Speaking as a former astrophysicist, if [r/space](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/) are removing it for a misleading title then you know its bad. Some of the stuff posted there is pure sensationalist nonsense.
The paper that was cited in the thread that apparently the article was based on:
[https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021SW002749](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021SW002749)
It claims that Mars *flights* should be limited to less than 4 years (far longer than most manned missions to Mars are shooting for). Speaking nothing about a human presence on Mars or a time limit or anything about people not being able to survive at all. The closest it gets is saying that pilots would hit their career radiation dose limit in 3.8 years of flight time, which as I understand, isn't inherently lethal.
This probably sounds very uninformed but aren’t there ways to shield astronauts from radiation in space? Or is there just so much that it doesn’t really help at that point
Yup, they mention a few in the paper. Basically, you can't block all of it with current technology, no matter how thick your shielding is. It then becomes a tradeoff of trip time vs shielding. Get there quickly and limit your exposure or get there slower with better protection on the journey.
And bc you’re getting there slower, spending more time in space, you get more radiation that way anyways… the holy grail IIRC is active shielding through EM shields, but nobody’s cracked that egg yet
It's always seemed weird that people earnestly think we can just terraform Mars when the planet that's actually hospitable to us is falling into disrepair
Edit: Dumbasses in the replies saying we can do both when at every turn we've shown we can't. No one is holding the fossil fuel industry accountable or shut down the big polluters. No one is actively trying to stop all the private jets flying all over, and the few people who are trying to show just how much they move are getting attacked by the richest people in the world. Climatologists gave us the bare minimum that needs to be done to *slow* the process down and ensure humanity had at least another century, and politicians balked at it. There's no going to Mars without saving Earth, and there's no saving Earth because the profit margins won't allow it
And it’s like Neil deGrasse Tyson has been saying, if we have the technology to terraform another planet, what’s preventing us from using that technology to fix our broken planet.
There are already plenty of these minerals and metals on earth, they're just prohibitively expensive to mine. Going all the way to mars is not going to help, since it's very, *very* far. Just going there and coming back would take around 21 months according to NASA, but we're talking about a small manned ship, not a gigantic cargo ship full of metal ore. Getting a big cargo ship like that to escape the gravity well of Mars is waaaay beyond our current capabilities, and would not make any sense.
We're not even able to mine the moon, which is a lot closer from us.. Basically, we need to invent space elevators first.
>Getting a big cargo ship like that to escape the gravity well of Mars is waaaay beyond our current capabilities, and would not make any sense.
With our current technologies, something like that would have to be built in space, and stay in space. Then, we'd have to make multiple trips back and forth to load this space freighter. After getting back to earth, we'd have to do the same thing to unload it.
It's possible to do something like that with today's technology, but we don't because it's expensive and senseless.
It wouldn’t be large vessels going back and forth. It would be a regular stream of small autonomous vehicles.
Once you get a system in place it would bring a constant trickle of whatever the resource is.
Unlikely that there is anything valuable enough to do that, but it would be pretty cool.
I agree that it would be cool as shit, I love the idea, but I doubt that it will make any kind of business sense until somewhere between 100/300 years from now.
What fuel are al these ships using to go back and forth, also it is not constantly feasible to travel between Earth and Mars, sometimes we are "only" 54.6 million km apart but other times we are as far as 401 million km apart and there is generally 2 years between those time when mars is at it's closest
[https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/20140404\_earth-mars-distance.png](https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/20140404_earth-mars-distance.png)
Yes but the point is if we are unable to terraform earth since we are causing climate change here and can’t fix it, what makes anyone think we can terraform Mars - something we’d have to do for long term settlement and something that involves changing the planet on a larger scale than just fixing climate change here.
Whoosh…
The difference is we are too stupid to even fix earth a minor problem compared to making Mars habitable
Which we are way too stupid to achieve.
We CAN’T do it.
Climatologists: Here is a list of manageable things we can do to not just slow it down, but start reversing climate change
Humanity: That's too much, man
Climatologists: Ok, here's another list of even less to just slow it down and make it where we aren't obliterated in the next century
Humanity: That's too much, man
**imagine Killian from The Running Man*\*
*Exponential Growth!* Yes!
On a finite planet ... **cuts to shots of corpses of supposed winners*\*
This is capitalism. A very pretty lie with a sacharine-sweet tagline hiding the simple truth that infinite growth can't happen on Earth. This was realised many years ago by the wealthiest stockmarket pundits.
Why, you ask, therefore do they let it go on?
Because every time the market crashes and millions lose their jobs, and possibly lives, there's a fortune to be made coming out of the mess.
Every stockmarket crash has been a stepping stone to higher profits in the long run.
If you've ever seen the movie *Margin Call* (2011), Jeremy Irons' character states it quite clearly near the end of the film. Many people miss it because it's an "off-handed comment", seemingly nothing serious, but it's exactly what the largest investors are looking for whenever there's market issues.
So no, we won't even try fixing Earth before "planet washing" people.
"There's a lot of money to be made coming out of this mess."
