just send all the billionaires to mars and the rest of us will have to learn how to survive without them
What makes you guys think they can't rule over you from Mars? On the other hand, that would just make them out of reach of any protests or riots and even more immune from consequences.
We will just cut off the interplanetary network.
And watch them enjoy the planet they have all to themselves.
It's not like anyone today protests directly to the billionaires.
Yep. People definitely want to colonize the first one. The only thing keeping apartments off that location is strict governmental regulation of space like that. The desire is definitely there though.
The poor moon, it gets skipped over. Doesn't it deserve to be colonized too? Maybe we could put an amusement park there or something.
Ooh! It could have animatronics that sing songs about what it was like being a whaler on the moon!
I don't think space travel is inherently a bad idea. But I don't think it'd be the billionaires to get us there, especially not someone like Elon.
SpaceX is a rocket ship manufacturer, NASA outsourced that like the US military outsources aircraft manufacturing to Boeing or Lockheed Martin.
Elon is not going to/was never going to "get us there" he's just the guy who owns the company that makes the vehicles. Idk what this huge miscommunication is and how people got to the idea that he's personally going to be the one who pushes humanity to mars, he doesn't even have a say in the operations NASA uses his spacecraft for.
Elon used to say he was going to found a Mars colony. I don't pay much attention to him so maybe he doesn't talk about it anymore, but it was a big thing maybe fifteen years ago.
Just talk to get him in the cultural zeitgeist, the man has essentially adopted the philosophy of "no bad press" and just said and done whatever he could to manipulate the market.
Look at Twitter, he didn't want to buy it, he just said so while he quietly sold the Tesla stock and started claiming Tesla was going downhill. It was a ploy to dumpster Tesla so he could reacquire it at a lower value. At that point he'd claim Tesla is amazing and rocket the stock value again.
That's why he's making all these short term cash grab solutions while destroying the long term value of Twitter, he never wanted it in the first place and is just trying to scrape up any dollar he can while it burns down. He's not dumb, he's manipulative and willing to commit to massive lies in order to make more money. He's a sociopath, but he's good at playing his fanboys like a marionette and it's been working for him for years.
This idea that he's just accidentally stumbled into making Tesla and SpaceX into multi billion dollar companies is a fantasy created by people who can't conceive that someone can be evil and intelligent at the same time. If it was that easy to be a bumbling moron and become a multi billionaire I wouldn't be middle class.
You don't become one of the wealthiest people on the globe by being an idiot, you do it by being conniving, exploitative, and having a quick enough wit to see the potential avenues of profit by doing the aforementioned things.
I don't like Elon, he's a POS that needs heavy taxation to regulate the industries he's a part of, but I'm so sick of people on here pretending he's just somehow accidentally moron'd his way into being richy rich. That doesn't happen or most of you would be millionaires as well.
Me (a sysadmin): We need an off-site backup. Preferably in a completely different "availability zone".
I love the thought of being one of the only programmers on Mars. Being able to say: "I'm gonna do it my way. What are you gonna do, travel to Mars?", when some comes up with a stupid request, would be absolutely priceless.
Okay, but The Planet Crafter is really cool for exactly that reason. You slowly but surely make a barren wasteland livable, it's extremely rewarding
Edit: I may have misunderstood the intention of this meme, but I still stand behind Planet Crafter being a fun game
Meanwhile on earth we are slowly but surely making a livable planet a barren wasteland
For money
For like 400 massive douchebags
Yeah, pretty much. What was the name of that movie? Oh yeah, Elysium. That's probably what's going to happen, isn't it
I'm all for it. With his ability to fuck things up, he'd actually do us a favour for once
It's not about prime real estate, it's about increasing the redundancy of humanity's survival. Two planets are better than one.
There seems to be a large amount of overlap between people who say things like "It's hubris to think that humans can change the atmosphere of the earth enough to make a noticeable difference in 400 years" and "we can make Mars inhabitable by humans in 50 years"
What the fuck, no there isn't. Are you actually implying most people that are interested in a mars colony are climate change deniers?
More the other way around, I know a surprising amount of climate change deniers that think we need to colonize Mars to save the human race.
I'm not trying to say it can't or it shouldn't be done, but it has to be both. We have to find a way to live sustainably and also expand.
It's also not about Terraforming! That's a goal for a few thousand years down the line. For now, just spreading out our habitats is a good idea.
What do you mean by opposite position?
