^^ Humans offer nothing good. The species needs to end completely. The sooner the better. The universe will be a far, far better place without us.
We will live on Mars one day. Even if it means Underground. We need more resources than Earth has and there is plenty off Earth.
There’s plenty of nitrogen on Mars. 2.6% of Mars atmosphere is nitrogen or about 10^14 kg.Putting a few people on Mars in a flag planting ceremony, does nothing. It's not a shot at anything.
Mars is completely inhospitable. You can't expand colonies there using local resources. Nearly everything needed for life has to be imported from Earth.
It has no radiation shielding so you need to live underground.
We have no idea what impact the low gravity would have on human life cycle. If you can't rear children in Martian gravity, you don't have a backup. Changing the gravity of a planet is quite a challenge.
The regolith is toxic to plants (The Martian was science fiction that glossed over this, simply adding poop won't do it. It looks like Lunar regolith is more compatible with plant life than Martian toxic regolith. Ever gram of Soil would need to be heavily processed to remove toxic perchlorates, and then would need enrichment with fertilizers, appropriate minerals, bacteria. So basically ever gram of life sustaining soil has to be imported or created.
Mars is essentially barren of nitrogen to grow plants. This is critical, you can't just create nitrogen, you have to import it, so you can't build more underground colony space without that imported nitrogen. There is no growing self sufficiency if you can't locally create the air that life needs.
Bottom line. Mars can't sustain human life on it's own. Everything has to be imported. You can only terraform Mars if you already have an obscenely advanced space fairing civilization, nearly capable of building a planet from scratch, because that is near the scale of effort to terraform Mars.
At the point we could Terraform Mars, we will already have millions if not billions of people living in artificial space habitats, that will be much better suited for human life, so Mars will neither be a "backup" because we have many backups in space already, nor will it be more desirable than artificial space habitats that have ideal human tuned characteristics.
Ultimately a post Earth humanity would be one living in artificial space habitats (Likely swarms of O'Neill cylinders).
Man, I had no idea that Mar's atmosphere was that thin. I thought it was like 10%, not 0.6%. But as we all know, Venus has a lot of atmosphere to spare, we can just move it from Venus to Mars and have 2 terraformed planets.Not clear what you disagree with.
But it's fairly easy to Google up some scientist who will deny that human CO2 production is causing global warming. You can Google up some supposed authority to support/deny nearly any position. It 's the consensus that counts.
I've been following this for years, and the consensus has Terraforming Mars look like a Fantasy.
I didn't just look at this today. I've followed this stuff for years. IIRC Nuking the CO2 would only double the atmospheric pressure on Mars. Congratulations, you moved atmospheric pressure from less than 1% to less than 2%.
Only about 98% of a planets worth of atmosphere to be imported.
I know, not as fun as the first one.
Man, I had no idea that Mar's atmosphere was that thin. I thought it was like 10%, not 0.6%. But as we all know, Venus has a lot of atmosphere to spare, we can just move it from Venus to Mars and have 2 terraformed planets.
Pigs can replace us no problem. We've set them up good to rule the world if we leave.^^ Humans offer nothing good. The species needs to end completely. The sooner the better. The universe will be a far, far better place without us.
There's a 3-panel comic strip I saw.
Panel1: "Wow, I'm on a space ship heading towards Mars!"
Panel2: ....
Panel3: "Gets sick of the view and checks his smartphone".
I don't think general public / masses / idiots think this through.Yeah, I imagine a mutiny on the first colony ship when it kicks in that, it's not a Star Trek episode and nothing is going to happen for the next 6 months of travel, except the same people, stuck sharing the same steel can, cutoff from the world.
Outside of the first handful of people, and legitimate scientist going to do unique science, I don't see much impetus for people to to take a hellish, health destroying journey to a inhospitable location, with no escape for 2 years minimum.
People quickly lose interest after the First of something. Most everyone knows that Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon, and maybe many know the second (I do). But how many people can name the the third or fourth (I can't without looking it up) person to walk on the freaking moon? Similar for Mount Everest. Who knows the third person to Climb Mount Everest?
It's first, or it barely matters.
We can already get to Mars without Elons help. FGS....
Unless Elon has some plan to fix red blood cell hemolysis (among several other human issues), which he btw does NOT, this is all just a huge joke on rubes that think his rockets are our salvation or that his technology is jumping all the hurdles we have in place before we can do something like this. We are for sure getting places with our science innovations, we have the science, we just don't have the A & P shit figured out.
We will not, ever, be living on Mars in any of our lifetimes.
there is no point in importing atmosphere, mars' gravity isnt enough to hold on to it.Man, I had no idea that Mar's atmosphere was that thin. I thought it was like 10%, not 0.6%. But as we all know, Venus has a lot of atmosphere to spare, we can just move it from Venus to Mars and have 2 terraformed planets.
There’s plenty of nitrogen on Mars. 2.6% of Mars atmosphere is nitrogen or about 10^14 kg.
The perchlorates in the soil (which the Martian didn’t mention because we literally found out about them after Weir was done writing the book) can be washed out of the soil with enough water. Water which is found on Mars.
We can solve world hunger and have a manned space program. Quite frankly some of the issues we face with manned spaceflight can be applied to problems here - like how to recycle water and waste streams for long duration space flight.
Solving world hunger and space exporation are not mutualy exclusive. Elon is providing a service for less money than the government can build it. Look at the SLS abomination, soon to be obsolete, replaced with a machine fully reusable at a fraction of the cost, Starship will render space much more accesible and SAVE taxpayer money. Who knows, this might solve world hunger.
It is for people like Musk. Musk doesn't give a shit at all about world hunger.
It is for people like Musk. Musk doesn't give a shit at all about world hunger. They haven't even pretended that has anything to do with any of this so I don't know why the fuck so many of you keep holding it up like duh obviously its just going to be magically solved by Musk sending his giant gleaming metal dicks into space to ejaculate wealthy people on other planetary bodies.
That's not really true as its not the government that is the issue there. Its private companies that corrupted politicians. Something Musk is actually very keen on enabling and continuing. He just wants the money himself. It won't long term, especially considering some of the nonsense he's intent on wasting money on. He'd gladly burn billions (probably trillions) on a solution that everyone knows won't work because he's so convinced he's right above all else.
Ah yes, just like cryptocurrencies are going to cure world hunger, income inequality, and all the other bullshit.
Hell, you people wanna bring up sci fi bullshit? How much sci fi is about space exploration bringing back some germ that devastates life on earth?
Like it or not these programs drive innovations that then help life down here.So what you're saying is we have literal need for those applications here, meaning they'd serve as a perfect test bed before wasting the resources shooting them into space? I don't think you realize you're actually enabling the argument for why its stupid to be spending so much resources to do that shit elsewhere, when compared to the benefits and need for doing that stuff here, right now.
I was joking about stealing Venus's atmosphere.there is no point in importing atmosphere, mars' gravity isnt enough to hold on to it.
at .37G lighter molecules will just rise off to the edge of the envelope and get blown off by the solar wind. nasa is looking into making a magnetic shield at the mars-sun lagrange point 1 to deal with the radiation and the windstripping. the simulations say they need a 20000 nT magnetic field to deflect the solarwinds away from mars. no hint on how to build or power the magnetic field generator.
even if you managed to get enough gas on the ground and build a magnetic shield, it would only be about 6psi because of the lesser gravity. that is well short of 14.7psi of earth. so walking around outside on mars would always be a scuba suit situation.
Why do we even need to bother sending humans? We can just send androids to do the mining and building. Maybe thousand years later, they might get Mars into habitable shape.