doing a great job of that. We'll need to get rid of the billionaires ASAP if we are to ever go anywhere. Plus if that's the kind of people we're bringing into the wider universe, fuck it, let entropy take us all. Better a cold void universe than to suffer a billionaire in a lively one.
posted by GoblinHoney at 7:39 AM on March 27 [10 favorites]
posted by GoblinHoney at 7:39 AM on March 27 [10 favorites]
I went to a talk recently about the cutting edge of exoplanet research. Colonizing or no, it's pretty amazing what people have managed to figure out about objects unimaginably far away. Humans are pretty cool.
posted by star gentle uterus at 7:44 AM on March 27 [6 favorites]
posted by star gentle uterus at 7:44 AM on March 27 [6 favorites]
imagine John F. Kennedy giving a beautiful, uplifting speech on sailing “this new ocean,” and then notice in the background two people squinting at the middle distance, thinking “but is it really like an ocean?”
[firstprinciples:] Even though plasma fluids don’t share all of their characteristics with liquid water, we encounter water so commonly that it makes a tempting metaphor not just for plasmas, but other phenomena as well
(bonus points to anyone who brings up Gödel)
[archive:] Gödel came up with a third kind of solution to Einstein’s equations, one in which the universe was not expanding but rotating
posted by HearHere at 7:50 AM on March 27 [7 favorites]
[firstprinciples:] Even though plasma fluids don’t share all of their characteristics with liquid water, we encounter water so commonly that it makes a tempting metaphor not just for plasmas, but other phenomena as well
(bonus points to anyone who brings up Gödel)
[archive:] Gödel came up with a third kind of solution to Einstein’s equations, one in which the universe was not expanding but rotating
posted by HearHere at 7:50 AM on March 27 [7 favorites]
Second for The Expanse. The show is significantly better than the books, IMO, because they do so much better with the Belters - one of the only oppressed peoples in all of sci fi television(!) and so well realized. 10/10. Also, Shohreh Aghdashloo as Chrisjen Avasarala is absolutely phenomenal.
Count me in on all the emotional response to space exploration stories. Just a real soft spot from my childhood. As things look for now, we will probably have some kind of reprise of the Titan submarine fiasco, only with dead astronauts abandoned on the surface of the moon by billionaires after they have repeatedly insisted that all the technical problems their engineers are telling them about need to be fixed by force of will alone. See also: Avenue 5.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 7:50 AM on March 27 [14 favorites]
Count me in on all the emotional response to space exploration stories. Just a real soft spot from my childhood. As things look for now, we will probably have some kind of reprise of the Titan submarine fiasco, only with dead astronauts abandoned on the surface of the moon by billionaires after they have repeatedly insisted that all the technical problems their engineers are telling them about need to be fixed by force of will alone. See also: Avenue 5.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 7:50 AM on March 27 [14 favorites]
Any engineered life support system will be dependent on the biodiversity of earth to fix its numerous teething problems. If earth isn’t thriving, space habitats won’t be livable. Without a diverse and flourishing earth, terraforming other planets isn’t possible.
NASA, for the most part, gets this. Most missions are very clever earth observation satellites. These are the missions we are losing.
posted by Headfullofair at 7:52 AM on March 27 [20 favorites]
NASA, for the most part, gets this. Most missions are very clever earth observation satellites. These are the missions we are losing.
posted by Headfullofair at 7:52 AM on March 27 [20 favorites]
This is something I've known for quite a while, but I still want to drive an old-fashioned tractor to farm a field in an O'Neill ring and all your reasonable arguments are not going to change that.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 7:56 AM on March 27 [9 favorites]
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 7:56 AM on March 27 [9 favorites]
But the human body and possibly mind, ain't built for that shit...
Further thoughts: Whenver I see pictures of the Mars landscape I always think "oh cool, that looks like a good hike".
But it wouldn't be. I'd be in a space suit and unable to feel wind or the sun. There would be no sounds. There would be no actual physical contact with soil and rocks while outside, it would be through thick gloves. Plus my cells would be busy being cooked by radiation 'cause Mars has no magnetsphere to block it. I would not superpowers because of that, quite the opposite.
Sure, I could return to some structure where I could take off the suit and relax. But I couldn't open a window to feel the breeze or hear the wildlife outside. The International Space Station supposedly stinks inside because it's never been cleaned and the air is recycled, can't imagine a Mars base wouldn't be similar.
If hungry there will no doubt be something frozen that can be heated up (mmm lasgna). And the beverage would be as cold or hot as needed, making it easier to forget that I'm drinking recycled urine.
If homesick, only need to wait 1-2 years for a 10 month journey home in a weightless environment tha is bathed in cosmic radition. Then I get to finally get back on Earth and learn how to walk again in the natural habitat the human body was designed for.
Does that really sound like fun?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:04 AM on March 27 [21 favorites]
Further thoughts: Whenver I see pictures of the Mars landscape I always think "oh cool, that looks like a good hike".
But it wouldn't be. I'd be in a space suit and unable to feel wind or the sun. There would be no sounds. There would be no actual physical contact with soil and rocks while outside, it would be through thick gloves. Plus my cells would be busy being cooked by radiation 'cause Mars has no magnetsphere to block it. I would not superpowers because of that, quite the opposite.
Sure, I could return to some structure where I could take off the suit and relax. But I couldn't open a window to feel the breeze or hear the wildlife outside. The International Space Station supposedly stinks inside because it's never been cleaned and the air is recycled, can't imagine a Mars base wouldn't be similar.
If hungry there will no doubt be something frozen that can be heated up (mmm lasgna). And the beverage would be as cold or hot as needed, making it easier to forget that I'm drinking recycled urine.
If homesick, only need to wait 1-2 years for a 10 month journey home in a weightless environment tha is bathed in cosmic radition. Then I get to finally get back on Earth and learn how to walk again in the natural habitat the human body was designed for.
Does that really sound like fun?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:04 AM on March 27 [21 favorites]
With everything that's going on, I honestly hope we just give crewed space exploration a rest for a few generations. The 60s space race wasn't without it's moral compromises, but those are beginning to pale in comparison to just how much power and influence we were willing to give to Elon Musk simply because we wanted cheap reusable rockets or a mars mission in our lifetimes.
A problem is that our world is so politically and environmentally unstable that the obvious thing, which would be to say, "it is going to take a LONG TIME to go to Mars", is flatly impossible. Like, no, we are not going to Mars in ten years. We are not colonizing Mars in twenty years. Any moderately careful thinker can see that we don't have the basics figured out and we're not obviously on track to have them figured out. If someone said to me, "a consistently funded space program in a politically and environmentally stable society could get people on Mars within fifty years, maybe sooner", I'd believe that.
