The student approached the Master and said "He wants to put a million people on Mars by 2040! That's so amazing!"
The Master replied. "I have a better plan. I will put a million people on Antarctica by 2040."
"But that sounds fucking insane. Why would you want to do something that stupid? It's a barren wasteland that's difficult to populate and would provide us with absolutely nothing!"
At that moment, the student was enlightened.
Elon Musk.
I'm waiting to see which planet he ends up on, so I know which one to avoid.
@chris @Rhodium103 We have the technology to stop asteroids from impacting Earth.
Also, Mars gets hit by asteroids too (even more so than Earth does).
I have lost patience for people using the impact hazard as a pretext for imaginary space colonization.
@chris @Rhodium103 It has now been 2 years since the #DARTMission demonstrated asteroid deflection: https://dart.jhuapl.edu/ , and the follow-up #HeraMission is being packed up at Canaveral right now to launch next month (there is also an independent CNSA asteroid deflection demonstration).
And no asteroids larger than 1 km that can impact Earth in the next several hundred years. There is one potential impact in 2880 that cannot yet quite be ruled out.
The impact hazard is being addressed.
@michael_w_busch @Rhodium103 Maybe curiosity and science are the only plausible reasons for mankind to go to space.
But that will give us no autonomous colonies we dream about in a lot of science fiction.
I'm realizing the pain a lot of speculative fiction about IT gives to me, what SciFi located in space do you personally enjoy?
@chris @michael_w_busch @Rhodium103 The worst thing about the asteroid impact scenario has nothing to do with the feasibility of a Mars colony. It is that suggesting saving the category "human species" matters is what matters is a DEPRAVED point of view.
The "human species" is not a living thing. It is a BINOMIAL NOMENCLATURE, "Homo sapiens". It is WORDS. What happens to it DOES NOT MATTER.
What MATTERS is the lives of ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS. THAT is what asteroid deflection saves.
@chris @michael_w_busch @Rhodium103 BTW it is likely easier to build a viable colony in space. After all, you can give it a centripetal acceleration of 1G, whereas Mars (despite all the naysaying I get) will kill off the colony by having inadequate gravity.
"Terraforming" is a distraction, as is the magnetosphere. You build the colony in a tin can with hydroponics, etc. We have never succeeded at this, but presumably it could be done. You use radiation shielding...
@chris @michael_w_busch @Rhodium103 People sometimes say people will "evolve" for the low gravity, but they are thinking Star Trek evolution that is driven by Final Cause—towards the goal of fitting a niche.
Actual evolution is driven by natural selection. That means evolution for low gravity would have to be achieved by throwing millions of people at the colony and keeping those few who survived healthily.
Generation after generation.
Which would be depraved.
@sn @michael_w_busch @Rhodium103 It does not seem to be ignored, but it does not exactly seem a done thing, either. 2030 for NEOMIR still is in the future, however a LOT more realistic than building a self sufficient colony on mars.
I don’t see any plausible path to a human presence on Mars. They all have a huge plot hole between “here’s a bunch of scientists” and “here’s human society #2”.
https://spacenews.com/prize-winner-wants-to-detect-asteroids-coming-from-suns-direction/
@michael_w_busch @chris @Rhodium103 a more pertinent issue is that arecebo is gone and AFAIK does not have a good substitute or replacement.
It was quite effective at detecting asteroids thanks to being able to actively send out radar pulses which then echo off of asteroids which would be difficult to detect visually. We can't deflect an asteroid if we don't know it exists.
@chris resources needed to setup a well organized Earth defense system <<< resources needed to setup an autonomous network of tin cans for humans to live in without depending on shuttling stuff from Earth at extreme costs.
Not saying we should never do it. Simply, I don't see this ever happening in the coming couple of centuries, and we have tons of problems to solve down on Earth so our species survives until the distant future when living on other worlds becomes feasible.
And even if we couldn't deflect a global killer, two self-sufficient "Mars style" underground bases (in Antarctica and Alaska/Siberia/Greenland) would probably still be easier than one on Mars
@chris @Rhodium103
"Easier" is doing 8.7 yottajoules of work in your post above.
https://defector.com/neither-elon-musk-nor-anybody-else-will-ever-colonize-mars
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…
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