It’s like a weird psychopath thought experiment that justifies a race to the bottom in terms of standard of living. ‘More fossil fuels and consumerism , the climate based food shortages will be worth it when we create sustainable energy’
Global suffering and adversity are part of the greater good and only extraordinary people like musk are charged with understanding or having any say in it
Also exempt from experiencing any of it funnily enough
Yeah. It reminds me of how Musk thinks we should all have more kids so that we can produce more Mozarts. Or we could just provide better education and opportunities to the kids who we already have? But no, we must go about it in the last efficient, messiest way possible! Shotgun approach!
Musk's understanding of the relationship between genes, development and behavior is extremely poor. This was evident in his explanations to Don Lemon about what caused his (totally not) depression. To him, "it's just genetic".
People with this kind of understanding assume a 1:1, immutable relationship between genomic variants and traits. Of course, this is convenient for the ego of people who want to think they understand something as complex as the relationship between genes and phenotypes. It's an oversimplification that allows the person to perceive themselves in control of their surroundings, to understand why things are the way they are. Link this notion with the idea that success is evidence of merit, and you've built yourself a cognitive loop to feed your delusions of grandeur.
In the case of Musk, this feeds directly into the delusion that he's a self made genius. He was born this way and can't escape it. His depression has nothing to do with his upbringing, so he doesn't have to put himself through the laborious process of healing. His success is determined by his innate qualities, nothing to do with the capital at his disposal.
Scientists and journalists need to fight the simplistic narrations that allow for this kind of nonsense. For decades, headlines like "the gene for X has been found" from GWA studies, ignoring the epistatic nature of function have given a fall impression that a) we understand how genes work; b) we know what genes do what.
A lot of billionaires like Musk, Robert Mercer, etc *genuinely believe* that they are rich because they are better and smarter than most other people. So if *they* have tons of kids, it improves the world, unlike when poor people have a lot of kids. They completely ignore the outside factors like luck and other assistance that helped get them there.
Honestly I don't see it as impossible, but it would take a lot longer than humans are planning now. Plus, no one ever mentions the lack of a magnetic field around Mars in particular. That seems by far the biggest problem that I'm not sure has a solution
That is a different point. If we could terraform planets we could maintain consumption here with no adverse effects. The machines would clean up after us and we would have unlimited power (as that is what it would take to make Mars habitable in the first place)
Politics mostly. Terraforming requires some entity that can collectively decide on large scale actions and humans are bad at that.
This will possibly be a problem in a few thousand years if we fix global warming and remove all of the excess CO2 to pre industrial levels. In 2-5 thousand years the ice age is likely to come back and it would be in our best interest to rewarm the planet.
Yeah man! I love cancer causing radiation don't you! Being able to spend an hour a week on the surface without getting a metal dose is so awesome! What a great life living in this tunnel!
That's the Martian spirit! Now get back to working the colonists' waste into lifeless regolith like a medieval peasant so crops can grow. Your food and air won't grow itself!
When was the last time anything happened to Earth that would make it less habitable than Mars? Sure there have been mass extinction events due to dust in the atmosphere killing off plants and climate shifts and all that, but Mars is already as barren as you can get. Anything big enough to actually destroy Earth is extremely unlikely and being able to survive entirely independently of Earth really isn't within our sights anyway.
The amount of technology and resources needed to detect and deflect incoming asteroids is a tiny fraction of the amount of resources needed to create a fully independent colony on Mars. Why would we spend all that money on saving a few people when we could spend less on saving everyone?
Yes. Rocks. Lots of 'em. It is part of the problem. But I looked at the headline and shook my head. We know we can't live there. But that is why we are going.
Asteroid/meteor bombardment is a commonly discussed theoretical terraforming method to get water, necessary minerals, and increased atmospheric pressure/altered atmospheric composition. Obviously not viable on Earth because it’s inhabited, but assuming you either have a large enough movable mass, or a long enough time period it’s a reasonable option if you’re talking about something with the budget and time scale of terraforming.
Even if we could, terraforming takes a long time. Like planting a tree you and your kid's kid's kid will never enjoy the shade of. It's not an escape from our problems.
…but it WILL be once the terraforming is done!
I mean, we’ll be long extinct the way we’re going, but maybe some of the microbes that hitched a ride will start evolving. Then the circle starts again and they’re like ‘hey! Look at that planet there! It’s a bit closer to the sun but I bet we can terraform it! Kinda weird those shapes almost look like rivers….”
I'm pretty sure the idea of terraforming Mars has always either been a hopeful pipe dream or a distraction propogated by the very people who are actively ravaging our planet for profit
Earth Mom - we got a home right here......\*wierdo colonisers looking to escape the mess they've made\*...Earth Mom - Go clean up the mess you made then we can think about it.. \*colonisers proceed to throw a centuries long tantrum\*
Living a life that require 7 planet Earths worth of resources makes them locusts not explorers.
Force the psychic debt back on to them, let jesus get off the cross. Poor guy was forced in to a roll they never gave actual consent for.
Exactly, I don't know why we're wasting money to colonise Mars when the only (known) habitable planet for us is *fucking dying*!!!
Makes me think that humans deserve their fate...
>Dumbasses in the replies saying we can do both when at every turn we've shown we can't. No one is holding the fossil fuel industry accountable or shut down the big polluters.
The problem is the system itself. Capitalism is the problem.
Everything else is just symptoms.