But between instability and instant-gratification brain that's impossible. With some small exceptions outside the US and the large exception of China, no one can plan ahead effectively enough to replace rotting infrastructure on Earth, and we think we're going to go to Mars? We can't even defer gratification past next quarter's stock market reports.
Given current conditions on Earth, you'd be absolutely bananas to go to space - what happens when a different variety of lunatic takes over government, or there's a massive war, and they decide resupply is too expensive or the space port gets blown up?
posted by Frowner at 8:22 AM on March 27 [25 favorites]
A problem is that our world is so politically and environmentally unstable that the obvious thing, which would be to say, "it is going to take a LONG TIME to go to Mars", is flatly impossible. Like, no, we are not going to Mars in ten years. We are not colonizing Mars in twenty years. Any moderately careful thinker can see that we don't have the basics figured out and we're not obviously on track to have them figured out. If someone said to me, "a consistently funded space program in a politically and environmentally stable society could get people on Mars within fifty years, maybe sooner", I'd believe that.
But between instability and instant-gratification brain that's impossible. With some small exceptions outside the US and the large exception of China, no one can plan ahead effectively enough to replace rotting infrastructure on Earth, and we think we're going to go to Mars? We can't even defer gratification past next quarter's stock market reports.
Given current conditions on Earth, you'd be absolutely bananas to go to space - what happens when a different variety of lunatic takes over government, or there's a massive war, and they decide resupply is too expensive or the space port gets blown up?
posted by Frowner at 8:22 AM on March 27 [25 favorites]
If there was a technological breakthrough that could make a difference in the long run, it's a thin, low-mass material we could make domes out of which has some combination of inherent shielding property combined with the ability to be magnetized sufficiently to make up the difference. I bet it would look something like Oakley sunglasses. You still have to deal with seals being eroded by grit, micro leaks of oxygen and water and etc. But that is probably the workable premise.
I just think we're probably another 50-100 years further out than people think right now. And critically, the billionaire mindset that is currently undermining social stability and utterly destroying grant funding for research is setting us back, not driving us forward the way they think.
ETA: What Frowner said, lol.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 8:23 AM on March 27 [6 favorites]
I just think we're probably another 50-100 years further out than people think right now. And critically, the billionaire mindset that is currently undermining social stability and utterly destroying grant funding for research is setting us back, not driving us forward the way they think.
ETA: What Frowner said, lol.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 8:23 AM on March 27 [6 favorites]
In recent years the concept of Mars colonization (or space settlement in general) has become so closely tied to Musk that it does tend to distort discussions on MetaFilter into becoming personal referendums about him.
Yeah, because he's a) forcibly inserted himself into the discussion and b) has influence that now extends to effectively running NASA.
We keep talking about colonizing Mars as if it's some abstract human achievement that needs to be unlocked, but how we get there is just as important as getting there, and that's not going to happen in a metaphorical vacuum. If it happens, it's going to be an effort which takes place in the real world which Musk exists in, so saying that he's distorting the conversation is kind of a tacit admission that the discussion of colonizing Mars is fantasy already.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:24 AM on March 27 [11 favorites]
Yeah, because he's a) forcibly inserted himself into the discussion and b) has influence that now extends to effectively running NASA.
We keep talking about colonizing Mars as if it's some abstract human achievement that needs to be unlocked, but how we get there is just as important as getting there, and that's not going to happen in a metaphorical vacuum. If it happens, it's going to be an effort which takes place in the real world which Musk exists in, so saying that he's distorting the conversation is kind of a tacit admission that the discussion of colonizing Mars is fantasy already.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:24 AM on March 27 [11 favorites]
The International Space Station supposedly stinks inside because it's never been cleaned and the air is recycled, can't imagine a Mars base wouldn't be similar.
They should throw a Cinnabon in there.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:37 AM on March 27 [7 favorites]
They should throw a Cinnabon in there.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:37 AM on March 27 [7 favorites]
kirkaracha: "They should throw a Cinnabon in there."
Oooooh, pick me, pick me!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:39 AM on March 27 [2 favorites]
Oooooh, pick me, pick me!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:39 AM on March 27 [2 favorites]
SMBC is my morning brain cookie of choice, highly recommend if you like science/humor/blather. I'm putting A City On Mars on my "Please buy me this book not another cats & wine tshirt" list.
posted by winesong at 8:42 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
posted by winesong at 8:42 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
Half-jokingly, I wonder if the resolution to the Fermi paradox is simply that any sufficiently intelligent species decides that colonialism isn't such a good idea.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:42 AM on March 27 [7 favorites]
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:42 AM on March 27 [7 favorites]
Sure, I could return to some structure where I could take off the suit and relax. But I couldn't open a window to feel the breeze or hear the wildlife outside.
From the book:
"It is not hyperbole to make the statement [that] if humans ever reside on the Moon, they will have to live like ants, earthworms or moles. The same is true for all round celestial bodies without a significant atmosphere or magnetic field—Mars included."
—Dr. James Logan, Former NASA Chief of Flight Medicine and Chief of Medical Operations at Johnson Space Center. (p. 192)
posted by sindark at 8:57 AM on March 27 [5 favorites]
From the book:
"It is not hyperbole to make the statement [that] if humans ever reside on the Moon, they will have to live like ants, earthworms or moles. The same is true for all round celestial bodies without a significant atmosphere or magnetic field—Mars included."
—Dr. James Logan, Former NASA Chief of Flight Medicine and Chief of Medical Operations at Johnson Space Center. (p. 192)
posted by sindark at 8:57 AM on March 27 [5 favorites]
Also:
posted by sindark at 9:00 AM on March 27 [18 favorites]
Consider the 2015 Newsweek article: “Star Wars’ Class Wars: Is Mars the Escape Hatch for the 1 Percent?” which claims “the red planet will likely only be for the rich, leaving the poor to suffer as earth’s environment collapses and conflict breaks out.” The only way you could believe this would be if you had no idea how thoroughly, incredibly, impossibly horrible Mars is. The average surface temperature is about -60°C. There’s no breathable air, but there are planetwide dust storms and a layer of toxic dust on the ground. Leaving a 2°C warmer Earth for Mars would be like leaving a messy room so you can live in a toxic waste dump.Good to see such a persistent and culturally influential illusion called out. I pull my hair out whenever journalists describe exoplanets as potential alternative Earths.
The truth is that settling other worlds, in the sense of creating self-sustaining societies somewhere away from Earth, is not only quite unlikely anytime soon, it won’t deliver on the benefits touted by advocates. No vast riches, no new independent nations, no second home for humanity, not even a safety bunker for ultra elites.
...
