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Overnight to Mars

GlennB said:
Of the highlighted - are you picturing a self-sufficient colony? If so, it will need to be able to manufacture each and every essential item. Batteries, microprocessors, metals, plastics, fabrics ... and all from local materials.
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If it isn't self-sufficient, then what is the point? It can't be a backup plan if it isn't. It might be something else, but it won't be a safeguard in case the home planet becomes unlivable. I take your point though. It's obviously no simple matter. And right now it's still a distant dream despite what Elon Musk says. It isn't happening this century, although we might send people to Mars on a temporary basis this century.
 
Olmstead said:
Sounds like a rich people lifeboat, and I'm not feeling it.
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In the end it may be but if there's a small lifeboat and we can save some life, sure why do I care if they are rich? I don't.

novaphile said:
As far as I can see, the colonies on the Moon and Mars will die very quickly after any major disaster on Earth.

Without Earth providing all the resources they need, they're done, it's only a matter of time.

Similarly, any time that Earth decides it can't afford the incredibly large amounts of money the colonies will cost to keep supplied, the colonies are done.
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Current state of tech, absolutely. I'm not making any predictions about 500 years from now though, and figuring out how to make that happen would be part of the low slow research effort I'm interested in.

Like I've been saying small investment over decades and centuries. I feel the same for meteor defenses. We can't do it yet, doesn't mean we shouldn't be looking for ways to keep giant meteors from hitting the earth. Same for SETI, we are extraordinarily unlikely to ever find life, especially intelligent life elsewhere but I still support a lowkey and low expense search. All of that would be a waste to have some sort of Manhattan project or Apollo style spending. But like compound interest, a little bit of spending over a long time I support.

As to why should you pay for it. IDK, general concern for the future of life, particularly human life. If its on elon's dime then you aren't except by buying Tesla's, using X, and some taxes launching satellites.

ETA: Even if no human ever lives their life on another planet, I think getting even microbial life established would be good. Fish, reptiles, birds, people even better. This is a values thing of course. I value life generally and having it all in one basket will mean that it less likely to continue longer. Granted, heat death of the universe and all, means billions of years from now it won't actually matter.
 
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ahhell said:
ETA: Even if no human ever lives their life on another planet, I think getting even microbial life established would be good. Fish, reptiles, birds, people even better. This is a values thing of course. I value life generally and having it all in one basket will mean that it less likely to continue longer. Granted, heat death of the universe and all, means billions of years from now it won't actually matter.
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I can use the same line of thinking to justify the moldy food in my fridge.
 
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ahhell said:
Like I said, we should low key work on it, I'm not saying to bankrupt society and get it done now or what not. It's like having a diversified investment portfolio. As far as we know, life has investment in single asset, the Earth. I think we should diversify in a responsible way.
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We should ignore it entirely, and work on the large number of precursor and enabling technologies that would actually position us to do useful work on developing Lifeboat Mars. The good news is, we're already working on the precursor and enabling technologies, because they're useful for a lot of other things as well. The better news is, as those technologies are developed, they will almost certainly make it even more practical to develop Lifeboat Earth instead, with a much higher chance of success for a much lower expenditure of resources.
 
Oh boy it's this topic again, with the exact same arguments and concerns all around as last time we went over this a couple of months ago.
GlennB said:
That can be achieved much more easily here on Earth. I know Dr Strangelove was comedy, but many deep mines could be constructed in a fraction of the time and at much less cost. Vast amounts of survival stuff would easily be placed down there, compared to the cost/time/difficulty of getting such to Mars.
'Lifeboat Mars' is an insane concept.
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You know what? I'm sold. Damn your golden tongue, I'm in. You and me, GlennB, let's get some Fallout all up in this bitch. Biological life support systems, local manufacturing infrastructure, tunnel snakes, what's not to like? So what's the plan? What do we need? I assume there's a plan, right? That this has been your thing for decades? You wouldn't be arguing that people shouldn't be hoping to do a thing you don't want to do until they've first successfully done a thing that neither of you wants to do, right? Because that would be daft.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
Oh boy it's this topic again, with the exact same arguments and concerns all around as last time we went over this a couple of months ago.

You know what? I'm sold. Damn your golden tongue, I'm in. You and me, GlennB, let's get some Fallout all up in this bitch. Biological life support systems, local manufacturing infrastructure, tunnel snakes, what's not to like? So what's the plan? What do we need? I assume there's a plan, right? That this has been your thing for decades? You wouldn't be arguing that people shouldn't be hoping to do a thing you don't want to do until they've first successfully done a thing that neither of you wants to do, right? Because that would be daft.
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All you've demonstrated is that preparing for the end of the world in any way is extremely silly.

And that the Mars thing is still the worst one among a bunch of silly options.
 
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Olmstead said:
All you've demonstrated is that preparing for the end of the world in any way is extremely silly.

And that the Mars thing is still the worst one among a bunch of silly options.
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Far from it! Any earth-based apocalypse survival plan will need to develop a plethora of technologies directly applicable to space colonization. Provided there is an earth-based apocalypse survival plan. If there isn't, well, that can go the other way too. Let the nerds build their shining city on Mars, even if you think it's a fool's errand. If and when ◊◊◊◊ does go down back on the homeworld, we'll be that much better prepared with hard-won lessons like knowing that Vault-Tec water chips are hot garbage so we need a backup solution for that too.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
Interesting choice. Why? That would be a problem I think we do understand well enough now. I expect one or two sample return missions will happen before we send people. I also see a way to mitigate risk by sending the ascent components to Mars on an earlier mission.
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Understanding the problem isn't the same as having a failure-proof solution.

