Would you mind elaborating on your first sentence a bit more? I personally feel that the tools we create and lessons we learn to be able to live on Mars could be a tremendous benefit to us and Earth.
Not OP, but I feel similar way - these lessons can be learned here on earth(colony on the bottom of the ocean?) Or simply on the moon, without going all the way to mars. It looks like due to radiation anyone living in mars would have to live underground anyway, so what's the difference between that and a habitat on the moon? Except for the moon being infinitely easier to get to and back.
>Not OP, but I feel similar way - these lessons can be learned here on earth(colony on the bottom of the ocean?)
Except we DIDN'T learn them. We've only developed these technologies when necessary and not before.
Look at space power sources. Sure, Earth could have been using solar power for longer than it has (and we could've started the process cost improvement curve much earlier), but we didn't. We pretty much used fossil fuels. But for space, we've been using almost exclusively solar power nearly from the beginning. Space provided a critical early demand for improving solar power.
Also, Mars has a CO2 atmosphere that (at likely altitude) shields from all micrometeorites and virtually all solar flare radiation. At Curiosity's site, an astronaut could spend 35 hours a week unshielded on the surface (which is much more than a typical American spends outside in a week) without exceeding terrestrial radiation limits. Mars also has lots of free iron in the form of iron nickel meteorites spotted by rovers and just sitting on the surface. It has water all over the surface in the soil and even in the air (not to mention vast glaciers). And the air provides CO2, which can be split into Oxygen plus CO fuel. In addition, the atmosphere provides nitrogen and Argon. The geology of Mars has been greatly impacted by hydrology, like on Earth, so you have similar concentrations of ores. And the gravity is significantly higher. So there are all sorts of advantages of Mars over the Moon.
> what's the difference between that and a habitat on the moon?
Gravity and the hope of terraforming.
You’re underestimating the power of inspiration. Saving the planet is dreary business. Colonising a new one is exciting. Those callings motivate different people in different ways. Constraining us to one problem means those who might have been inspired to study chemistry to terraform Mars find it more attractive to go into finance.
I don't know if the Moon is really "infinitely" easier to get to and back - in a real sense the Moon is "most of the way there" - getting to Mars surface is only 25% more delta-v than the Moon, and that's without considering that aero-braking is available when you're landing on Mars.
The round trip is harder, sure, but we're talking maybe a factor of 10 rather than infinity.
Living in space is not fun, it is not natural, it is physically and mentally demanding which is why so much training goes into creating professionals which do it full time - there is no leisure, it is at best eustress, and I think space gets romanticized by the individual in ways which don't track with the actual work required to get us to be a species with two homes.
And the act of terraforming Mars to be Earth-like is nothing less than a titanic feat. The ways in which our world are fine-tuned to be bountiful would take more than several decades worth of missions - at least! - to even be mostly tractable on small segments of Mars, even with internal habitation. There will be failures. We will occasionally overextend like we do in every large project on Earth. What resources these projects? What's our buffer when they fail, even temporarily?
Meanwhile the physical means exist now to regenerate the Earth's environment and live sustainable yet happy lives. But the move from here to there requires decades long initiatives with little in the way of immediate profit. Things like safe nuclear power, permaculture and forest farms plus directed soil renewal, scalable water filtering, plastic substitutes; or scaling back conspicuous consumption and eliminating planned obsolescence in favor of efficient use of existing products along with the repair and maintenance of older ones.
Yet the reason why these problems are intractable is collective action, not unknown means. Dealing with Mars is both a longer term project than rejuvenating the Earth, and its perceived tractability stems from the way it looks conceptually simpler from a coordination standpoint if you ignore the civilization that makes it possible - just NASA and Elon right?
gambiting|5 years ago
Robotbeat|5 years ago
Except we DIDN'T learn them. We've only developed these technologies when necessary and not before.
Look at space power sources. Sure, Earth could have been using solar power for longer than it has (and we could've started the process cost improvement curve much earlier), but we didn't. We pretty much used fossil fuels. But for space, we've been using almost exclusively solar power nearly from the beginning. Space provided a critical early demand for improving solar power.
Also, Mars has a CO2 atmosphere that (at likely altitude) shields from all micrometeorites and virtually all solar flare radiation. At Curiosity's site, an astronaut could spend 35 hours a week unshielded on the surface (which is much more than a typical American spends outside in a week) without exceeding terrestrial radiation limits. Mars also has lots of free iron in the form of iron nickel meteorites spotted by rovers and just sitting on the surface. It has water all over the surface in the soil and even in the air (not to mention vast glaciers). And the air provides CO2, which can be split into Oxygen plus CO fuel. In addition, the atmosphere provides nitrogen and Argon. The geology of Mars has been greatly impacted by hydrology, like on Earth, so you have similar concentrations of ores. And the gravity is significantly higher. So there are all sorts of advantages of Mars over the Moon.
JumpCrisscross|5 years ago
Gravity and the hope of terraforming.
You’re underestimating the power of inspiration. Saving the planet is dreary business. Colonising a new one is exciting. Those callings motivate different people in different ways. Constraining us to one problem means those who might have been inspired to study chemistry to terraform Mars find it more attractive to go into finance.
caf|5 years ago
The round trip is harder, sure, but we're talking maybe a factor of 10 rather than infinity.
iso1210|5 years ago
bordercases|5 years ago
And the act of terraforming Mars to be Earth-like is nothing less than a titanic feat. The ways in which our world are fine-tuned to be bountiful would take more than several decades worth of missions - at least! - to even be mostly tractable on small segments of Mars, even with internal habitation. There will be failures. We will occasionally overextend like we do in every large project on Earth. What resources these projects? What's our buffer when they fail, even temporarily?
Meanwhile the physical means exist now to regenerate the Earth's environment and live sustainable yet happy lives. But the move from here to there requires decades long initiatives with little in the way of immediate profit. Things like safe nuclear power, permaculture and forest farms plus directed soil renewal, scalable water filtering, plastic substitutes; or scaling back conspicuous consumption and eliminating planned obsolescence in favor of efficient use of existing products along with the repair and maintenance of older ones.
Yet the reason why these problems are intractable is collective action, not unknown means. Dealing with Mars is both a longer term project than rejuvenating the Earth, and its perceived tractability stems from the way it looks conceptually simpler from a coordination standpoint if you ignore the civilization that makes it possible - just NASA and Elon right?