Musk wants to go to Mars because it’s completely impossible without twenty or thirty more years of research and engineering developments. He’s looking for fat government contracts without any intention of actually getting us to Mars, he just wants to grift off the taxpayer.
YsoL8 on
I’d be shocked if we ever go beyond 2 or 3 small moon research bases in my lifetime
The 6 month to 2 year travel time alone means that what would already one of the most complex and difficult projects ever attempted would also have to happen in slow motion in comparison with anything we are used to in modern life. You certainly couldn’t throw 3 or 4 rockets loaded up with completely untried equipment at the problem and call it a day.
We have no business going beyond the moon with people if we cannot even prove we can make it work for needed minimal endurances in the easiest place we could possibly try. Its just asking for 100% crew deaths.
rip1980 on
Eh, whatever it takes to make him go away.
madrocketman on
Mars Society has this weird fixation that Mars is the only useful destination in the long run. It entirely relies on the idea that you can extract all of the necessary materials and also terraform the planet with our current technology. I find it hilarious when Zubrin says, “Why the Moon is Unsuitable for Settlement.” Well, neither is Mars! Yeah, you have polar ice caps, and some of the minerals that would be useful. But Mars is so incredibly far away that there would be no practical use in having a colony there. It’s realistically a “cool let’s go visit,” and not much else. Let alone, we don’t have the technology to terraform it!
Contrast that to the Moon, which would have many more capabilities, Nuclear Fuel, Telescopes, Space Hotels within at most a multi-day return to Earth, etc. Alongside being able to visit the Moon like 200 more times than every time you could visit Mars.
“For the coming age of space settlement, the Moon compares to Mars as Greenland compared to North America during the age of European maritime expansion. Greenland was closer, and Europeans did visit it first. But it was too barren to support a vibrant new branch of human civilisation.” This analogy is silly when you think about it. European expansion didn’t focus on Greenland because there was material value and other valuable assets that could be extracted in North America. What is there to extract and make money off of on Mars? I can’t think of any reason that would make Mars more advantageous for colonization than the Moon in the 21st Century.
This also excludes any discussion about long-term human effects. Every time I go to a Mars Society event, they seem to dodge this question about how studies currently show, and by looking at places like Antarctica in the winter, that conditions on Mars would basically be incredibly depressing and soulless for the Astronauts. Add that with less gravity, basically grounding them to Mars for the rest of their life.
This isn’t even to mention that if you want a Mars colony, you probably want to test the long-term equipment and crew somewhere close. Which the Moon is closer by a lot. So even if you’re so fixated on Mars, I don’t see how you could conclude that colonization on the Moon would be a mistake. Because that seems to be a piece of the puzzle that we need to solve first before we can even consider long term habitation with no escape back to Earth if something goes wrong.
So yeah, I’m very much in support of doing Moon first. Because there’s no way that you can just directly go to Mars and do a colony with our current technology and limitations in knowledge.
4 Comments
Musk wants to go to Mars because it’s completely impossible without twenty or thirty more years of research and engineering developments. He’s looking for fat government contracts without any intention of actually getting us to Mars, he just wants to grift off the taxpayer.
I’d be shocked if we ever go beyond 2 or 3 small moon research bases in my lifetime
The 6 month to 2 year travel time alone means that what would already one of the most complex and difficult projects ever attempted would also have to happen in slow motion in comparison with anything we are used to in modern life. You certainly couldn’t throw 3 or 4 rockets loaded up with completely untried equipment at the problem and call it a day.
We have no business going beyond the moon with people if we cannot even prove we can make it work for needed minimal endurances in the easiest place we could possibly try. Its just asking for 100% crew deaths.
Eh, whatever it takes to make him go away.
Mars Society has this weird fixation that Mars is the only useful destination in the long run. It entirely relies on the idea that you can extract all of the necessary materials and also terraform the planet with our current technology. I find it hilarious when Zubrin says, “Why the Moon is Unsuitable for Settlement.” Well, neither is Mars! Yeah, you have polar ice caps, and some of the minerals that would be useful. But Mars is so incredibly far away that there would be no practical use in having a colony there. It’s realistically a “cool let’s go visit,” and not much else. Let alone, we don’t have the technology to terraform it!
Contrast that to the Moon, which would have many more capabilities, Nuclear Fuel, Telescopes, Space Hotels within at most a multi-day return to Earth, etc. Alongside being able to visit the Moon like 200 more times than every time you could visit Mars.
“For the coming age of space settlement, the Moon compares to Mars as Greenland compared to North America during the age of European maritime expansion. Greenland was closer, and Europeans did visit it first. But it was too barren to support a vibrant new branch of human civilisation.” This analogy is silly when you think about it. European expansion didn’t focus on Greenland because there was material value and other valuable assets that could be extracted in North America. What is there to extract and make money off of on Mars? I can’t think of any reason that would make Mars more advantageous for colonization than the Moon in the 21st Century.
This also excludes any discussion about long-term human effects. Every time I go to a Mars Society event, they seem to dodge this question about how studies currently show, and by looking at places like Antarctica in the winter, that conditions on Mars would basically be incredibly depressing and soulless for the Astronauts. Add that with less gravity, basically grounding them to Mars for the rest of their life.
This isn’t even to mention that if you want a Mars colony, you probably want to test the long-term equipment and crew somewhere close. Which the Moon is closer by a lot. So even if you’re so fixated on Mars, I don’t see how you could conclude that colonization on the Moon would be a mistake. Because that seems to be a piece of the puzzle that we need to solve first before we can even consider long term habitation with no escape back to Earth if something goes wrong.
So yeah, I’m very much in support of doing Moon first. Because there’s no way that you can just directly go to Mars and do a colony with our current technology and limitations in knowledge.