You know what's terrifying to me about colonization? The chance of failure. It just seems...more probable. In the Americas there were numerous failed colonies. The Virginia company's Jamestown had half the colonist die in the first year, and 400 replacements came but by 1610 there were only 65 or so left alive. On Mars, there isn't a blade of grass, a gasp of air, and perhaps not many drinks of water waiting for us.
It'd be agonizing to read or watch daily reports (if we're allowed to see them) about colonists dying of starvation, thirst or asphyxiation (or something else!), one by one until the transmissions simply stopped. I know these are the risks but that doesn't lessen the dread when it happens.
One thing that reminds me is The Lady Be Good, a WW2 plane crashed in the Libyan desert. A few of the crew members wandered off. The co-pilot's last diary entry is kind of chilling (http://ladybegood.net/diaries/index.htm): " No help yet, very (unreadable) cold nite."
> There are 7 billion people on the planet and we're all going to be dead in about 100 years. Stop being afraid.
I never said we shouldn't go. You did not refute my central point. Instead, you seem to be implying that I am saying we shouldn't go because of my fear of the danger which is tantamount to calling me a coward. I don't know why you would say such a mean thing. :(
That's one way to look at it. Another way is that this is totally irrelevant to any real individual's world view: Why should the fact that people die and suffer make death and suffering somehow things to be ignored?
I stopped riding motorcycles because the knowledge of the risk I was taking became too much. But if we simply say "well, people die, we'll all be dead soon enough," not only do we give ourselves license to simply ignore a whole lot of awful things that either should change or could change our perspective, we throw out the logic we'd otherwise sensibly apply to our own lives.
Most of us make enough poor decisions as it is without the additional rationalization "none of it matters in the long term anyway."
There's a lot of americans that have bad blood with the space program; deaths in a colonization program would just fuel them.
I'm pretty sure the number of deaths doesn't matter either. Only a few people died in the boston bombings and that didn't stop the entire country from turning upside down over it for a few weeks.
That's why I think that China, given time, might be in a better position for Mars colonization. Democracy is afraid of bold moves in space, while the Chinese regime will see it as a long-term chance to bolster it's position in the eyes of common people.
The willingness for a ordinary Chinese man to see his sons die in car crashes, wars or terraformed planets is exactly the same as it is for any other ordinary father anywhere else and anywhen.
Just because governments may be willing to advance on a wave of bodies, does not make it something the population will tolerate, or for long.
Those are the risks. It would be naïve of us to completely disregard them no matter how exciting the news of colonization would be. The moon landing, for example, almost didn't happen at the last minute due to some unforeseen (yet masterfully handled) issues during the landing itself.
I don't think (hopefully avoided) disasters will keep future colonists from following in the footsteps of their predecessors. After all, look how many people perished reaching the poles or climbing Everest. They do it because want to, not necessarily because they can or because it's safe.
> They do it because want to, not necessarily because they can or because it's safe.
I think they'd do it for the money some how. In the Americas, that was mostly the motivation for the Virginia Company and the Massachusetts Bay Company were commercial ventures. People went to Jamestown hoping to find gold. Eventually word got out that the survival rate was in the very low double-digit percentage and they had to start offering people large tracts of land. Eventually the colonies started to export tobacco back to Europe and the tax revenues generated was always welcome.
If those colonists go, it'll because they're dying to get rich.
I can't deny some of the drive for exploration is financially driven, but you'll find no shortage of volunteers just to claim the bragging rights. Then, of course there's an entire legion of folks ready to do anything for God and Country, so plenty of volunteers there too.
OTOH, most seventeenth-century colonists got on ships expecting their existing knowledge of agriculture, medicine, construction, diplomacy, warfare, etc. to be as applicable in the new world as it was in the old.
But we already know that Mars can't naturally sustain human life, and that colonists will need to build and maintain self-contained systems to grow food, clean water, recycle/dispose of waste, protect them from the elements, etc. And we already know how Mars differs from Earth in available solar energy and atmospheric composition; we understand in advance what resources might be extracted from Martian rock and soil.
So we can prototype Martian survival systems in advance, and simulate them, prior to actually going to Mars, something that seventeenth-century colonists not only lacked the means to do, but which likely never even occurred to most of them in the first place.
I'm sure there will still be "unknown unknowns" for the colonists to deal with, but I doubt that the risk exposure will be quite as life-or-death as the Jamestown or Roanoke colonists' was.
I think complacency and assurance of success played a role in the failures of early colonies. Did people really know it would be that hard? Certainly in the case of colonizing Mars, people will know about the lack of air, water, etc, and will rigorously prepare for them, with more advanced technology to boot. All things considered, I feel a Martian colonization effort today has a much better chance of success than the early American colonies. Not guaranteed, but better.