Mars is nowhere near being a Plan B home for humanity anytime soon. Consider a worst-case climate scenario. The oceans have swollen ten meters higher, drowning New York City and Boston. Low-lying countries like Belgium and the Netherlands have been swallowed up whole. Heat waves make parts of the Southern Hemisphere uninhabitable as the planet is ravaged by floods, droughts, wildfires, and massive tropical cyclones. More than half of the world’s species die, coral reefs become bleached skeletons, freshwater sources from snowpack melt away or are fouled by rising seas, tropical diseases make their way into formerly temperate climates. Crops fail, people starve, and violence breaks out as over a billion climate refugees beat against the closed gates of the comparatively livable North.
That planet? Eden compared to Mars or the Moon. That Earth still has a breathable atmosphere, a magnetosphere to protect against radiation, and quite possibly still has McDonald’s breakfast. It’s not a world we would like to inhabit, but it is the one world in the solar system where you can run around naked for ten minutes and still be alive at the end. (p. 2, 137-8)
posted by sindark at 9:00 AM on March 27 [18 favorites]
Like, no, we are not going to Mars in ten years.
Frowner
This is puzzling. "Going to Mars" and "colonizing Mars" aren't the same things. As even you hint at, it's possible that a country with its shit more together like China could do it, and indeed they've made plans for a first crewed mission in 2033. Overly ambitious and unrealistic? Maybe, but China has made such astonishing strides in the last few decades, and hit so many goals that the West scoffed at as impossible, that I wouldn't discount it.
so saying that he's distorting the conversation is kind of a tacit admission that the discussion of colonizing Mars is fantasy already.
RonButNotStupid
No, it really isn't, and the post quoted above is a good example. Of course we are talking about real ventures in the real world, but there's this level of foaming at the mouth vitriolic ITS COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE IT WOULD TAKE ELEVENTY BILLION YEARS ITS LITERALLY GENOCIDE that enters these discussions and distracts from discussing exactly the actual, real world development. The book that is the subject of this post is actually a good antidote to this tendency, it's a very sober look at the real challenges of such a venture but doesn't declare it impossible or literally Hitler to even think about.
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:19 AM on March 27 [3 favorites]
Frowner
This is puzzling. "Going to Mars" and "colonizing Mars" aren't the same things. As even you hint at, it's possible that a country with its shit more together like China could do it, and indeed they've made plans for a first crewed mission in 2033. Overly ambitious and unrealistic? Maybe, but China has made such astonishing strides in the last few decades, and hit so many goals that the West scoffed at as impossible, that I wouldn't discount it.
so saying that he's distorting the conversation is kind of a tacit admission that the discussion of colonizing Mars is fantasy already.
RonButNotStupid
No, it really isn't, and the post quoted above is a good example. Of course we are talking about real ventures in the real world, but there's this level of foaming at the mouth vitriolic ITS COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE IT WOULD TAKE ELEVENTY BILLION YEARS ITS LITERALLY GENOCIDE that enters these discussions and distracts from discussing exactly the actual, real world development. The book that is the subject of this post is actually a good antidote to this tendency, it's a very sober look at the real challenges of such a venture but doesn't declare it impossible or literally Hitler to even think about.
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:19 AM on March 27 [3 favorites]
Also the very idea that comes up a lot in the vitriolic screeching, that there's an inherent tension between manned space exploration and addressing environmental or other Earth concerns, is pretty bizarre because there really isn't. I feel this is an extremely parochial American view of things.
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:22 AM on March 27 [3 favorites]
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:22 AM on March 27 [3 favorites]
"It is not hyperbole to make the statement [that] if humans ever reside on the Moon, they will have to live like ants, earthworms or moles. The same is true for all round celestial bodies without a significant atmosphere or magnetic field—Mars included."
Mars might actually be a bit safer, 'cause it does have an atmosphere which may make its dust easier on humans via erosion, as opposed to the Moon (see below). I haven't looked into the details.
The Moon has no atmosphere, which means its dust is sharp and abrasive and could present all sorts of long term problems to human bodies. Our biological systems have only ever known smoother dust particles 'cause Earth has erosion from wind and weather.
My own romance with space travel came to a screeching halt after reading astronaut Robert Crippen's advice for taking a poop in space: "Make sure you take off all your clothes, 'case it's easier to clean feces off your skin as opposed to your clothing" (paraphrasing from memory).
I'm good, thanks Rob.
it's a very sober look at the real challenges of such a venture but doesn't declare it impossible or literally Hitler to even think about.
The real question is "What's the point?"
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:23 AM on March 27 [3 favorites]
Mars might actually be a bit safer, 'cause it does have an atmosphere which may make its dust easier on humans via erosion, as opposed to the Moon (see below). I haven't looked into the details.
The Moon has no atmosphere, which means its dust is sharp and abrasive and could present all sorts of long term problems to human bodies. Our biological systems have only ever known smoother dust particles 'cause Earth has erosion from wind and weather.
My own romance with space travel came to a screeching halt after reading astronaut Robert Crippen's advice for taking a poop in space: "Make sure you take off all your clothes, 'case it's easier to clean feces off your skin as opposed to your clothing" (paraphrasing from memory).
I'm good, thanks Rob.
it's a very sober look at the real challenges of such a venture but doesn't declare it impossible or literally Hitler to even think about.
The real question is "What's the point?"
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:23 AM on March 27 [3 favorites]
IT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN
lalochezia
I would strongly suggest you read the book because it directly addresses and discusses literally every point you bring up in your post (manufacturing, health and healthcare, etc) with actual real-world science and numbers. Their conclusion is not yours, however.
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:25 AM on March 27
lalochezia
I would strongly suggest you read the book because it directly addresses and discusses literally every point you bring up in your post (manufacturing, health and healthcare, etc) with actual real-world science and numbers. Their conclusion is not yours, however.
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:25 AM on March 27
This is SpaceX, and these are our dreams. The future is then, we are now, and you are wonderfully mortal.
My Name is Elon Musk and I Want to Help You Die In Space (a McSweeney's classic)
posted by MengerSponge at 9:27 AM on March 27 [4 favorites]
My Name is Elon Musk and I Want to Help You Die In Space (a McSweeney's classic)
posted by MengerSponge at 9:27 AM on March 27 [4 favorites]
MetaFilter: impossible or literally Hitler to even think about.
posted by Captaintripps at 9:29 AM on March 27 [3 favorites]
posted by Captaintripps at 9:29 AM on March 27 [3 favorites]
The real question is "What's the point?"
Different strokes for different folks. I imagine for China a big part of the motivation is a huge symbolic win that would be their crowning "we're truly on top" moment in the way the US always pointed to the Moon landing. For me, personally, the question makes no sense. It is the point. It's the telos of all other space activity. I'm not naive about the challenges, and feel as some other posters here do in terms of realistic timelines, but the level of hostility to the very idea (or even mere discussion of the idea!) seen in these threads is just silly to me.