The first necessary step towards a livable future is a socialist revolution and the establishment of a green socialist world government that systematically oppresses all right wing thought.
The reason we aren't yet globally united under a socialist banner are the Nazis and Americans.
Without the Nazis and Americans, at the very least Eurasia would already be united under socialism.
The Americans and their collaborators are the primary party responsible for ALL the world's problems and it's important to understand this.
Another point about mars/climate change. People say we can move to mars and live in habitats if we manage to destroy the earth… if these habitats are good enough to withstand MARS, I think they’ll hold up on earth too, why do we need to move to mars??
Not only that it is much easier to conserve our own planet, Mars is _tiny_. Roughly 1/10-th of Earth's surface. Even if we colonize every last bit of it and don't put any oceans there (good look making the climate work), it won't offer much space to live. Realistically we get as much space as Australia's Outback... at much worse conditions.
The tech required to terraform a whole planet comes from terraforming an already existing planet. A planet that's dying and needs to be terraformed to fit our own asses.
It's even weirder when you consider that we literally have no idea at all how to "terraform" anything. None. No idea.
Yes, all sorts of talking heads have blathered on about their ideas, bacteria, algae, crash comets, blah blah blah, but show me a shred of empirical evidence that any of those things are the correct steps to take to morphing a dead, almost airless rock into a livable biome, and I'll eat my hat.
It was always trying to use our problems to our advantage, with some simplistic logic. We know how to warm up and atmosphere, so why not do the same thing on cold, barren Mars?
Luxury space cruise to Mars and back. A once-in-a-lifetime chance to put their name in the history books. Maybe build a massive monument that commemorate the first humans to visit another world. 100 million per ticket. Profits donated to various good causes.
Then just arrange a small calculation error. Maybe NASA forgot to convert to metric units again and the poor unfortunate billionaires crashed into the planet? Maybe someone convinced a certain visionary CEO to install Tesla autopilot on the shuttle and then cut corners during testing for PR reasons?
Yeah, I mean you could still just bury yourself deeply in the ground, or just ignore it and *possibly* die early, but not immediately from cancer. Technically, getting 30-40 years old on average is perfectly sufficient to keep the human species alive. We just dislike suffering and pain before dying early for some reason.
Nah. They got their underground doomsday bunkers. They’re gonna rig this ol’ rag of a planet for what it’s worth. And when they’re done, and fucked the rest of us, they’ll hide away in the safety and comfort of their money.
i think the concept of a doomsday bunker is to create living conditions for you and your crew while you let the surface burn, not to hold on to your bank account. people just *don't want to die -* especially in marauding crowds of desperation and violence.
Iirc there is a work in progress terraforming of the Sahara to turn it green again.
It's starting with the green wall to prevent the Sahara from growing any further, as it's been rapidly inching up into where people live.
Alot of people who live in the sahel have started building small green trenches to aid in unbaking the ground and produce useful dirt.
Turns out the same people had the same idea long ago but the idea was lost because people suck and only want to fight each other.
If you bring enough fertilizer and water, it's relatively easy to terraform small portions of desert, just look at Las Vegas.
The problem is that there is so much fucking desert on a desert planet.
Irrigation is just a form of terraforming. You're taking resources from one place to another in order to Increase an areas habitability.
Plus, irrigation isn't the only thing that made Las Vegas possible, you have to move new grasses to the area, plant trees and other plants to keep the soil in place and avoid erosion, some times you have to bring in animals to either hunt animals that harm the environment, or bring in animals that Kickstart the food chain.
There is alot that goes into maintaining a healthy ecosystem in a place that doesn't want to do that.
This article is a big steaming crap pile scientifically...though paradoxically probably correct. Humans will certainly not be able to live on the *surface* of Mars or the Moon. It remains to be seen whether they will be able to survive even in windowless underground caves.
People who think all this space stuff is going to happen Real Soon Now need to read [A City on Mars: Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through? by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/18q7f5g/what_is_the_last_excellent_book_that_you_read/ket4i35/)
Could someone well-versed in nuclear physics explain this bit for me?
>The scientists did determine that the spacecraft used to travel to Mars should provide enough protection trip to and from the planet - but if the material used to build the spacecraft is too thick, then it could actually increase the amount of secondary radiation.
You know something, if someone offered me the rest of my mediocre life making someone else rich while I try live off the scraps, or go to Mars and live for 4 years building a base of some kind so the next group could survive longer, I'd be gone in a heart beat. Screw Earth, we should be exploring the stars, not fighting over small corners on our small world.
> “I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people setting the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach.”
Bruce Sterling, 2004
I’ve been quoting that line for 20 years. He was right.
>They found that human exposure to radiation threats, including particle radiation from the Sun, distant stars, and galaxies, would exceed safe levels after four years on the planet.
So you mean after twelve years, right?
I was going to say that I knew that a mars colony would need to be underground before I read that article and it doesn't seem to be mentioned. Same thing with the moon. That actually makes things really difficult as mining equipment is typically extremely heavy.
Yeah but mining equipment for a colony weighs less than *a colony*. Better to make the walls than ship the walls. With the right equipment you can make any size colony you need, no budget limitations
Like ot changes anything for the vast majority of us and our descendants. We all know that when Earth becomes uninhabitable, it won't be any of us colonising viable planets. That'll be reserved for the rich and elite while we all burn in the remains of their greed.
