Should we try to establish a colony on Mars?
Given that humanity is pretty close to sending at least one person to Mars, should we really consider trying to establish a colony on Mars? Or, should we try to establish a colony on the moon first? Or, have we learned that (being human), and looking at our past history of trying to establish colonies, can we justify the effort of trying to establish a colony anywhere in space?
Comments (45)
Or we could try establishing civilization on Earth first.
Put it on the back side of the moon so we won't have to look at the mess they will surely make. I do not want to look up at the moon and see a big AMAZON or HILTON advertising blinking off ad on. The back side also has the advantage of being shielded from earth's radio noise, so it would be a good place for radio astronomy.
The back side of the moon has geology which is dissimilar to the front side (or so I have heard). We should study that.
Just the fact that we can get to the moon in at least 3 days, and not at least 6 months, counts for a lot.
No problem on earth can better be solved on the moon.
:up:
Quoting Don Wade
Yes.
Not first, simultaneously. (Mining asteroids will require both for launch and resource processing infrastructure sites. :point: )
Sure we can.
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills ..." ~JFK
Everyone who says that we should focus on Earth is correct. It is not controversial and is evident.
What I'd like to point out, that does bother me quite a bit, is that there need be no mutual exclusivity between discovering and exploring space vs. taking care of things in Earth. What we as a society spend on Space related stuff is NEGLIBILE, compared to all the waste going to banks, military, etc. etc.
Keep in mind that NASA's budget, for instance is 0.5% of the US budget. That's nothing given how much money is used.
Having said this, maybe not a settlement on Mars, but having a concept of how to have many people survive in space for years, might be worth it. Not to mention all the wonder stuff with new telescopes and robots giving us priceless information on our universe.
It's often presented as if it's because we spend money on space that we don't have nice things here on Earth, which is just false. Space exploration is a human miracle.
Then how can we leave our politics back on Earth, or should we just assume that our politics goes with us? History tells us that building colonies on a new land just means more of the same, but a lot harder to control. How do we control colonies on Mars?
I said that a colony on Mars might not be the best medium term goal for space exploration, because of several quite severe complications associated with such a project as of today.
Maybe in some years it could be feasible. Maybe.
The politics is not possible to remove anywhere. I'd happily bump up NASA's budget to 2%-4% of GDP, and slash military spending 50%. This still guarantees the strongest army in the world by vast quantities and frees up money for people in need.
Besides fascinating priceless info, we might learn practical things here on Earth by continuing space exploration.
But any massive space program involving lots of people will involve politics, if a concrete actionable plan arises, then we can talk about political organizations and the like.
A good question. But, until we have one, we will probably continue to use old-style rocket propulsion. That still leaves the question: Should we even try to colonize space - or maybe just send robots with AR and VR technology?
Where no man has gone before, of course! Seriously though, I don't know. If we could go to the past, I'd be hip on the Pleistocene. But even if we could find an Eden planet in the present, be it ever so humble . . . In other words, I love the Earth. I think it would be great if Elon Musk, et al, would take about 7 billion people with him.
I could do a Lewis and Clark thing, but I don't want to put in the school time, engineering and all that to go to space.
Anyway, from a fighter pilot's point of view, to hit the enemy plane with your cannons/machine guns, you need to fire not at the bogey but in front of it (lead).
We have a well-equipped spaceship that could potentially sustain us for millions of years more on our long journey through space, but it's dangerously over-heated and resource-depleted. And that is Spaceship Earth. Our only hope is to tend to it if we want to survive.
Earth's moon, Mars, & asteroid mining are not the end-all-be-all of space exploration. I think what should happen (though probably won't even if we survive long enough ...) more or less is this :point: :nerd:
Quoting Don Wade
Send AI-driven robots to build underground space habitats (to start with) on Luna and Mars and maybe the moon-like asteroid Ceres. Meatbag payloads (i.e. mission specialists & megamillionaire / billionaire tourists) to follow years later for short duration stays rather than long duration or permanent stays (due to hazards of prolonged hard radiation surface exposure and bone-loss / heart-enlarging degenerative low gravity). I'm betting on our 'intelligent' machines to "colonize" this solar system and over the next few centuries spread an interplanetary (& Lagrange) network of habitats from Venus to the Kuiper Belt for endless pilgrimages of visitors from Earth.
:up:
A and D look to me as the least problematic or most attainable for a short term project, D in so far as shielding technology is concerned.
The James Webb telescope, due to launch in a few days, includes shields that will block virtually all sunlight to prevent it being fried by the sun, as it's going to deploy quite a bit removed from Earth.
I think we're going to be quite surprised to see what it discovers.
I totally agree!
I'm reminded of some of the "survival-games" you can play on a computer - such as "medieval dynasty". With that in mind, what would we need - to not only survive, but to prosper and raise a family? Gravity (equal to Earth's 1-G), radiation protection equal to Earth's (near sea-level). (I don't think anyone would want to raise a family in conditions less than what we have on Earth.) Those conditions can be met today with artificial systems, but they are not easy, and I'm still not convinced anyone would want to raise a family (anywhere in space - except on Earth) in even those conditions. If you can't realistically raise a family at any location, (even if you would like to visit), then it's really difficult to justify the effort to form a colony there.