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:30 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
Different strokes for different folks. I imagine for China a big part of the motivation is a huge symbolic win that would be their crowning "we're truly on top" moment in the way the US always pointed to the Moon landing. For me, personally, the question makes no sense. It is the point. It's the telos of all other space activity. I'm not naive about the challenges, and feel as some other posters here do in terms of realistic timelines, but the level of hostility to the very idea (or even mere discussion of the idea!) seen in these threads is just silly to me.
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:30 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
I became aware of Zach Weinersmith through Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. For years, I thought of it as kind of a low-rent XKCD, amusing enough to check out once in a while.
That was a totally wrongheaded way to think about it. I find SMBC wildly more variable than XKCD, but its highest heights are really high. And his whole <waves hands> dealio is way, way more subversive than Munro's.
The thing about SMBC's higher highest heights is that, when Weinersmith decides to create something focused and polished, it's amazing. Bea Wolf is my favorite coffee table book.
posted by gurple at 9:40 AM on March 27 [3 favorites]
That was a totally wrongheaded way to think about it. I find SMBC wildly more variable than XKCD, but its highest heights are really high. And his whole <waves hands> dealio is way, way more subversive than Munro's.
The thing about SMBC's higher highest heights is that, when Weinersmith decides to create something focused and polished, it's amazing. Bea Wolf is my favorite coffee table book.
posted by gurple at 9:40 AM on March 27 [3 favorites]
Sorry if I scrolled past this in the comments but the only thing I need to convince me we will never colonize the moon or mars is the dearth of self-sustaining colonies in Antarctica or on the ocean floor.
posted by simra at 9:42 AM on March 27 [4 favorites]
posted by simra at 9:42 AM on March 27 [4 favorites]
Astrum recently posted a video that back up most of what Kelly and Zach Wienersmith wrote in their book. The corrosive nature of the dust, the lack of a magnetosphere, and they especially highlight the dust storms that happen locally annually and can involve the entire planet on what seems to be a 3-7 year cycle. So far our most long-lasting rovers have all been done in by accumulated dust that blocks their solar panels to the point they cannot sustain a charge.
Mars has a Fatal Flaw and No One has a Solution
posted by drossdragon at 9:50 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
Mars has a Fatal Flaw and No One has a Solution
posted by drossdragon at 9:50 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
If we're serious about colonizing Mars, or surviving climate change, then we should expand biology research, especially into plants like sandwort, and whatever fungi, bacteria, etc, that survive in relatively extreme enviroments. Musk is doing exactly the opposite, btw.
As an "easy" goalpost/filter, we should seriously discuss Mars travel only after we've plants growing on top of Mt Everest, preferably some cactus. I'll note that nature only managed 6,180 m, after like 700 million years of trying. It's possible our genetic engineering could discover new extremophile tricks after only a few decades, or centries, but this research requires resoruces and time.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:55 AM on March 27 [10 favorites]
As an "easy" goalpost/filter, we should seriously discuss Mars travel only after we've plants growing on top of Mt Everest, preferably some cactus. I'll note that nature only managed 6,180 m, after like 700 million years of trying. It's possible our genetic engineering could discover new extremophile tricks after only a few decades, or centries, but this research requires resoruces and time.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:55 AM on March 27 [10 favorites]
One book/movie that highlighted nearly all of the ways Mars will try to kill you is The Martian. The book version tried to kill the main character every chapter in new and interesting ways.
And yet never even touched the radiation / magnetic field issue, which might not matter much on a two meek mission but would if one was stuck there for a year or more.
posted by Gelatin at 10:12 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
And yet never even touched the radiation / magnetic field issue, which might not matter much on a two meek mission but would if one was stuck there for a year or more.
posted by Gelatin at 10:12 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
My own proposed First Step is a fully functional amusement park on the bottom of the Mariana Trench...
posted by jim in austin at 10:12 AM on March 27 [2 favorites]
posted by jim in austin at 10:12 AM on March 27 [2 favorites]
So far our most long-lasting rovers have all been done in by accumulated dust that blocks their solar panels to the point they cannot sustain a charge.
What if we put wipers on the solar panels?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:16 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
What if we put wipers on the solar panels?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:16 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
Even sending humans on a short mission to Mars is not actually feasible with current or in-development technology, as Maciej Cegłowski (yeah, I know) discusses at length in Why Not Mars and The Shape of a Mars Mission.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:25 AM on March 27 [4 favorites]
posted by mbrubeck at 10:25 AM on March 27 [4 favorites]
the very idea that comes up a lot in the vitriolic screeching, that there's an inherent tension between manned space exploration and addressing environmental or other Earth concerns, is pretty bizarre because there really isn't
?? We have limited resources. Everything more demanding than regenerative agriculture is in tension with everything else*.
Less materially, but significant: many people, when faced with making choices about how to use our limited resources, deflect to an imagined space future in which resources aren't limited. Even if such a future might be possible (grimacing in physics here), the paths to get there are limited.
*regenerative agricultures are in tension with each other because you have to pick an ecosystem to aim for, often including how many people are eating what, and that's tense.
posted by clew at 10:25 AM on March 27 [5 favorites]
?? We have limited resources. Everything more demanding than regenerative agriculture is in tension with everything else*.
Less materially, but significant: many people, when faced with making choices about how to use our limited resources, deflect to an imagined space future in which resources aren't limited. Even if such a future might be possible (grimacing in physics here), the paths to get there are limited.
*regenerative agricultures are in tension with each other because you have to pick an ecosystem to aim for, often including how many people are eating what, and that's tense.
posted by clew at 10:25 AM on March 27 [5 favorites]
In retrospect, it probably would have been best if NASA had been able to continue it's plan to land people on Mars in the 80s. It would have been cheaper, it probably would have been John Young, who was awesome in general, if not exactly great with people.
Then we could look back in pride and nostagia and focus on sending more robots out, while working on space stations.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:32 AM on March 27
Then we could look back in pride and nostagia and focus on sending more robots out, while working on space stations.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:32 AM on March 27
The only way what we're doing to this planet makes sense from a scientific/technological perspective is to view Earth as a disposable springboard from which humanity will leap to virgin new worlds "to penetrate and foul", as Pynchon once put it.
Heaven and the Millennium do exactly the same thing for Christians
posted by jamjam at 10:33 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
Heaven and the Millennium do exactly the same thing for Christians
posted by jamjam at 10:33 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
If there was a technological breakthrough that could make a difference in the long run, it's a thin, low-mass material we could make domes out of which has some combination of inherent shielding property combined with the ability to be magnetized sufficiently to make up the difference.