That there's an overlap between people who think "climate change is manmade and requires systematic change to overcome" and also "terraforming Mars is a laudable long term goal, but can't be done at the expense of the earth"?
Yeah, there's a lot of overlap there, it's not particularly hypocritical.
In order to colonize mars, having a good space station in orbit would help out immensely. We're talking big enough to stretch out and hold a few hundred people.
The station would need to grow crops and have minor but flexible manufacturing.
At that point, why would you colonize mars vs just make more stations?
For real, resource extraction is a big one. Finding ice means they can make, besides water, oxygen and rocket fuel. Not to mention that shelters for radiation are incredibly hard to make without a huge amount of mass, which we cannot efficiently get into orbit without a space elevator. Hence being able to extract it from the location of the colony, say dig into the ground or build thick walls with bricks made from soil, is necessary for long term survival of the inhabitants. I think it is cool that due to these reasons having air balloons over Venus might even be a better option due to it having a protective atmosphere.
You can make a radiation field by running a large motor that would save you from the solar radiation.
In space you always have access to the sun. A cheap form of power. You need a lot more batteries if you're on the planet.
Venus is a much better idea over mars.
Didn't know that it was feasible to create a radiation field by running a large motor. Not that I doubt you, but if you have a source I would be very happy to read more about it.
I heard about it on one of Isaac Arthur's videos. I can't remember which one, but the analogy he used was that earth's magnetosphere is essentially a big motor created by earth's metal core spinning. (Oversimplified) So you should be able to build a motor that would shield a station
Sure, and theoretically we could do a lot of shit. Isaac Arthur isnt a scientist he's a edutainment YouTuber.
Creating our own magnetosphere is a little more complex or we'd have already done it, plus what happens if it fails? Where's your backup? You just gonna die when it shuts down?
Creating our own magnetosphere is a little more complex or we'd have already done it
There hasn't been a need for it until now, thats like expecting people to invent parachutes before aircraft
Its the same way that Earth protects us from harmful radiation. Take a big magnet and spin it
Space stations don't produce raw materials, even if they could self sustain their human populations with food grown onboard they'd require the resources of earth to build and expand, so they're still dependent on Earth.
A space station wouldn't make anything inherently easier, unless it was attached via space elevator just having a chunk of metal in orbit doesn't change how much energy you need to get things out of the gravity well.
Right now, even with water recycling systems, we still have to ship water to the ISS. A planet or moon also offers way more radiation protection by tunneling underground than any spacecraft at this time could provide.
I'd say we go for Deimos and Phobos first and set up mining operations there before spreading to the Martian surface. Their super-low gravity will make shipping materials easier. They essentially are natural space stations, just add infrastructure.
While I fundamentally agree, it's inevitable that Earth and Mars would go to war in that scenario.
Why is it inevitable? We don't even have a colony there let alone a government and you think it would inevitably lead to war?
Put down the sci fi novels for a second.
You could have just slapped any combination of letters together in that name as long as there's a J and I'd still believe this sentence.
I wouldn't mind leaving a lot of Earth's natural beauty alone, as much as SpaceX's mission doesn't resonate with me very much
Ooh! It could have animatronics that sing songs about what it was like being a whaler on the moon!
As for point 2. For any space project for resource gathering you want to stay FAAAR away from any major gravity wells as escaping them is currently 99% of the cost for our current rocketsm it's genuinely wasteful in terms of fuel and most of the rocket is shed afterwards too.
Gravity wells would be one way delivery only while resource gathering operations, as you said, would stay on dwarf planets, asteroids and lesser moons like our own.
Just felt like giving an explanation to your post for anyone who reads by and doesn't understand why mining asteroids/ the moon is a plainly superior option.
Economics Explained recently published a video explaining how using space as a way to get resources will never be economically viable. It doesn't matter how cheap you can produce something if the shipping cost is $5,000 per gram. We'd sooner syphon gold out of ocean water than get it from an asteroid.
Space travel is a great investment when it comes to discovering new technologies that revolutionize life, but a terrible investment for resource extraction.
It's great if the resources go from space, to space and stay the hell away from major gravity wells.
So space station colonies or colonies on dwarf planets and smaller moons.
Remember, a good 90% of the cost is "how do we leave the planet" and then most of the rocket is shed. All that waste wouldn't be needed if we never touch down on planets to begin with.
Hence the interest in a lunar base, especially one that can produce fuel from local water
However, Mars has mountains 10 times higher, Deeper and larger canyons. In general it would be suitable for megalophobic scenarios.
