Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Valmy]

I suspect the answer is that we can and should spend a lot of money trying to put a colony on Mars, and we should spend however much money is necessary to avoid that becoming the only hope for humanity, which is a couple orders of magnitude more (probably).

It always seemed like it would be cheaper and easier to colonize the bottom of the oceans or Antarctica first. By which to say it would be ungodly expensive and almost impossible to successfully colonize those areas on a permanent basis but still orders of magnitude easier than colonizing Mars. Already I think the short term inhabitants in Antarctica demonstrate many of the mental strains of living in such a hostile environment.

This is an interesting discussion, but well outside the relevance of Elon Musk's douchiness.

The point of colonizing Mars is not really about just colonizing Mars, and that is true in a way that colonizing the bottom of the ocean does not meet.

It's like saying it would be easier to go to some inhospitable place on the Earth then it is going to the Moon. That is almost certainly true, but isn't really the point of going to the Moon.

Well what more is there to say about Elon Musk and his cringey social media adventures?

I think you are missing my point. I do think we should colonize mars and other planets and moons in the solar system. But in order to do that we need to successfully colonize unhospitable places on Earth first in order to experiment with and understand all the problems with doing it first particularly the social and mental impact on humans living in such places. If we can successfully do that in a permanent sustainable way, that would be a significant step in colonizing in other more inhospitable places. We did explore the bottom of the oceans and the north and south poles before going to the Moon, after all.

[Berkut]

I don't know. 

I mean, lets say we spent some hundreds of billions to colonize the bottom of the deep ocean. OK. I guess.

Would we learn enough from that that applies to how to get to and colonize Mars to make it useful in the effort to colonize Mars?

I am sure we would learn a lot, but how applicable would it be?

And without some kind of actual payoff, who would fund it and support it?

Once we did that, could someone then just say "Hey, it would be easier to colonize the center of an active volcano then Mars! We should do THAT first, you know, just because!"

It seems like a diversion more then anything else.

[The Brain]

Human populations have lived isolated (in some ways much more isolated than a colony on Mars would be) and under considerable stress many times through history. I think we have a decent idea how humans function under those conditions. FWIW I think the main challenge of Mars is surviving and making a living in the physical environment of Mars, not mental or social stuff.

[Berkut]

I suspect that there is a laundry list of things we don't know we don't know about any kind of effort like this.

But I don't get the basic idea that a colony on Mars is somehow harder to mentally deal with then a colony on Antartica, at least not fundamentally.

I mean, humans have managed to survive some pretty extreme situations for really long times. Hell, just managing to survive an 18th century sailing ship for a year, for example. 

[Josquius]

I suspect the answer is that we can and should spend a lot of money trying to put a colony on Mars, and we should spend however much money is necessary to avoid that becoming the only hope for humanity, which is a couple orders of magnitude more (probably).

It always seemed like it would be cheaper and easier to colonize the bottom of the oceans or Antarctica first. By which to say it would be ungodly expensive and almost impossible to successfully colonize those areas on a permanent basis but still orders of magnitude easier than colonizing Mars. Already I think the short term inhabitants in Antarctica demonstrate many of the mental strains of living in such a hostile environment.

This is an interesting discussion, but well outside the relevance of Elon Musk's douchiness.

The point of colonizing Mars is not really about just colonizing Mars, and that is true in a way that colonizing the bottom of the ocean does not meet.

It's like saying it would be easier to go to some inhospitable place on the Earth then it is going to the Moon. That is almost certainly true, but isn't really the point of going to the Moon.

Well what more is there to say about Elon Musk and his cringey social media adventures?

I think you are missing my point. I do think we should colonize mars and other planets and moons in the solar system. But in order to do that we need to successfully colonize unhospitable places on Earth first in order to experiment with and understand all the problems with doing it first particularly the social and mental impact on humans living in such places. If we can successfully do that in a permanent sustainable way, that would be a significant step in colonizing in other more inhospitable places. We did explore the bottom of the oceans and the north and south poles before going to the Moon, after all.

We have loads of examples of setting up space colonies on earth though. Antarctic bases have been a thing since forever then there's experiments like biosphere and a bunch of less flashy experiments by NASA and the like playing space colony for a year.

I do think we're pretty good with the social and mental issues and its pretty easy to set up experiments to try new slants on them.