Smedly, Butlerian jihadi, your idea makes me think that a version of this kind of material might be used for a mega-project in geostationary orbit between the Earth and the Sun. Our Space Shade reverses global warming. Yay! Of course, I also imagine over time it becomes more opaque and the Earth plunges into darkness and that's when the vampires take over. It's kind of of like Highlander 2, but the immortals are vampires.
posted by john at 10:40 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
Smedly, Butlerian jihadi, your idea makes me think that a version of this kind of material might be used for a mega-project in geostationary orbit between the Earth and the Sun. Our Space Shade reverses global warming. Yay! Of course, I also imagine over time it becomes more opaque and the Earth plunges into darkness and that's when the vampires take over. It's kind of of like Highlander 2, but the immortals are vampires.
posted by john at 10:40 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
We inherently act like earth is disposable aka unsustainably, mostly because we're evolved beings in a pretty big pond, a fact which our intelligence, morality, beliefs, etc could probably never change (see the maximum power principle).
We claim the springboard sci-fantasy to justify this inherent behavior, and probably this fantasy accelerates the unsustainablilty, but ultimately the unsustainable behavior precedes, and does not depend upon, the fantasy.
We could otoh have sustainably forced upon us by external constraints, like predator-prey relationship impose sustainablity in nature (see again the maximum power principle), or worse by shrinking the pond ala climate change.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:49 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
We claim the springboard sci-fantasy to justify this inherent behavior, and probably this fantasy accelerates the unsustainablilty, but ultimately the unsustainable behavior precedes, and does not depend upon, the fantasy.
We could otoh have sustainably forced upon us by external constraints, like predator-prey relationship impose sustainablity in nature (see again the maximum power principle), or worse by shrinking the pond ala climate change.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:49 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
For many years now I've amused myself by telling space nerds that space is hell and we have no business going down there.
I love sci-fi as much as anyone, but the clue is in the name: fiction.
posted by june_dodecahedron at 10:51 AM on March 27 [4 favorites]
I love sci-fi as much as anyone, but the clue is in the name: fiction.
posted by june_dodecahedron at 10:51 AM on March 27 [4 favorites]
I read the book a couple of years ago and prior to reading it. I had always considered travel to Mars to be a really challenging engineering problem. What I hadn't appreciated was that it is so much more than anything we did for something like the Apollo missions it's not just orders of magnitude more complicated. It's that we simply have no answers for how to sustain life without external support for such a long period of time.
I realized at the same time that boosters of colonization were ignorant fools who had never actually considered what's involved.
posted by Ickster at 10:54 AM on March 27 [4 favorites]
I realized at the same time that boosters of colonization were ignorant fools who had never actually considered what's involved.
posted by Ickster at 10:54 AM on March 27 [4 favorites]
I use to think the idea of a space elevator was absolutely insane and impossible. But it's probably better to pursue that idea that trying to figure how to lob tons of stuff from the bottom of a graivty well. THAT would be one of helluva pay off for space exploration if we could get it going.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:55 AM on March 27 [5 favorites]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:55 AM on March 27 [5 favorites]
?? We have limited resources.
Yes, but the world is not as simplistic as "one unit of Space Resources = one less unit of Earth Resources". The actual problems on Earth are caused by bad distribution of those limited resources, which are more than enough for both space exploration AND material improvement of life on Earth.
When Gil Scott-Heron wrote "Whitey on the Moon", it was not spending on NASA preventing the US government from providing services to help the poor in the US. It was a whole bunch of separate choices that caused that. The US could easily have both helped its populace and funded NASA. Similarly, not to keep harping on China, but it has lifted over 800 million people out of extreme poverty since 1970, the largest such effort in human history. It has materially improved the lives of its own people since that time in almost unbelievable ways. It can also fund space exploration. They are not mutually exclusive.
That's why the idea is just silly. In fact, the day that the US is working so hard on helping its people and fighting climate change that it really has to make the hard choice between a dollar spent on space exploration being a dollar less for food would be a glorious day to celebrate.
posted by star gentle uterus at 11:11 AM on March 27 [6 favorites]
Yes, but the world is not as simplistic as "one unit of Space Resources = one less unit of Earth Resources". The actual problems on Earth are caused by bad distribution of those limited resources, which are more than enough for both space exploration AND material improvement of life on Earth.
When Gil Scott-Heron wrote "Whitey on the Moon", it was not spending on NASA preventing the US government from providing services to help the poor in the US. It was a whole bunch of separate choices that caused that. The US could easily have both helped its populace and funded NASA. Similarly, not to keep harping on China, but it has lifted over 800 million people out of extreme poverty since 1970, the largest such effort in human history. It has materially improved the lives of its own people since that time in almost unbelievable ways. It can also fund space exploration. They are not mutually exclusive.
That's why the idea is just silly. In fact, the day that the US is working so hard on helping its people and fighting climate change that it really has to make the hard choice between a dollar spent on space exploration being a dollar less for food would be a glorious day to celebrate.
posted by star gentle uterus at 11:11 AM on March 27 [6 favorites]
When Gil Scott-Heron wrote "Whitey on the Moon", it was not spending on NASA preventing the US government from providing services to help the poor in the US. It was a whole bunch of separate choices that caused that.
Back then that argument might have been convincing because governments were large complicated things with multiple chains of authority and decision-making, but fast forward to today when the effective head of NASA is now actually the one preventing the US government from providing services to help the poor in the US. And since he's not canceling the funding for projects that he personally benefits from you can say that he really is making the hard choice between space exploration and food and he's choosing space exploration.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:38 AM on March 27 [5 favorites]
Back then that argument might have been convincing because governments were large complicated things with multiple chains of authority and decision-making, but fast forward to today when the effective head of NASA is now actually the one preventing the US government from providing services to help the poor in the US. And since he's not canceling the funding for projects that he personally benefits from you can say that he really is making the hard choice between space exploration and food and he's choosing space exploration.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:38 AM on March 27 [5 favorites]
You seem to making some tortured point about Trump. Yes, he's a huge problem, but it's quite bizarre to frame that as what's in discussion here.
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:20 PM on March 27
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:20 PM on March 27
Comments here are focusing on the technological problems of putting people on Mars. When I read the book, I found the discussions of technology to be fun but also very very familiar. What I found more eye-opening about the book were the in-depth discussions of law and politics that people don't seem so interested in solving or even thinking about.
that there's an inherent tension between manned space exploration and addressing environmental or other Earth concerns, is pretty bizarre because there really isn't
Of course these discussions lose the plot very easily, but I see them starting from the frequent claim that space is our escape hatch from a polluted, overcrowded, and wasted Earth. I'm sure that humanity can support both space exploration and keeping Earth habitable, but clearly space is not some alternative to keeping Earth habitable.
