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 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:
By who's count? 500 years ago we were afraid to sail straight west, for fear of falling off the edge of the earth, or dying in the vast nothingness of the ocean. Will colonizing Mars pay off in terms of what we gain in materials? Absolutely not. But its the first step to the wider universe. What we will gain in knowledge of colonizing another world will pay off as we reach further out. There are other earth-like planets out there, and there could just as easily be new minerals and resources to discover, which could further fuel our ability to traverse the stars.

I'm not sure you understand the sheer difficulty of colonization and interplanetary/interstellar travel, or the vast quantities of physical resources available in our own solar system. It's not a question of technological ability standing in the way, it's the fact that there are easier ways to achieve any goal that would motivate those things. If you want minerals you mine asteroids, not planets where you have to get your minerals out of a planetary gravity well. If you want living space you make it out of less-habitable regions on earth, not mars. Or, better, you stabilize population growth so that no more living space is required. The only real reason to go out there is for pure scientific exploration, and there are very few situations where humans make more sense than spending the equivalent payload capacity on a swarm of robot probes.

And no, we weren't afraid to sail west out of fear of falling off the edge of the earth. Nobody disputed the fact that the earth was round, with no edges to fall off of. The only reason for not sailing west was that the distance before the next known land was far beyond the endurance of the ships available at the time. Columbus wasn't a brave explorer who proved everyone wrong, he was an idiot who got his distance calculations wrong and would have starved to death in the middle of the ocean if he hadn't found, by sheer luck, a previously unknown continent where he could replenish his supplies. I really wish that flat earth myth would die, because it has nothing to do with reality.

 Peregrine wrote:
If you want minerals you mine asteroids, not planets where you have to get your minerals out of a planetary gravity well.

If you want off-world manufacturing, you use the minerals found there, and ship the product out, not the raw materials. Asteroid mining would be the equivalent of off-shore oil platforms. Mars mining, if the placement of resources allows, would be more like an industrial complex, with a town nearby.
Launches off the surface and manufacturing both cause a lot of pollution, so lets stink up another planet.

 Skinnereal wrote:
Mars mining, if the placement of resources allows, would be more like an industrial complex, with a town nearby.

It's still dumb, because of the gravity well problem. There is nothing you can do on mars that would justify the vastly increased cost imposed by having to get it out of the planetary gravity well before you can use it. Space factories located near the asteroids make sense, because getting the finished product to its destination is (relatively) easy. Factories on mars don't.

 Ginsu33 wrote:
Nuclear bombardment is the only option, we will show the galaxy at large that humanity shall not suffer the existence of the Xeno, even at it's smallest and most insignificant forms.

And after that, we will strip-mine the planet of all resources and cover the surface of Mars with asphalt and factories. Progress!

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:


Aside from being pure fiction what would colonizing mars do to help with this? A hostile species showing up to kill or enslave us isn't going to stop just because we're on two planets instead of one. Not that they're likely to show up anyway, because the cost of interstellar travel is much greater than any conceivable reward.

By who's count? 500 years ago we were afraid to sail straight west, for fear of falling off the edge of the earth, or dying in the vast nothingness of the ocean. Will colonizing Mars pay off in terms of what we gain in materials? Absolutely not. But its the first step to the wider universe. What we will gain in knowledge of colonizing another world will pay off as we reach further out. There are other earth-like planets out there, and there could just as easily be new minerals and resources to discover, which could further fuel our ability to traverse the stars.

Gotta look past Mars, man.

Those other planets are pretty much unreachable in a Human lifetime though, given the fast distances involved. Even if somehow we'd do the impossible and find a way to travel at the speed of light, it would still take many lifetimes to reach most earth-like planets.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
Mars mining, if the placement of resources allows, would be more like an industrial complex, with a town nearby.

It's still dumb, because of the gravity well problem. There is nothing you can do on mars that would justify the vastly increased cost imposed by having to get it out of the planetary gravity well before you can use it. Space factories located near the asteroids make sense, because getting the finished product to its destination is (relatively) easy. Factories on mars don't.

Only if you assume there is zero technological advancement in that time period that makes getting stuff from the surface into space more economical.

Besides, the point of colonizing Mars would be to, you know, have people live there. Resources on Mars would be used to build the new colony, not necessarily shipped back to Earth.

Also, assuming that Mars has no resources is flawed. Its an entire planet, which does have a molten core like Earth. It will have mineral deposits of some kind or another. Its not going to be all useless rock.

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:
Well we've pretty much always known that the first colonists are on a one-way trip, just pack a bit of Lysol for whatever doesn't fit into our petri dishes and call it a day.

Colonizing space is our future, so we need to find a proper way to get rid of germs for the people who have to return to Earth.

Alcohol and heat. Just gotta make sure the recipient of the cleanse has to survive.

Crispy78 wrote:
Yeah, from the point of view of the Fermi Paradox, finding signs of life next door would be absolutely devastating for our long-term outlook...

Which is why I'm suspecting that we are the only life forms in the galaxy so far to have developed civilization. Humanity is an anomaly.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Also, assuming that Mars has no resources is flawed. Its an entire planet, which does have a molten core like Earth. It will have mineral deposits of some kind or another. Its not going to be all useless rock.

And don't forget, even useless rock is just a conglomerate of other more fine grained rock powder thingys.....and you can always find a use for more refined rock powder thingys.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Only if you assume there is zero technological advancement in that time period that makes getting stuff from the surface into space more economical.