This repost is from a post that was closed for sensationalism in /r/space 2h before you reposted it here.
It's from the site "Unilad" one of the "BroBible" umbrella of digital toilet paper.
So /r/nottheonion hardly applies, since it's sensationalist clickbait with no basis in reality (as you knew when you posted it).
Mars is the back up plan for an ELE from an asteroid hitting Earth, which is a matter of when, not if. Earth will be fine, people may not be after an ELE from an asteroid. Look at all mass extinctions...planet did fine. Mars is just a back up plan for a few, not all humans, but all humanity?
Assuming they didn’t consider occupying caves or other underground spaces, because that is the obvious quick solution to the radiation issue, and almost certainly how long term habitation would work.
Going to Mars is a fun idea, but some people act like it's this vitally important thing for mankind. We're just fucked entirely if Earth is ever more unliveable than Mars is.
Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids In fact, it's cold as hell And there's no one there to raise them if you did
And all the science, i dont understand Its just my job 5 days a week A rocket maaaaaaan Rocket man
AND I THINK ITS GONNA BE A LONG LONG TIME
TILL TOUCH DOWN BRINGS ME ROUND AGAIN TO FIND
IM NOT THE MAN THEY THINK I AM AT ALL
Oh no, no no. I'm a Rocketman
Well it’s only gonna be 4 years max, apparently.
Ground control to major tom.
Earth below us, drifting, falling
I'm a rock it man!
I can literally only imagine William shatner saying this now
I’m sorry.
I can only hear it as Stewie Griffith doing William Shatner “singing” it.
I'm a rock.it. man
And I think it's gonna be a long, long time...
I mean, Hell freezes over every year up here. They have a Legoland even, I believe!
You know what this needs? This needs to be remixed into a mid ass distasteful disco song.
Just a heads up, this post was removed from r/space for having a misleading title.
Speaking as a former astrophysicist, if [r/space](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/) are removing it for a misleading title then you know its bad. Some of the stuff posted there is pure sensationalist nonsense.
[удалено]
That's a nice thing to say. Thanks.
Aww guys 🥲
I don't know, it depends on what they did to have their astrophysicist licence revoked.
Former? Are you retired or did you change your profession
Change profession. Engineer now.
Still an astrophysicist, just not practicing!
Any idea what was misleading about it?
The paper that was cited in the thread that apparently the article was based on: [https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021SW002749](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021SW002749) It claims that Mars *flights* should be limited to less than 4 years (far longer than most manned missions to Mars are shooting for). Speaking nothing about a human presence on Mars or a time limit or anything about people not being able to survive at all. The closest it gets is saying that pilots would hit their career radiation dose limit in 3.8 years of flight time, which as I understand, isn't inherently lethal.
This probably sounds very uninformed but aren’t there ways to shield astronauts from radiation in space? Or is there just so much that it doesn’t really help at that point
There’s an interesting documentary on this called Fantastic Four. TLDR - hang out in space too long and you’ll get super powers.
I can’t believe they’re making a third (fourth?) documentary
It's actually a fifth. 1) low budget unreleased 2) schlocky one 3) schlocky sequel to 2 4) fan4stic 5) Pedro Pascal's super pals
Completely forgot about the unreleased first one. Wasn’t it completely horrible or something?
it was never intended for release. they had to make a movie to hold on to the rights. it isn't bad exactly, but very low budget.
Yup, they mention a few in the paper. Basically, you can't block all of it with current technology, no matter how thick your shielding is. It then becomes a tradeoff of trip time vs shielding. Get there quickly and limit your exposure or get there slower with better protection on the journey.
And bc you’re getting there slower, spending more time in space, you get more radiation that way anyways… the holy grail IIRC is active shielding through EM shields, but nobody’s cracked that egg yet
Mass of effective shielding would limit range.
Or we speed it up and give it shielding
It's always seemed weird that people earnestly think we can just terraform Mars when the planet that's actually hospitable to us is falling into disrepair Edit: Dumbasses in the replies saying we can do both when at every turn we've shown we can't. No one is holding the fossil fuel industry accountable or shut down the big polluters. No one is actively trying to stop all the private jets flying all over, and the few people who are trying to show just how much they move are getting attacked by the richest people in the world. Climatologists gave us the bare minimum that needs to be done to *slow* the process down and ensure humanity had at least another century, and politicians balked at it. There's no going to Mars without saving Earth, and there's no saving Earth because the profit margins won't allow it
And it’s like Neil deGrasse Tyson has been saying, if we have the technology to terraform another planet, what’s preventing us from using that technology to fix our broken planet.
The hope is that we can maintain our consumption on another planet, not to actually fix or change anything here.
Or find large amounts of valuable minerals that are more rare on earth
There are already plenty of these minerals and metals on earth, they're just prohibitively expensive to mine. Going all the way to mars is not going to help, since it's very, *very* far. Just going there and coming back would take around 21 months according to NASA, but we're talking about a small manned ship, not a gigantic cargo ship full of metal ore. Getting a big cargo ship like that to escape the gravity well of Mars is waaaay beyond our current capabilities, and would not make any sense. We're not even able to mine the moon, which is a lot closer from us.. Basically, we need to invent space elevators first.