EDIT: to answer the question, world government first, then moon, then elsewhere
Colonizing Mars would probably open up a can of worms as it would expose another vector for domination of humans by both other humans and technology.
If the center of human civilization is on Earth and you're 200 million miles away on Mars, and some big criminal operation starts happening there, Earth won't be able to do anything about it. It would be extremely easy for a small group of people to hijack the colony and put it under a military junta. Imagine: just a few perverts with guns get to Mars, and they decide to kill all of the men and create a harem with the women as sex slaves. Or, say a rich guy sets up a little station on Mars where he traffics children to the super rich a la Epstein. Perhaps Mars could be used as a political concentration camp, or a black ops base where illegal and unethical experiments are done, etc etc etc.
What is Earth going to do about that? Call the space cops? In order to prevent these things from happening, you would need to have lots of people and infrastructure in place, which takes time, and presupposes that these things don't happen in the mean time.
History has taught us that when an empire does not have the technological means to maintain control over the colonies, these colonies start to assert their independence. It happened with the Roman Empire, it happened with the Merovingians, it happened with the British Empire...and it will happen again with Mars, unless there comes some technological advancement that gives people the means of rapid communication and transportation across space.
And if a colony were developed, it would only be possible by a tremendous technological effort, requiring strict human obedience. Human would exist in order to keep the colony alive, not the other way around.
My thoughts exactly. Earthlings (baseline, unmodified by extensive biotech / nanotech) cannot live in space, only visit briefly if they intend to ever return alive (healthy) to Earth.
First of all, I don't think you can establish a colony on Mars. Colony is a political and economic move done by a government under one nation. If Mars could be "colonized", all nations should have an equal shot at it. So the entire Earth colonizing Mars.
When you say "our past history", did you have a specific country in mind?
Ok, but what do you give our chances of achieving it on earth? Perhaps on the moon or Mars, with the threat of dramatic and irrecoverable death overshadowing any potential disagreements, some sort of functional civilization could occur as we would be required to work together to stay alive. The immediacy of potential death would eliminate the "break off on my own" approach.
Well, I mean, I know of some guy around here, like to throw knowledge around. I'd say that one can try to experiment living in space for a long time for memento mori. :joke:
Speculation here is pretty wild. I mean, the International Space Station worked relatively well for some time. But it seems to me that on practical affairs, we'd want to make the space travel we currently do, more comfortable and suitable for us.
Hell, going to Mars would take like 7 months in very close quarters with people you'd eventually want to kill or something.
Self sufficiency is still a long ways away on this planet, never mind Mars.
But this is crazy rambling really, I mean, we can't freakin' get together to beat a quite (comparatively) weakish virus (in terms of % death rates).
Doing something significant in Mars or the Moon, seems impossible....
I agree. We are pretty close to having the technology to send men (or maybe even women) back to the moon, or go to mars. However, we don't seem to be even close to getting along well enough as humans to trust ourselves to even plan on how to establishing a colony - on the moon, or mars.
With that being said - and if there is "intelligent life" anywhere else in the Universe - and they also developed some form of spaceflight - maybe that's why they didn't try to colonize either. The very basic tenants of life (to eat other life, or to be eaten by by other life) would be enough to keep intelligent life forms from trying to establish colonies. It seems intelligent life forms simply cannot trust itself. Any comments?
I mean, the only evidence we have of intelligent life is here, with us being the only creatures capable of explicit reflexive consciousness. So if there is intelligent life out there, something of which I'm not nearly as confident as I used to be, then it would stand to reason that it would similar to us in several important respects.
One of those similarities, one would guess, are the basic needs of life. I don't know if we can or cannot trust ourselves.
I'm under the impression now that size matters. Once you're speaking about massive cities with tens of millions of people, sustained political organization seems ever more difficult, as we can see now.
But even this would not be the biggest difficulty, it's simply that space is so damn big. It would take 4.3 light years just to reach our nearest neighboring star system.
Andromeda, the nearest galaxy, would take 2.5 million years, travelling at the speed of light to get to. That's just too much.
Distance not only works against us - it can also work for us.
Right, yeah if humans can't even get their shit together on Earth then it's hard to see how it would be any better on Mars.
Quoting Manuel
The conditions of people on the frontier of the American wild west were often miserable and extremely dangerous. Space ("the final frontier") would be even more so.
If Mars or anywhere else is to be colonized, it will probably be the poor, disenfranchised and/or insane that will be the first group to go. The rich will stay at home until it's demonstrated to be safer and more comfortable than on Earth (or in their private orbital station above Earth).
Perhaps. But with distance comes time. Time is not with us.
What you say makes sense. The thing is, who would front the money?
You'd have to have a high percentage of trained people being sent anywhere in space, to be prepared for how to deal with upcoming challenges. So you can train the poor and disenfranchised, but the money is key.
The rich will do whatever they can. Either a remote luxury island, a bunker or a space hotel.
I suppose we have to go by "baby steps", next big thing is going to be the James Webb telescope. That's going to be really informative. One can only hope all goes well in launch and in destination.