Strangely, there's probably a huge amount of people who would love nothing more than to have all of that attention and then die on mars with everyone watching.
Mars does have a risk that the early settlers didn't have though, which is an instantaneous death of the entire community due to some type of life support system failure. That would be extremely heartbreaking.
I'd hope that by the time there's attempts at a major colony on Mars, we'd be smart enough to set up multiple redundant systems for everything even if it costs more...
It would be very hard to terraform Mercury which makes it a bad candidate for the long run. It would be very hard, but Mars would be the best planet to terraform: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars
I don't think terraforming is necessarily the best way to prioritize initial colonization. Access to food, energy, and other resources are what should be initially prioritized. This still means that Mars is an excellent candidate for colonization, because of proximity to the asteroids.
I don't think so. Technically the plan outlined there is feasible, but the problem is getting there.
Flying that close to the sun would multiply the radiation problem considerably. Then you'd have to land and drill underground and build enough to get a foothold before you died.
Finally, there's the fact that you'd have to live underground. You could never really live on the surface.
For Venus, yes, you could float around in the atmosphere, but where would you get raw materials? The surface is too hostile to mine.
The cycler station is an interesting idea. Seems to me you'd still have to accelerate the crew and supplies to an Earth-Mars orbit every time, but the habitat would only have to be accelerated to that orbit once.
When we can pay for it in rainy day cash and aren't borrowing $20 a day for every taxpayer like we are now, dooming the kids, then I'll gladly support it.
A notable quote :
"We hope that Professor Langley will not put his substantial greatness as a scientist in further peril by continuing to waste his time, and the money involved, in further airship experiments. Life is short, and he is capable of services to humanity incomparably greater than can be expected to result from trying to fly..." from Dec. 10, 1903
You don't pick and choose what breakthroughs in technology, science and medicine will result from the Space Program (as has already been demonstrated). Simply developing one solution leads to a plethora of others that will go on to benefit society in numerous unforeseen ways.
NASA puts out a wonderful publication of the branches and side products, services and technologies that has come about as a result of the space program thus far (this is since the moon landing). Hint: It's more than just "Velcro".
Space programs of Mars exploration caliber stimulates all, read that word again please, all branches of sciences. All branches of engineering. All branches of mathematics. All branches of biology and medicine. The benefit to society is nearly incalculable, but if you must put a dollar amount, it's well above a paltry $trillion (the actual cost will be in the billions, far less than the monthly consumption of the pointless war in Iraq).
The tragedy that plagues all of our generations, it seems, is that great feats that suddenly leaps in progress in all areas of our lives have to fight through an insurmountable myopia. Similar to what happened soon after landing on the moon.
Part of me hopes China colonizes Mars first. America is long overdue for a lesson in hubris. Maybe they'll appreciate the new breakthroughs in the above mentioned fields more than the American populace can.
I'm all for a Mars colony, if we're debt free and it's paid for with cash. We just can't afford the investment now. It really isn't a case of "can't afford to not do it".
If China colonizes Mars, Americans will almost certainly reap the benefits you describe, at little cost. It wouldn't be a lesson in hubris so much as smart to step aside.
It actually is. The U.S. hasn't ever been "debt free" however arbitrarily that's determined. The late 60's - 70's wasn't a great time for the U.S. economically since the 50's boom was starting to wind down.
What really triggered growth afterwards, setting the stage for the early 80's boom, was the space program. Specifically the myriad of branch industries, technologies and services it spawned both directly and indirectly.
In plain words: Space builds jobs and we really can't afford not to do it.
Once Russia lost the moon, they were already in sour shape. They had arguably better technology to do what they did (the N1, though ridiculed for being overly complex, was actually based on proven technology and in-house innovation), they were safer and more cautious. The U.S. "won" not just because the N1 failed, but the agency and the political sphere took grave risks (costing 3 astronauts their lives).
But as Tyson himself says, there are only three main drivers for exploration:
1) The "I don't want to die" driver. Apollo falls under this since those damn Commies were involved.
2) The "I don't want to die poor" driver. The Columbus voyages fall under this
3) The praise of royalty and deities (don't see much of this except for the 700 Club and Scientology; are they building spaceships?)
The first two are sort of contained in a race against China. If the U.S. "loses", it will suffer the same fate as Russia; irrelevance.
"Build jobs" isn't a good enough reason. Chairman Mao built lots of jobs by having people melt their pans to create new pans. The Great Chinese Famine came next, predictably.
If the jobs create more benefit than not, you're right. But space programs don't do that, not today anyway. Nowadays they are closer to melting pans to create new pans than they are to mining ore to make new pans.