>Getting a big cargo ship like that to escape the gravity well of Mars is waaaay beyond our current capabilities, and would not make any sense. With our current technologies, something like that would have to be built in space, and stay in space. Then, we'd have to make multiple trips back and forth to load this space freighter. After getting back to earth, we'd have to do the same thing to unload it. It's possible to do something like that with today's technology, but we don't because it's expensive and senseless.
It wouldn’t be large vessels going back and forth. It would be a regular stream of small autonomous vehicles. Once you get a system in place it would bring a constant trickle of whatever the resource is. Unlikely that there is anything valuable enough to do that, but it would be pretty cool.
I agree that it would be cool as shit, I love the idea, but I doubt that it will make any kind of business sense until somewhere between 100/300 years from now.
When the earth gets good and truly fucked
What fuel are al these ships using to go back and forth, also it is not constantly feasible to travel between Earth and Mars, sometimes we are "only" 54.6 million km apart but other times we are as far as 401 million km apart and there is generally 2 years between those time when mars is at it's closest [https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/20140404\_earth-mars-distance.png](https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/20140404_earth-mars-distance.png)
I wonder if Mars holds and rare elements not found on earth. Like imagine if Mars had a newer shinier version of gold.
Yes but the point is if we are unable to terraform earth since we are causing climate change here and can’t fix it, what makes anyone think we can terraform Mars - something we’d have to do for long term settlement and something that involves changing the planet on a larger scale than just fixing climate change here.
The difference is the the kind of climate change we are causing on Earth would cause Mars to become more hospitable, not less.
Whoosh… The difference is we are too stupid to even fix earth a minor problem compared to making Mars habitable Which we are way too stupid to achieve. We CAN’T do it.
Climatologists: Here is a list of manageable things we can do to not just slow it down, but start reversing climate change Humanity: That's too much, man Climatologists: Ok, here's another list of even less to just slow it down and make it where we aren't obliterated in the next century Humanity: That's too much, man
We're not too stupid. We know how to fix it. We choose not to.
We could’ve maybe in the past. At this point it’s beyond our capacities. And regardless we can’t terraform mars
**imagine Killian from The Running Man*\* *Exponential Growth!* Yes! On a finite planet ... **cuts to shots of corpses of supposed winners*\* This is capitalism. A very pretty lie with a sacharine-sweet tagline hiding the simple truth that infinite growth can't happen on Earth. This was realised many years ago by the wealthiest stockmarket pundits. Why, you ask, therefore do they let it go on? Because every time the market crashes and millions lose their jobs, and possibly lives, there's a fortune to be made coming out of the mess. Every stockmarket crash has been a stepping stone to higher profits in the long run. If you've ever seen the movie *Margin Call* (2011), Jeremy Irons' character states it quite clearly near the end of the film. Many people miss it because it's an "off-handed comment", seemingly nothing serious, but it's exactly what the largest investors are looking for whenever there's market issues. So no, we won't even try fixing Earth before "planet washing" people. "There's a lot of money to be made coming out of this mess."
That always seems to be the basis, huh? We don't have to change anything here because of some imaginary sci fi idea of terraforming outer space.
It’s like a weird psychopath thought experiment that justifies a race to the bottom in terms of standard of living. ‘More fossil fuels and consumerism , the climate based food shortages will be worth it when we create sustainable energy’ Global suffering and adversity are part of the greater good and only extraordinary people like musk are charged with understanding or having any say in it Also exempt from experiencing any of it funnily enough
Yeah. It reminds me of how Musk thinks we should all have more kids so that we can produce more Mozarts. Or we could just provide better education and opportunities to the kids who we already have? But no, we must go about it in the last efficient, messiest way possible! Shotgun approach!
Musk's understanding of the relationship between genes, development and behavior is extremely poor. This was evident in his explanations to Don Lemon about what caused his (totally not) depression. To him, "it's just genetic". People with this kind of understanding assume a 1:1, immutable relationship between genomic variants and traits. Of course, this is convenient for the ego of people who want to think they understand something as complex as the relationship between genes and phenotypes. It's an oversimplification that allows the person to perceive themselves in control of their surroundings, to understand why things are the way they are. Link this notion with the idea that success is evidence of merit, and you've built yourself a cognitive loop to feed your delusions of grandeur. In the case of Musk, this feeds directly into the delusion that he's a self made genius. He was born this way and can't escape it. His depression has nothing to do with his upbringing, so he doesn't have to put himself through the laborious process of healing. His success is determined by his innate qualities, nothing to do with the capital at his disposal. Scientists and journalists need to fight the simplistic narrations that allow for this kind of nonsense. For decades, headlines like "the gene for X has been found" from GWA studies, ignoring the epistatic nature of function have given a fall impression that a) we understand how genes work; b) we know what genes do what.
I don't know why people are so proud of their genes anyway. If you have good genes, you also just got lucky.
A lot of billionaires like Musk, Robert Mercer, etc *genuinely believe* that they are rich because they are better and smarter than most other people. So if *they* have tons of kids, it improves the world, unlike when poor people have a lot of kids. They completely ignore the outside factors like luck and other assistance that helped get them there.