Probably space is attractive to that kind of thinking b/c there's nobody there to get in the way of our perfect plans. However:
- this just recapitulates the myth that America was a blank canvas upon which the White Man could build a utopia
- if space is going to be colonized, then there will be somebody there to have a conflict with
- it's easy to forget that sending people to space would fuel conflicts back on Earth
posted by polecat at 12:36 PM on March 27 [5 favorites]
that there's an inherent tension between manned space exploration and addressing environmental or other Earth concerns, is pretty bizarre because there really isn't
Of course these discussions lose the plot very easily, but I see them starting from the frequent claim that space is our escape hatch from a polluted, overcrowded, and wasted Earth. I'm sure that humanity can support both space exploration and keeping Earth habitable, but clearly space is not some alternative to keeping Earth habitable.
Probably space is attractive to that kind of thinking b/c there's nobody there to get in the way of our perfect plans. However:
- this just recapitulates the myth that America was a blank canvas upon which the White Man could build a utopia
- if space is going to be colonized, then there will be somebody there to have a conflict with
- it's easy to forget that sending people to space would fuel conflicts back on Earth
posted by polecat at 12:36 PM on March 27 [5 favorites]
those limited resources, which are more than enough for both space exploration AND material improvement of life on Earth
It isn't remotely *knowable* that our resources are enough for material improvement of [?human?] life on Earth, because we don't know what our available resources are. "All we need to change is distribution" arguments depend on dividing up what we currently use, evenly among people -- but we currently use way too much. We would have to use much less than we're currently using merely to be steady-state, and it's increasingly likely that we need to allocate resources to re-stabilizing cycles we used to be able to extract from.
posted by clew at 12:41 PM on March 27 [2 favorites]
It isn't remotely *knowable* that our resources are enough for material improvement of [?human?] life on Earth, because we don't know what our available resources are. "All we need to change is distribution" arguments depend on dividing up what we currently use, evenly among people -- but we currently use way too much. We would have to use much less than we're currently using merely to be steady-state, and it's increasingly likely that we need to allocate resources to re-stabilizing cycles we used to be able to extract from.
posted by clew at 12:41 PM on March 27 [2 favorites]
Man, y'all are putting Oakley sunglasses and probably a mullet on the Earth, and I can't even reliably land a dang capsule on the Mun.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 12:57 PM on March 27 [2 favorites]
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 12:57 PM on March 27 [2 favorites]
IPCC authors think 1.5°C demands rapid deep emissions cuts from All economic sectors across ALL global regions.
As I understand collapse historians like Scheidel, Tainter, and Turchin, the required massive economic contraction should make society more vastly equitable anyways, so the real question should be how to collapse faster and how to retain much of our knowledge, science, and technology.
About her mealworm suggestion, check out the pig toilet, which have a rich tradition. Imho, some commedian should make a Dune "outtake" sketch where the Paul and Lady Jessica discuss using the Fremen pig toilets.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:00 PM on March 27
As I understand collapse historians like Scheidel, Tainter, and Turchin, the required massive economic contraction should make society more vastly equitable anyways, so the real question should be how to collapse faster and how to retain much of our knowledge, science, and technology.
About her mealworm suggestion, check out the pig toilet, which have a rich tradition. Imho, some commedian should make a Dune "outtake" sketch where the Paul and Lady Jessica discuss using the Fremen pig toilets.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:00 PM on March 27
Man, y'all are putting Oakley sunglasses and probably a mullet on the Earth, and I can't even reliably land a dang capsule on the Mun.
MechJeb is your friend.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:16 PM on March 27
MechJeb is your friend.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:16 PM on March 27
we currently use way too much
Well, that problem may be solving itself.
Besides, who's "we"? Americans and Europeans, for sure. E.g. carbon emissions per capita in the US are 14.2 metric tons. The EU, 7.2. For Brazil it's 2.2.
Brazil happens to have about the same average income as the planet does. And it's quite liveable! Redstributing all the world's wealth would have just produced equal misery in 1848, but it would be quite comfortable today.
As for Mars, nobody's going to get a libertarian free state on Mars. Or the moon, or a space station. Space requires close cooperation; the best model is the South Pole base, which is not at all totalitarian, but where you don't mess around with the life support. And they're not going to get a technodystopian slave colony either: oppression is way harder when one dissident can easily destroy the whole colony.
posted by zompist at 1:31 PM on March 27 [4 favorites]
Well, that problem may be solving itself.
Besides, who's "we"? Americans and Europeans, for sure. E.g. carbon emissions per capita in the US are 14.2 metric tons. The EU, 7.2. For Brazil it's 2.2.
Brazil happens to have about the same average income as the planet does. And it's quite liveable! Redstributing all the world's wealth would have just produced equal misery in 1848, but it would be quite comfortable today.
As for Mars, nobody's going to get a libertarian free state on Mars. Or the moon, or a space station. Space requires close cooperation; the best model is the South Pole base, which is not at all totalitarian, but where you don't mess around with the life support. And they're not going to get a technodystopian slave colony either: oppression is way harder when one dissident can easily destroy the whole colony.
posted by zompist at 1:31 PM on March 27 [4 favorites]
We'll need to get rid of the billionaires ASAP if we are to ever go anywhere.
I have always supported the concept of a maximum permissible income of $100,000 per year per person, salary and capital gains included. Anything above is confiscated and redistributed to people making the least of a tenth of that.
Also: Deport Elon Musk!
posted by y2karl at 3:06 PM on March 27 [2 favorites]
I have always supported the concept of a maximum permissible income of $100,000 per year per person, salary and capital gains included. Anything above is confiscated and redistributed to people making the least of a tenth of that.
Also: Deport Elon Musk!
posted by y2karl at 3:06 PM on March 27 [2 favorites]
I listened to the "Not Like Us: How Billionaires Think" episode of the Question Everything podcast this morning, which is from about a month ago but very timely with this post, as it's all about billionaire obsession with transhumanism and space colonization, etc. One point that came across very clearly is that a century or so ago (really thinking about the U.S. gilded age, but not just then), the richest people in the country would endow or construct huge libraries, colleges, and other public works projects as a way or ensuring their legacies. But when today's billionaires believe that they can live forever, there's no need for anything like that. (Not that relying on a hyper-wealthy elite to build public institutions is a good idea anyway - I'd just rather they be doing that then trying to construct their own personal world to rule eternally in.)
On another point, one of the guests talks about meeting with some billionaires who are prepping for the apocalypse with their lavish luxury bunkers, and bragging about how they'll have Navy SEALs protecting the bunker from the masses, and the guest asked them how they'll keep the SEALs loyal. "Well, I'll be the only one who has the combination to the food vault." The guest counters that Navy SEALs can probably extract that information pretty easily, and suggests that treating his employees well in the current day can be the best way to build loyalty down the line, to which the billionaire asks "but where does that end?"