The moon's gravity is weak enough that we could land an entire two-person launch vehicle, and its launch platform, all at once, already in launch configuration, already fueled, and already flight-checked for launch. If anything had gone wrong, the Apollo astronauts were spring loaded to return home with a minimum of fuss.

On Mars, they'd have to assemble the launch vehicle, fuel it, flight check it, all in a hostile environment, and with their survival depending on getting it right. That's a lot of weight to put on the crew, first thing after touchdown.

I think it's solvable, but I'm still interested in the solution that ends up being used.

As for why this is my choice? Because I see it as the obvious and most pressing problem of a manned Mars mission: How to not make it a suicide mission.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
Far from it! Any earth-based apocalypse survival plan will need to develop a plethora of technologies directly applicable to space colonization. Provided there is an earth-based apocalypse survival plan. If there isn't, well, that can go the other way too. Let the nerds build their shining city on Mars, even if you think it's a fool's errand. If and when ◊◊◊◊ does go down back on the homeworld, we'll be that much better prepared with hard-won lessons like knowing that Vault-Tec water chips are hot garbage so we need a backup solution for that too.
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The "nerds" can't afford to build a shining city on Mars by themselves, and they never will. When the resource requests start getting unreasonable, it becomes very pertinent whether or not it is a fool's errand.
 
theprestige said:
Understanding the problem isn't the same as having a failure-proof solution.

The moon's gravity is weak enough that we could land an entire two-person launch vehicle, and its launch platform, all at once, already in launch configuration, already fueled, and already flight-checked for launch. If anything had gone wrong, the Apollo astronauts were spring loaded to return home with a minimum of fuss.

On Mars, they'd have to assemble the launch vehicle, fuel it, flight check it, all in a hostile environment, and with their survival depending on getting it right. That's a lot of weight to put on the crew, first thing after touchdown.
I think it's solvable, but I'm still interested in the solution that ends up being used.

As for why this is my choice? Because I see it as the obvious and most pressing problem of a manned Mars mission: How to not make it a suicide mission.
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SpaceX's proposal was to have a number of robotic missions that would produce methane fuel and LOX for relaunching later manned landings, set up habs etc etc. But they stopped discussing it back in 2018 or so, iirc. It was an insane 'plan'.
 
arthwollipot said:
Turns out the "nerds" are literally the richest people on the planet and several of them already have space programmes.
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And those space programmes are adorable.

Meanwhile actual missions of note require significant state-backing.
 
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Olmstead said:
The "nerds" can't afford to build a shining city on Mars by themselves, and they never will. When the resource requests start getting unreasonable, it becomes very pertinent whether or not it is a fool's errand.
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What resource requests? To my understanding, we don't even have the launch capability to start doing the experiments to test feasibility of basic vertebrate development in reduced-g environments. We're a long, long way from any kind of practical cost consideration. When that happens, that's when you whip out your ridiculous zero-sum approach to science. Until then you're just fighting phantoms of your own making.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
What resource requests? To my understanding, we don't even have the launch capability to start doing the experiments to test feasibility of basic vertebrate development in reduced-g environments. We're a long, long way from any kind of practical cost consideration. When that happens, that's when you whip out your ridiculous zero-sum approach to science. Until then you're just fighting phantoms of your own making.
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My whole beef is that the Mars colonization to escape armageddon isn't science but science fiction. But sure, let's keep ignoring all the reasons why it's a stupid idea, because maybe something useful will fall out of Amazing Stories #37.
 
Olmstead said:
My whole beef is that the Mars colonization to escape armageddon isn't science but science fiction. But sure, let's keep ignoring all the reasons why it's a stupid idea, because maybe something useful will fall out of Amazing Stories #37.
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Yes, Azimov forbid people be inspired.

But if you want to talk practicalities, sure. Take that imaginary money you're saving by not supporting space colonization and think about what imaginary efforts you'd rather it be put to. Curing cancer? Global warming? Those are science fiction now too, because in reality the only country that might have hoped to host an offworld colony even as a staggeringly ill-conceived boondoggle is dismantling itself wholesale into a fascist oligarchy just to keep people from talking about how our president is a pedophile. He hasn't started another World War yet, but frankly it's on the table.

I don't know about you, but armageddon being science fiction or not I'd be a bit more reassured about the future of the human race if there were a whole other planet laughing at us right now and posting "chuckles Martianly" memes.
 
arthwollipot said:
Yes, that's the business model. Seems to be working.
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Sure, for values of "working" that aren't remotely similar to billionaire nerds self-funding an actual Mars colony program.

It's ironic, really. Our present day billionaires would have to command a major part of the world's resources and industrial capacity, to install a viable colony on Mars. But the chief complaint about our present day billionaires is that they already command too much of the world's resources and industrial capacity.

At our current stage of development, a Mars colony would be a global endeavor, consuming everything our global civilization has to offer. It would be like the Pyramids of Giza, and about as useful.
 
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