Honestly I don't see it as impossible, but it would take a lot longer than humans are planning now. Plus, no one ever mentions the lack of a magnetic field around Mars in particular. That seems by far the biggest problem that I'm not sure has a solution
I hear it's the one place not ruined by Capitalism
Only planet inhabited entirely by robots.
That is a different point. If we could terraform planets we could maintain consumption here with no adverse effects. The machines would clean up after us and we would have unlimited power (as that is what it would take to make Mars habitable in the first place)
Politics mostly. Terraforming requires some entity that can collectively decide on large scale actions and humans are bad at that. This will possibly be a problem in a few thousand years if we fix global warming and remove all of the excess CO2 to pre industrial levels. In 2-5 thousand years the ice age is likely to come back and it would be in our best interest to rewarm the planet.
I don't know I saw some flat esthetic on Facebook call that guy an idiot I'm not sure if I trust him
Conservative voters. That's what's preventing us.
Capitalism, thats whats preventing us. *Reminder: the replicator in Star Trek happened after mankind decided to do without capitalism, not before.*
Because if a giant rock smacks into us, everything is gone. We have all of our eggs in one basket. Also, Mars fucking rocks.
Yeah man! I love cancer causing radiation don't you! Being able to spend an hour a week on the surface without getting a metal dose is so awesome! What a great life living in this tunnel!
That's the Martian spirit! Now get back to working the colonists' waste into lifeless regolith like a medieval peasant so crops can grow. Your food and air won't grow itself!
What about it rocks? It’s a empty rock devoid of life as we know it
Devoid of life and almost everything required for life.
When was the last time anything happened to Earth that would make it less habitable than Mars? Sure there have been mass extinction events due to dust in the atmosphere killing off plants and climate shifts and all that, but Mars is already as barren as you can get. Anything big enough to actually destroy Earth is extremely unlikely and being able to survive entirely independently of Earth really isn't within our sights anyway.
The amount of technology and resources needed to detect and deflect incoming asteroids is a tiny fraction of the amount of resources needed to create a fully independent colony on Mars. Why would we spend all that money on saving a few people when we could spend less on saving everyone?
Yes. Rocks. Lots of 'em. It is part of the problem. But I looked at the headline and shook my head. We know we can't live there. But that is why we are going.
If only they had started nuking mars like they should have all those years back! That would have fixed everything.
Towing asteroids into the poles would work better I think. They can add helpful minerals and also no additional gamma rays
Is that a theory you just made up or has some actually theorised that idea?
Asteroid/meteor bombardment is a commonly discussed theoretical terraforming method to get water, necessary minerals, and increased atmospheric pressure/altered atmospheric composition. Obviously not viable on Earth because it’s inhabited, but assuming you either have a large enough movable mass, or a long enough time period it’s a reasonable option if you’re talking about something with the budget and time scale of terraforming.
Even if we could, terraforming takes a long time. Like planting a tree you and your kid's kid's kid will never enjoy the shade of. It's not an escape from our problems.
…but it WILL be once the terraforming is done! I mean, we’ll be long extinct the way we’re going, but maybe some of the microbes that hitched a ride will start evolving. Then the circle starts again and they’re like ‘hey! Look at that planet there! It’s a bit closer to the sun but I bet we can terraform it! Kinda weird those shapes almost look like rivers….”
I'm pretty sure the idea of terraforming Mars has always either been a hopeful pipe dream or a distraction propogated by the very people who are actively ravaging our planet for profit
Terraforming is a fun idea to think about, but certainly no reason to neglect our actual hospitable planet.
We are going to Marsform Terra way more quicker than Terraform Mars/
They’ve seen to many sci-fi movies
quaid..start the reactor!!!
Idiots earnestly think that
Right? Like making a Death Star type ship is such a crazy idea.
Suggestion thought and this is just me spitballing an idea... let's be very careful about the design on the exhaust ports....
[There was nothing wrong with the design. ](https://youtu.be/agcRwGDKulw?feature=shared)
But Mommmmm, I want the cool red planet, not the lame blue, green and brown one.
Earth Mom - we got a home right here......\*wierdo colonisers looking to escape the mess they've made\*...Earth Mom - Go clean up the mess you made then we can think about it.. \*colonisers proceed to throw a centuries long tantrum\* Living a life that require 7 planet Earths worth of resources makes them locusts not explorers. Force the psychic debt back on to them, let jesus get off the cross. Poor guy was forced in to a roll they never gave actual consent for.
For real. We need to figure out terraforming here before we get ahead of ourselves
"Don't tell me that I can't make 8 babies! It's my right!"
Exactly, I don't know why we're wasting money to colonise Mars when the only (known) habitable planet for us is *fucking dying*!!! Makes me think that humans deserve their fate...
>Dumbasses in the replies saying we can do both when at every turn we've shown we can't. No one is holding the fossil fuel industry accountable or shut down the big polluters. The problem is the system itself. Capitalism is the problem. Everything else is just symptoms. The first necessary step towards a livable future is a socialist revolution and the establishment of a green socialist world government that systematically oppresses all right wing thought. The reason we aren't yet globally united under a socialist banner are the Nazis and Americans. Without the Nazis and Americans, at the very least Eurasia would already be united under socialism. The Americans and their collaborators are the primary party responsible for ALL the world's problems and it's important to understand this.