So this is fantasy. Not because it's scientifically impossible (it's not - just very difficult and still a ways off), or because the juice isn't worth the squeeze (probably accurate, at least from any but the longest-term financial investment perspectives), but because the end goal for the folks pushing for it is, in fact, a fantasy. A fantasy where they rule over an effectively-enslaved underclass dependent on them for even basic life support. And as noted above - space colonization simply can't work that way. It requires way too much actual cooperation.
From the standpoint of scientific discovery, and even just milestones of what humanity is capable of, I'm a huge fan of space exploration, but it's not going to work this way. International cooperation can get us there - corporate groupthink chasing Elon's dream checklist can't.
posted by Navelgazer at 3:23 PM on March 27 [6 favorites]
On another point, one of the guests talks about meeting with some billionaires who are prepping for the apocalypse with their lavish luxury bunkers, and bragging about how they'll have Navy SEALs protecting the bunker from the masses, and the guest asked them how they'll keep the SEALs loyal. "Well, I'll be the only one who has the combination to the food vault." The guest counters that Navy SEALs can probably extract that information pretty easily, and suggests that treating his employees well in the current day can be the best way to build loyalty down the line, to which the billionaire asks "but where does that end?"
So this is fantasy. Not because it's scientifically impossible (it's not - just very difficult and still a ways off), or because the juice isn't worth the squeeze (probably accurate, at least from any but the longest-term financial investment perspectives), but because the end goal for the folks pushing for it is, in fact, a fantasy. A fantasy where they rule over an effectively-enslaved underclass dependent on them for even basic life support. And as noted above - space colonization simply can't work that way. It requires way too much actual cooperation.
From the standpoint of scientific discovery, and even just milestones of what humanity is capable of, I'm a huge fan of space exploration, but it's not going to work this way. International cooperation can get us there - corporate groupthink chasing Elon's dream checklist can't.
posted by Navelgazer at 3:23 PM on March 27 [6 favorites]
Whenver I see pictures of the Mars landscape I always think "oh cool, that looks like a good hike".
Stan Robinson, is that you?
posted by doctornemo at 5:15 PM on March 27 [2 favorites]
Stan Robinson, is that you?
posted by doctornemo at 5:15 PM on March 27 [2 favorites]
I'd imagined that after spending a couple of centuries learning how to build workable habitats on the Moon and in space around the Earth/Moon system - you might then be able to send one of those space habitats out to orbit Mars. From that platform they might be able to build a habitat on the surface - but I don't know why they would be eager to.
By coincidence, I'd ordered the book a couple of days ago.
posted by rochrobbb at 5:45 PM on March 27
By coincidence, I'd ordered the book a couple of days ago.
posted by rochrobbb at 5:45 PM on March 27
So this is fantasy. Not because it's scientifically impossible (it's not - just very difficult and still a ways off), or because the juice isn't worth the squeeze (probably accurate, at least from any but the longest-term financial investment perspectives), but because the end goal for the folks pushing for it is, in fact, a fantasy. A fantasy where they rule over an effectively-enslaved underclass dependent on them for even basic life support. And as noted above - space colonization simply can't work that way. It requires way too much actual cooperation.
The reason I posted this was this post about "Freedom Cities". I think there will always be some humans, perhaps even many humans, who dream of a perfect society, and somehow the more detailed these visions are, the more they become kind of nightmarish. From Plato's ideal state to Peter Thiel's floating cities and everything in between and beyond.
Obviously, there is an overlap between space exploration and space colonization, but it isn't 1:1. Lots of people are fascinated by space without having the slightest desire to live on the moon or Mars. But it puzzles me how Thiel with his floating cities and Musk with his Mars colonies both can ignore basic science and still be able to convince thousands that their schemes are viable.
posted by mumimor at 7:40 PM on March 27 [2 favorites]
The reason I posted this was this post about "Freedom Cities". I think there will always be some humans, perhaps even many humans, who dream of a perfect society, and somehow the more detailed these visions are, the more they become kind of nightmarish. From Plato's ideal state to Peter Thiel's floating cities and everything in between and beyond.
Obviously, there is an overlap between space exploration and space colonization, but it isn't 1:1. Lots of people are fascinated by space without having the slightest desire to live on the moon or Mars. But it puzzles me how Thiel with his floating cities and Musk with his Mars colonies both can ignore basic science and still be able to convince thousands that their schemes are viable.
posted by mumimor at 7:40 PM on March 27 [2 favorites]
You miss all the pitches you don’t swing at.
While this is true, it's also not an argument for picking up your baseball bat and walking out into the middle of the freeway.
posted by flabdablet at 7:42 PM on March 27 [4 favorites]
While this is true, it's also not an argument for picking up your baseball bat and walking out into the middle of the freeway.
posted by flabdablet at 7:42 PM on March 27 [4 favorites]
It wasn't that long ago when expressing skepticism about human space flight riled up a majority of the responses on Metafilter ready to counter argue. All it took was some rich guy to get people to reevaluate the whole idea.
People used to seriously argue that we must prepare for a time when Earth is no longer habitable, for whatever reason that may be. But if you're arguing for the survival of humanity, you just aren't being serious. We might be able to make the genetic information of humanity survive our planet, even our solar system. But for actual people to do more than survive, we would have to be able to terraform any host planet into something pretty much exactly like Earth. Humans developed in that bubble, and simply will not thrive outside of it over the long term.
Which is to say, it would probably be easier to transform humanity for another world than another world for humanity.
Moon bases, Mars bases, etc will come. I've no doubt. But there really is no hurry. And it makes no sense to pretend that there's a compelling reason to speed up the progress.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:10 PM on March 27 [4 favorites]
People used to seriously argue that we must prepare for a time when Earth is no longer habitable, for whatever reason that may be. But if you're arguing for the survival of humanity, you just aren't being serious. We might be able to make the genetic information of humanity survive our planet, even our solar system. But for actual people to do more than survive, we would have to be able to terraform any host planet into something pretty much exactly like Earth. Humans developed in that bubble, and simply will not thrive outside of it over the long term.
Which is to say, it would probably be easier to transform humanity for another world than another world for humanity.
Moon bases, Mars bases, etc will come. I've no doubt. But there really is no hurry. And it makes no sense to pretend that there's a compelling reason to speed up the progress.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:10 PM on March 27 [4 favorites]
Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars, by Albert Burneko.
Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars's dead core? No? Well. It's fine. I'm sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and cosmic radiation, forever. No? Huh. Well then let's discuss something else equally realistic, like your plan to build a condo complex in Middle Earth.posted by jokeefe at 12:08 AM on March 28 [9 favorites]
OK, so you still want to talk about Mars. Fine. Let's imagine that Mars's lack of a magnetic field somehow is not an issue. Would you like to try to simulate what life on Mars would be like? Step one is to clear out your freezer. Step two is to lock yourself inside of it. (You can bring your phone, if you like!) When you get desperately hungry, your loved ones on the outside may deliver some food to you no sooner than nine months after you ask for it. This nine-month wait will also apply when you start banging on the inside of the freezer, begging to be let out.