Eventually, IMO, many billionaires (trillionaires) with their help/thralls will fuck off to asteroid terreria.
:100: :up:
Mars has to colonised. I’m saddened someone hasn’t landed on Mars already as I expected it to have happened by now. Now there are private companies around competing it is only a matter of time. Elon Musk seems 100% driven towards getting to Mars and everything he does is based on this goal. As long as he says alive I think we’ll be there soon enough.
For longterm stability and independence Mars has much more going for it purely due to the gravity. Most of the first colonists will likely die/suffer a lot, but many (including myself) would happily take the risk. Should we go? Sure! Why the hell not? What good reason is there not to explore and stretch the human story to see what can be achieved? Every adventure opens up new avenues for humanity as a whole.
I still believe I’ll live long enough to see humans land on Mars (or at least attempt to!).
Why? Has it failed in some way that an invasion from earth could fix it?
Whenever someone talks cheerfully about colonising Mars, they are usually thinking about somebody else living there and not thinking what it would be like for them to live there. When Life on Mars becomes possible, Life on Earth will become more prized and only for the rich. The planet with no atmosphere will become the destination for people on the public housing waiting list.
It only shows how little effort has been put after the 70's into manned flight de facto. But let's not kid ourselves: the whole manned space mission was an PR offshoot from the real program of building the ICBM arsenal. Russia even had a military space station and experimented shooting an AA cannon in space.
So obviously without an nuclear arms race, it has been slow on this theatre. But hope that something will come out of it. Going to Mars is one for the history books, at least then something from our time could be remembered in a positive light. I fear otherwise that the 21st Century will look quite pale and boring compared to the 20th Century.
Quoting James Riley
Hear hear!!!
If we think in terms of what early colonist did throughout hostory - you're right. It was usually the poor, disinfranchised, or criminals that were the first colonist. However, in the case of colonizing the moon, or mars, you can't get a "cheap-flight" to get there. It takes a lot of money just to get one person into space. It would take a lot more to get a group of would-be colonist on the moon or mars, and I don't believe any rich group is going to send a poor group anywhere to colonize.
It is also not possible now, (or even in the near future), to build a "hotel in orbit" that would have 1-G gravity and safety from radiation. Again, not a place even for rich colonist. Same problem: You can't raise kids there - hense, no colony - just a place for adults to visit.
There's a good chance you're right. But, even if we sent, not just one, but a hundred people to Mars and they had enough groceries and water to keep them alive - they would die like the early "Jamestown" colonist. The radiation alone would eventually kill all the people. We could protect against the radiation by building underground - but the gravity of Mars is less than half of what we have on Earth. You can't raise a child in low gravity environments because they would grow up not having the bones and mussels to accomodate space travel like their parents. We don't know if human organs would even develope right under low gravity conditions. (Early research by NASA doesn't look very good there either.)
To survive (long-term) in space you need to to take (Earth's Systems) along with you - that includes air, water, 1-G gravity, radiation protection (equal to fairly near sea-level), and that's just for adults. simply put: "Space travel in not for kids." No kids - no colonies. Space becomes just a place for (rich people) to visit.
I expect many colonists/explorers would die. Eventually they would find a way to make it work and I think Elon Musk is certainly overly optimistic in terms of how to make the colony self-sustained ... but given that we get there I see no reason why trail and error will not eventually lead to success. His plan is basically to rotate people on and off of Mars. You can pretty much guarantee some people will stay and some will be born there. The ethical question of allowing a baby to grow up on Mars would likely mean they would have to undergo medical changes if they were to come to Earth ... I think in 50 yrs such procedures will be almost second nature given the potential that CRISPR has to offer.
In comparison to colonising Mars CRISPR is FAR FAR FAR BIGGER, even if it lives up to just a miniscule of what many in the field say is on the way.
You may be right. It seems Mr. Musk is certainly trying very hard to make it happen. We may even be able to "grow" a crop of humans from seeds and would therefore not even need to transport them to Mars. Now there's a theme to run with!
Addendum: my lil geek-heart is about to burst with the news https://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2021/12/denis-villeneuve-to-adapt-arthur-c.html?m=1 :nerd: :hearts: LLAP.
Very serious! Have you heard about "Louise Brown"? Worlds first test-tube baby: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Brown . That was back in 1978. We've come a long way since then. It's not as much "science-fiction" as it was at one time.
I can easily imagine a cargo of human seeds being sent to mars - along with some care-taker robots sent with them to watch over them. (I'm not sure humans didn't get on Earth the same way back about 40-million years ago.) There is no reason to think of space travel, for long distances - such as to other star systems - as being done by adults. They wouldn't live long enough. You have to start with seeds - not adults.
I would suggest a little more research. You might try: https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/06/12/artificial-wombs-the-coming-era-of-motherless-births/ .
Is it a dream...or is it a nightmare? Depends a lot on your perspective.
The original question was: "Should we try to establish a colony on Mars?". There has been a lot of good discussion. We already have colonies of machines, and even mobile robots, there now. But can we, or should we, place a human-colony there? I'm still interested in what this group has to say out the question.