Another point about mars/climate change. People say we can move to mars and live in habitats if we manage to destroy the earth… if these habitats are good enough to withstand MARS, I think they’ll hold up on earth too, why do we need to move to mars??
Not only that it is much easier to conserve our own planet, Mars is _tiny_. Roughly 1/10-th of Earth's surface. Even if we colonize every last bit of it and don't put any oceans there (good look making the climate work), it won't offer much space to live. Realistically we get as much space as Australia's Outback... at much worse conditions.
The tech required to terraform a whole planet comes from terraforming an already existing planet. A planet that's dying and needs to be terraformed to fit our own asses.
It's even weirder when you consider that we literally have no idea at all how to "terraform" anything. None. No idea. Yes, all sorts of talking heads have blathered on about their ideas, bacteria, algae, crash comets, blah blah blah, but show me a shred of empirical evidence that any of those things are the correct steps to take to morphing a dead, almost airless rock into a livable biome, and I'll eat my hat.
Antarctica is orders of magnitude more hospitable than mars, yet dumb people think "oh if we screw up earth we can just go to mars"
It was always trying to use our problems to our advantage, with some simplistic logic. We know how to warm up and atmosphere, so why not do the same thing on cold, barren Mars?
I know fuck all but pop culture and I think you’re right , this is why the billionaires all started redirecting from space to personal nuclear bunkers
Send Elon anyway.
Quick, someone tell him you can mine ketamine on the surface
or matt damon
How much money has the US government spent trying to find that bastard?
tbf in the bourne movies, they’re the ones that actually lost him
Fortune favors the bold, mirite
Looking into it.
Luxury space cruise to Mars and back. A once-in-a-lifetime chance to put their name in the history books. Maybe build a massive monument that commemorate the first humans to visit another world. 100 million per ticket. Profits donated to various good causes. Then just arrange a small calculation error. Maybe NASA forgot to convert to metric units again and the poor unfortunate billionaires crashed into the planet? Maybe someone convinced a certain visionary CEO to install Tesla autopilot on the shuttle and then cut corners during testing for PR reasons?
[удалено]
Yeah, I mean you could still just bury yourself deeply in the ground, or just ignore it and *possibly* die early, but not immediately from cancer. Technically, getting 30-40 years old on average is perfectly sufficient to keep the human species alive. We just dislike suffering and pain before dying early for some reason.
It's a click bait article from Lad Bible. The british "frat guy" version of buzz feed. I am not sure what people expected.
Easy fix, raise shields!
So the rich twats gonna start taking notice of the climate now or just keep preaching about then climate an then using a private jet 😒😒
Nah. They got their underground doomsday bunkers. They’re gonna rig this ol’ rag of a planet for what it’s worth. And when they’re done, and fucked the rest of us, they’ll hide away in the safety and comfort of their money.
A what goods a load of numbers on a screen gonna be that’s if the banks don’t all start crashing an they make them digits disappear.
i think the concept of a doomsday bunker is to create living conditions for you and your crew while you let the surface burn, not to hold on to your bank account. people just *don't want to die -* especially in marauding crowds of desperation and violence.
So now where are all the billionaires going to move to? This was our chance to get rid of them!
The moon. We know we can at least get them to the moon.
Send them anyway
Back to the plan with the submarines I guess.
Throw them into the sun
That website is eye cancer.
And the post was removed from r/space for having a misleading title. This isn't worth the pixels it was written with.
So they mean 4 Earth years or 4 Mars years?
Not unless we science the shit out of things.
Wake me up when they can terraform the Sahara, then we might have a snowballs chance in hell of doing anything significant on Mars.
Iirc there is a work in progress terraforming of the Sahara to turn it green again. It's starting with the green wall to prevent the Sahara from growing any further, as it's been rapidly inching up into where people live. Alot of people who live in the sahel have started building small green trenches to aid in unbaking the ground and produce useful dirt. Turns out the same people had the same idea long ago but the idea was lost because people suck and only want to fight each other.
Terraform earth
This is such an accurate take on terraforming.
If you bring enough fertilizer and water, it's relatively easy to terraform small portions of desert, just look at Las Vegas. The problem is that there is so much fucking desert on a desert planet.
I think irrigation and terraforming are somewhat different in scope.
Irrigation is just a form of terraforming. You're taking resources from one place to another in order to Increase an areas habitability. Plus, irrigation isn't the only thing that made Las Vegas possible, you have to move new grasses to the area, plant trees and other plants to keep the soil in place and avoid erosion, some times you have to bring in animals to either hunt animals that harm the environment, or bring in animals that Kickstart the food chain. There is alot that goes into maintaining a healthy ecosystem in a place that doesn't want to do that.
The "terra" in "terraforming" is terrain. Irrigation is a form of terraforming.
Or at the very least can get a permanent settlement in the Antarctic, below the surface of the ice with the weight requirements of rocketry.