Suppose we got our laptops today because of the Apollo program. Will we get 10X faster computers because of a Mars colony? Unlikely. And even if we could, it's more efficient to get that benefit from investment directly into computers rather than indirectly through a Mars colony. I don't buy the argument that we must have a super lofty goal to get the side benefits we really wanted.
This is all academic anyway. The US really can't afford a Mars colony, as in people won't loan us the money at sufficiently low interest. The interest rates the US pays have been creeping up. Things may seem rosy at the moment but the house of cards is actually crumbling. The US now spends $220 billion annually on interest on debt, projected to reach $1 trillion in just 7 years. Even without added debt for Mars colonization the consequences of our borrowing will surely be severe within a decade. Paying down our debt is the best big investment we can make.
You can't honestly believe that we've made all of the advances in space flight that we can. This is certainly not a pan-melting exercise.
Building self-sustaining habitats in a zero-g, irradiated environment where resupply is extremely infrequent is very different from building Apollo or the Space Shuttle. You could argue that the ISS is a stab at this, but it's not self-sustaining at all. Maybe someday, but we haven't done it.
The construction of a colony on Mars wouldn't be a PR or purely scientific exercise, either. If it's enabled by having jumpoff points near the Earth and Mars, there will be enormous advances in robotics, because the potential payoff will be huge. The first company to successfully mine asteroids will reap a huge windfall in platinum and other metals that are rare on Earth. These metals becoming cheaper and more abundant will have large effects on the terrestrial economy because suddenly, whole new classes of devices become cost-effective (fuel cells, for example).
There will be other advances in science from this, beyond the pedestrian "make existing tech faster" stuff, and it's not make-work. What you're saying now is exactly the myopia he's referring to, and the costs involved are not even on the scale of a pointless war.
You make good points. Like I said, I support a Mars colony under the right conditions. I say it's myopia to ignore a much better investment. All the benefits you name pale in comparison to the benefits (or loss savings) of paying down the debt. If we proceeded on a Mars colony now, the US would likely slip into a Greater Depression before we could reap a benefit large enough to prevent that. Due in part to those wars we're too close to the abyss. The best choice is to get away from the abyss before focusing attention elsewhere.
I'm not borrowing billions. Are you? The only organization in America borrowing billions daily, that I'm aware of, is the federal government, and I certainly wouldn't want them involved in any Mars colony I'd join. Would you?
No, I wouldn't either. It's a safe bet that most everyone in the discussion of a mega space project like this one assumes the US gov't will (borrow to) pay for it.
Well, it appears that the two data points that you and I can validated don't corroborate that hypothesis.
There are plenty of organizations that could successfully fund a Mars colony, and I'm sure there are many, many people who would donate to a crowdfunding campaign to make it happen outside the scope of any existing formalized organization.
We're not borrowing anything objectively real. We are "borrowing" fiat money that we can inflate or simply abandon any time we feel like it. If the US can't service its debt, it will simply devalue it.
If it was about anyone else on any other subject I'd agree.
Yet the select few that were lucky enough to get up there — and not even as far as Aldrin — really have ulterior motives[0] quite different than selling a few printed pages.
Is it really fair to call those motives ulterior? Pro-colonization people seem to be very up-front about the importance of having a "backup planet" (to ensure the human race continues if something were to happen to our own "fragile ball of life").
Also, he's been pushing for Mars for a while now, even saying a trip back to the Moon would be like reliving our glory days rather than doing real exploration.
And I believe Musk was truly saddened by Armstrongs attitude.
...
"I was very sad to see that," Musk tells "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley. "Those guys are heroes of mine, so it's really tough … I wish they would come and visit … see the hard work that we're doing here and I think that it would change their mind."
You know what I wouldn't mind seeing first? An unmanned base on the moon to work through the kinks of in-situ fabrication and resource extraction in an extraterrestrial environment. It wouldn't have to be too big and it could even be semi-tele-operated (given a lag time of seconds, rather than minutes or hours) by researchers and technicians on Earth.
If we're talking about sending people to Mars to live for long periods of time, and worrying about whether in doing so we're consigning them to miserable deaths, it seems like spending the money to work out the bugs in a non life-and-death situation might be a prudent idea. We've sent people to orbit the moon, we've landed people on the moon and robots on Mars, but we've never had people spending time on another world without relying entirely upon supplies they brought with them.
It'd be agonizing to read or watch daily reports (if we're allowed to see them) about colonists dying of starvation, thirst or asphyxiation (or something else!), one by one until the transmissions simply stopped. I know these are the risks but that doesn't lessen the dread when it happens.
One thing that reminds me is The Lady Be Good, a WW2 plane crashed in the Libyan desert. A few of the crew members wandered off. The co-pilot's last diary entry is kind of chilling (http://ladybegood.net/diaries/index.htm): " No help yet, very (unreadable) cold nite."