Its the practicalities of stuff that just isn't relevant on earth that are the key problems, like actually getting to Mars, radiation, and dealing with low pressure, low oxygen environments.

[Valmy]

Well the bottom of the ocean is a high pressure, low oxygen environment.

[Josquius]

Well the bottom of the ocean is a high pressure, low oxygen environment.

So not the same at all for Mars. More a cold Venus.

[viper37]

But I don't get the basic idea that a colony on Mars is somehow harder to mentally deal with then a colony on Antartica, at least not fundamentally.

If something goes wrong on Mars, you are dead.  No matter what, you are dead, because there is likely no rescue attempt possible.

And that will lead to panic among the colonists.

In Antartica, there could still be the remote possibility or repairing communications and calling for help. Or having equipment to trek to another base to get help.

And in Antartica, it is scientists and military personel we have there, not general civilians like what is proposed for Mars.

So yeah, the first ones will be dead, like the first European colonies in America were, for the most part.

But I guess we have to start somewhere.

[HVC]

Plus with a weak magnetosphere mars colonists will either be mole people (making colonizing much harder) or cancerous lumps within a few generations.

[Eddie Teach]

I'm sure the bubble will be shielded.

[Tamas]

Most we'll get on Mars probably for centuries will be a research station. Of course it'll be called a colony but it won't really be.

But that still will be amazing. And the real point of why we need a space renaissance is resource exploitation and industrialisation of our more immediate surroundings. We need asteroid mining and we also need to figure out how to effectively move industries to Earth orbit.

[Josquius]

Most we'll get on Mars probably for centuries will be a research station. Of course it'll be called a colony but it won't really be.

But that still will be amazing. And the real point of why we need a space renaissance is resource exploitation and industrialisation of our more immediate surroundings. We need asteroid mining and we also need to figure out how to effectively move industries to Earth orbit.

Yeah, way too many people fall into the error of applying historic thinking to the future.
Colonising Mars will be nothing like the colonisation of the Americas. We won't be shipping over bodies just to work. It'll be a premium ticket reserved for the best of the best.

I can see the next few hundred years, all being well, developing a massive human presence in space... But this won't mean many people living their whole lives up there.
Mars is a bit iffier but when it comes to say moon colonies I'd expect having kids there would be actually illegal due to the sheer cruelty of it.

[Jacob]

Most we'll get on Mars probably for centuries will be a research station. Of course it'll be called a colony but it won't really be.

But that still will be amazing. And the real point of why we need a space renaissance is resource exploitation and industrialisation of our more immediate surroundings. We need asteroid mining and we also need to figure out how to effectively move industries to Earth orbit.

What are the resources we are short of that it makes sense in terms of cost and practicality of exploiting?

And what are the benefits of putting industry in orbit? I mean, it's good for making colonies more self-sustaining, and for building space vessels since we don't have expend fuel to escape earth's gravity well. Are there other benefits?

I ask because I genuinely have very little grounding in this area.

I have only the vaguest idea about these things, so my questions are

[The Brain]

But I don't get the basic idea that a colony on Mars is somehow harder to mentally deal with then a colony on Antartica, at least not fundamentally.

If something goes wrong on Mars, you are dead.  No matter what, you are dead, because there is likely no rescue attempt possible.

You likely take steps to reduce the number of single point failures. And in the early most dangerous phases the colony will be able to ask any question about engineering, medicine, agriculture, or whatever, and get the best advice money can buy within a few hours.

[Valmy]

But I don't get the basic idea that a colony on Mars is somehow harder to mentally deal with then a colony on Antartica, at least not fundamentally.

If something goes wrong on Mars, you are dead.  No matter what, you are dead, because there is likely no rescue attempt possible.

And that will lead to panic among the colonists.

In Antartica, there could still be the remote possibility or repairing communications and calling for help. Or having equipment to trek to another base to get help.

And in Antartica, it is scientists and military personel we have there, not general civilians like what is proposed for Mars.

So yeah, the first ones will be dead, like the first European colonies in America were, for the most part.

But I guess we have to start somewhere.

Yeah but a bad start would be counter-productive. We shouldn't do it without doing everything conceivable to ensure success.

If going to Mars is understood to be a death sentence we will quickly run out of volunteers.