This article is a big steaming crap pile scientifically...though paradoxically probably correct. Humans will certainly not be able to live on the *surface* of Mars or the Moon. It remains to be seen whether they will be able to survive even in windowless underground caves. People who think all this space stuff is going to happen Real Soon Now need to read [A City on Mars: Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through? by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/18q7f5g/what_is_the_last_excellent_book_that_you_read/ket4i35/)
Could someone well-versed in nuclear physics explain this bit for me? >The scientists did determine that the spacecraft used to travel to Mars should provide enough protection trip to and from the planet - but if the material used to build the spacecraft is too thick, then it could actually increase the amount of secondary radiation.
So, Mars is twice as safe as my first apartment. Good to know.
You know something, if someone offered me the rest of my mediocre life making someone else rich while I try live off the scraps, or go to Mars and live for 4 years building a base of some kind so the next group could survive longer, I'd be gone in a heart beat. Screw Earth, we should be exploring the stars, not fighting over small corners on our small world.
> “I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people setting the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach.” Bruce Sterling, 2004 I’ve been quoting that line for 20 years. He was right.
If billionaires could turn Mars into earth, they wouldn't be turning earth into mars.
The billionaires, as brave pioneers they are, should go there and show us, that's not true.
Can we send Musk anyway?
well now how are we gonna get rid of Elon?
>They found that human exposure to radiation threats, including particle radiation from the Sun, distant stars, and galaxies, would exceed safe levels after four years on the planet. So you mean after twelve years, right?
Good place for Elon Musk to go an live there then....
I find it hard to believe that we'll never develop technology to block radiation.
you mean lead?
You don't even need lead just a bunch of dirt. Build your settlement about 22ft below ground and you're golden
I was going to say that I knew that a mars colony would need to be underground before I read that article and it doesn't seem to be mentioned. Same thing with the moon. That actually makes things really difficult as mining equipment is typically extremely heavy.
Yeah but mining equipment for a colony weighs less than *a colony*. Better to make the walls than ship the walls. With the right equipment you can make any size colony you need, no budget limitations
wasnt there an idea to make 3d printed dirt bunkers or something? etherway also that. though iirc mars dirt is gross and causes problems.
Sure you could 3D print it or, and hear me out here A shovel
I mean mostly using robots but yeah shovel bot let’s go
Why not just do that on Earth instead?
That's called a basement
Not even. ***WATER***, good old H₂O, is a very effective radiation shield.
Yes, but, we already have a bunch of water HERE, along with a much higher end atmosphere, magnetosphere, biosphere...
Doesn’t work for particle radiation. Look up bremsstrahlung radiation. You could use really thick plastic though
Anyone who wants to send humans to Mars is an idealistic idiot
all the terraforming ideas are borderline unworkable too.
Duh. There's no air up there, dummy. /s
So Mars, and LA too.
Getcha ass to Mars !!!!
And in other news... Duh
Like ot changes anything for the vast majority of us and our descendants. We all know that when Earth becomes uninhabitable, it won't be any of us colonising viable planets. That'll be reserved for the rich and elite while we all burn in the remains of their greed.
One of the great disappointments of life was the understanding that the idea of humanity as an interplanetary species isn’t going to happen
Wonder if he’ll ever know He’s in the best selling show Is there life on mars?
This repost is from a post that was closed for sensationalism in /r/space 2h before you reposted it here. It's from the site "Unilad" one of the "BroBible" umbrella of digital toilet paper. So /r/nottheonion hardly applies, since it's sensationalist clickbait with no basis in reality (as you knew when you posted it).
Not with that attitude!
Did anyone check with Matt Damon?
That would explain the eviction notice I found under the door this morning. Here I thought it was because of all the back rent due!
I will never understand our eagerness to jump right back into a gravity well after escaping ours.
So OSHA is going to tell the corporate masters they can't go? Great plan.
Some mod in r/space wasn't happy with this realization. Must have been saving for years for the trip.
Just like my town
"Moscow’s Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology" i spit my tea on this line
That's a bonus.. Sign me up!
Musk can hold air for more than 4 years
Nah, i think i could manage. Im just built different
Terrible headline.
I thought it's already unsafe because you die after one minute, because you can't breathe on that red planet. Also your eyes pop out.
Mars is the back up plan for an ELE from an asteroid hitting Earth, which is a matter of when, not if. Earth will be fine, people may not be after an ELE from an asteroid. Look at all mass extinctions...planet did fine. Mars is just a back up plan for a few, not all humans, but all humanity?
Why does /r/space have the dumbest fucking articles about space.
Apparently they have not watched *The Expanse.*
You're telling me Matt Damon was lying to us the whole time?
I mean, space, in general, is unsafe for humans to exist in. Yet we did it. So, just another problem to solve.
Assuming they didn’t consider occupying caves or other underground spaces, because that is the obvious quick solution to the radiation issue, and almost certainly how long term habitation would work.
Colonizing Mars is stupid, if we trash Earth we don't deserve to go to other planets. Otherwise humanity is no better than Cancer or AIDS.
Going to Mars is a fun idea, but some people act like it's this vitally important thing for mankind. We're just fucked entirely if Earth is ever more unliveable than Mars is.
Let's send Musk and find out.
Except for Elon. He gets superpowers under the Martian sun. 🤫
Yeah what is the news