Congratulations: You have now simulated—you have now died, horribly, within a day or two, while simulating—what life on Mars might be like, once you solve the problem of it not having even one gasp worth of breathable air, anywhere on the entire planet. We will never live on Mars.
Also: Whenever I see pictures of the Mars landscape I always think "oh cool, that looks like a good hike
Whenever I see pictures of Mars, and I look at that dead, frozen, irradiated landscape, I think that you couldn't pay me enough to even think about going there, let alone live in a bunker underground sharing my regulation 100 square feet of space with another person and hoping to God that there might be a way back home.
We will never travel through space to other planets. It's a fantasy and that's all it will ever be.
posted by jokeefe at 12:15 AM on March 28 [3 favorites]
Whenever I see pictures of Mars, and I look at that dead, frozen, irradiated landscape, I think that you couldn't pay me enough to even think about going there, let alone live in a bunker underground sharing my regulation 100 square feet of space with another person and hoping to God that there might be a way back home.
We will never travel through space to other planets. It's a fantasy and that's all it will ever be.
posted by jokeefe at 12:15 AM on March 28 [3 favorites]
My view on this has not changed.
I don't think even the moon is viable. The regolith problem alone is likely to put paid to that.
posted by Pouteria at 1:17 AM on March 28 [1 favorite]
I don't think even the moon is viable. The regolith problem alone is likely to put paid to that.
posted by Pouteria at 1:17 AM on March 28 [1 favorite]
The Mars Society has a Youtube channel with hundreds of videos. Videos of the talks from the past 10 years of the annual conference are online. This includes presentations of many formal journal papers from professors and grad students that address many of the criticisms in this post.
posted by Sophont at 1:23 AM on March 28 [2 favorites]
posted by Sophont at 1:23 AM on March 28 [2 favorites]
Whenver I see pictures of the Mars landscape I always think "oh cool, that looks like a good hike".I would like to be the first to quote Brandon Blatcher's post who includes the crucial second sentence.
But it wouldn't be.
posted by It is regrettable that at 3:25 AM on March 28 [1 favorite]
When we talk about "getting out into space", it seems like there are three major categories, two of which have honestly made good arguments for their viability.
posted by jackbishop at 7:31 AM on March 28 [3 favorites]
- Unmanned probes: These are awesome and sending a lot of them out is good. In raw resource terms they're not that expensive, they risk absolutely no human life (barring hopefully minimal construction/launch/deploy incidents), and we learn a lot every time we send a probe somewhere we haven't sent one before or where we still had substantive questions to answer.
- Short-term crewed missions: Really we've only done earth-orbit and the moon, and these are of course useful with diminishing returns. Humans are (even today) more responsive, more effective, and more able to operate autonomously than robots (especially if we provide the on-site humans with robotic tools for those tasks unassisted humans don't do well), and there's a good argument to be made that sending people to any stellar location will get us more information and faster than machines alone could do. But it's risky, and outside of the immediate vicinity of Earth we have no way to do it that's not completely suicidal yet. There's reason to believe (or at least hope) that someday we will have better capabilities in this regard, and when we do, exercising them will be an attractive thing to do. But note that diminishing-returns thing above: the Apollo missions stopped in no small part because we've, at this point, basically sated our scientific curiosity about the Moon. There'll probably not be a reason to go to Mars indefinitely either.
- Medium-to-long-term habitation: I include "indefinitely" in the scope of "long-term" here, and that in particular is something which is going to be in the realm of pure fantasy until we have technological advances so extraordinary we probably couldn't guess at what they would be today. We've done medium-term projects in Earth orbit, and they've been worthwhile, because having a laboratory space for microgravity experiments and extra-atmospheric observation is useful. But for every location, and every duration we expect the structure to function for, we'd need to do a pretty thorough cost-benefit analysis, and nowhere except earth orbit do the benefits seem to measure up at all. 'Cause, at the end of the day, there only seem to be three reasons beyond pure romanticism to settle a new place:
- We need someplace safer or friendlier to live than where we are now: Great reason for terrestrial migration, lousy for extraterrestrial. Nowhere in the solar system is remotely as habitable as Earth is, and that will continue to be true in every environmental-degradation scenario which does not involve completely sterilizing and irradiating the whole planet with nuclear weapons (and maybe even that scenario). Nowhere outside the solar system is reachable to us, or knowable to us to the extent of confidently proclaiming habitability. There is no safer or friendlier planet than Earth available, nor will there be barring some extraordinary development in interstellar transportation.
- We need more room for population growth: See point one, basically. The gospel that population growth is an economic necessity is something we're going to have to come to terms with at some point by ceasing to grow our population, and bleeding off extra population into what will of necessity be expensive, low-density settlements would be at best a stopgap measure and at worst actively counterproductive.
- Certain resources or processes off-earth are worth having access to: This is really the only legitimate argument I see. For instance, microgravity research was really only possible in space stations. If microgravity fabrication was something useful or necessary, that would be an argument for space factories. If Mars or the Moon had large stocks of something useful which was rare on or absent from Earth, that could be a good reason to set up a long-term resource-extraction operation there. But something like this needs to be explicit. Setting up a Marsbase on the hope that surely Mars has useful resources to us is basically wishful thinking: there's no reason to believe that there's anything to justify such an endeavor. Compare with Earth orbit, where we knew that microgravity was and environment with scientifically interesting properties, and can at least suspect that it has useful industrial implications.
posted by jackbishop at 7:31 AM on March 28 [3 favorites]
Elon Musk's estranged daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson on her father's plans to colonize Mars
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:19 PM on March 28
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:19 PM on March 28
I don't think we'll get human exploration of Mars in my lifetime, which makes me a little sad, but that's okay. I'm not holding out hope, but what I really want right now is orbital sound stages where high-budget movies can film in actual microgravity, or spin to simulate whatever gravity level is desired.
This seems plausibly within reach of our current technology, just prohibitively expensive for anyone who isn't a state. I would very much like to see a scifi film filmed in actual microgravity, and I would consider this a fair trade for giving up on crewed space exploration for the forseeable future, given that the later isn't really going anywhere right now anyway.
Please and thank you.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 4:50 AM on March 30
This seems plausibly within reach of our current technology, just prohibitively expensive for anyone who isn't a state. I would very much like to see a scifi film filmed in actual microgravity, and I would consider this a fair trade for giving up on crewed space exploration for the forseeable future, given that the later isn't really going anywhere right now anyway.
Please and thank you.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 4:50 AM on March 30
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posted by genpfault at 6:07 AM on March 27 [3 favorites]