Delta-V numbers don't change no matter how much your technology advances. It will always require huge amounts of energy to get stuff into orbit from a planetary gravity well, so why would you want to add that extra cost when you can manufacture stuff on the same planet where it will be used?

Besides, the point of colonizing Mars would be to, you know, have people live there.

But what is the point of having people living there? People are a means to an end, not the purpose itself.

Also, assuming that Mars has no resources is flawed. Its an entire planet, which does have a molten core like Earth. It will have mineral deposits of some kind or another. Its not going to be all useless rock.

Of course it will have minerals, but they can't be profitably extracted compared to asteroid mining or minerals already on earth. Mars has no resources worth obtaining, which means there is no incentive to put a colony there.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Only if you assume there is zero technological advancement in that time period that makes getting stuff from the surface into space more economical.

Delta-V numbers don't change no matter how much your technology advances. It will always require huge amounts of energy to get stuff into orbit from a planetary gravity well, so why would you want to add that extra cost when you can manufacture stuff on the same planet where it will be used?

Besides, the point of colonizing Mars would be to, you know, have people live there.

But what is the point of having people living there? People are a means to an end, not the purpose itself.

Also, assuming that Mars has no resources is flawed. Its an entire planet, which does have a molten core like Earth. It will have mineral deposits of some kind or another. Its not going to be all useless rock.

Of course it will have minerals, but they can't be profitably extracted compared to asteroid mining or minerals already on earth. Mars has no resources worth obtaining, which means there is no incentive to put a colony there.

I agree with you on the practicalities around material production, etc. The key motivator to me is species survival; all it takes is for Earth to get whanged by one rogue asteroid and we’re done (and asteroids are one of the easier threats to deal with). Having self-sustaining populations on more than one body, even within a single system, dramatically increases our long term resilience. As I understand it, it could even work against gamma ray bursts, as they’re short enough duration that some areas of the solar system would likely be missed.


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And then there’s the more esoterical “to go where no one has gone before” reason, which is totally impractical, but very romantic and cool.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Besides, the point of colonizing Mars would be to, you know, have people live there.

But what is the point of having people living there? People are a means to an end, not the purpose itself.

That's where we differ. To me, people are the purpose, and the technology is just a means to make that happen. I admit that any intelligent threat would not be foiled by humans being on two neighboring planets, instead of one. But even in that clip about the Great Filter, many of these threats are not sentient. If someone burns off Earth's atmosphere, or causes nuclear winter on Earth, Mars should be fine.If a giant asteroid slams into Earth, Mars will be fine. Let's say a home grown plague breaks out on Earth- you have months to quarantine Mars. Even if you don't make the quarantine, you'll have species adaptations occurring in a Martian population. It is not a perfect solution- but it vastly increases our species' long term chances of survival.

I'm not willing to rule out that possibility because we can still fit more humans onto Earth, or that the gravity well makes resource exploitation unfeasible.

Well, Matt Damon had to leave something behind before we saved him again.

 Peregrine wrote:
Of course it will have minerals, but they can't be profitably extracted compared to asteroid mining or minerals already on earth. Mars has no resources worth obtaining, which means there is no incentive to put a colony there.

Throughout this entire conversation, you're making the assumption that human civilization and infrastructure evolves and develops along a linear path. This is wrong. Infrastructure expands and contracts, or becomes redundant based on what civilization wants or needs. Without an infrastructure and demand to sustain the size of the market/economy/society, yes it gets really hard to make a profit or sustain an operation for a long period. But with the infrastructure in place, history has shown that even the costliest enterprises become relatively easy to what it was at the beginning.

There are also certain minerals and rocks that are becoming exponentially harder to find and extract. This is one of the larger reasons why people like Elon Musk is trying to get into space. There IS a point where mining deeper into the Earth is going to cost more than going into space.

I think one issue with the "we have the power we can plunder it" approach is if there is life on Mars it represents a unique evolutionary path and with that would have unique genetics which has a value in and of itself.

We can get a million tons of iron, but is that worth wiping out a strain of microorganisms that may produce the next equivalent of penicillin?

It would be more likely to be the next Bubonic plague.

But we could easily isolate the organisms in a contained environment and scrub the natural environment so we get the best of both options.

 Grey Templar wrote:
It would be more likely to be the next Bubonic plague.

But we could easily isolate the organisms in a contained environment and scrub the natural environment so we get the best of both options.

Or governments race one another to be the first to develop an incredibly deadly new bioweapon. New arms race! Space bacteria missile gap!
I don't put much trust into Human nature. We are greedy and highly destructive. If there is something on Mars and it is not viable for military or commercial purposes it is probably going to be destroyed at some point.

 ScarletRose wrote:
I think one issue with the "we have the power we can plunder it" approach is if there is life on Mars it represents a unique evolutionary path and with that would have unique genetics which has a value in and of itself.

We can get a million tons of iron, but is that worth wiping out a strain of microorganisms that may produce the next equivalent of penicillin?

That would depend on what benefit the organism can offer us, whether its a real benefit, or potential benefit, and what the weight of those benefits are compared to an industrial one. And that is a real decision that people will make. No one would ever discount the idea to harvest something for its industrial use just because something can or can't offer a scientific benefit. Although, the optimal solution is to have both, and that's what everyone usually aims for.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
It would be more likely to be the next Bubonic plague.

But we could easily isolate the organisms in a contained environment and scrub the natural environment so we get the best of both options.

Or governments race one another to be the first to develop an incredibly deadly new bioweapon. New arms race! Space bacteria missile gap!
I don't put much trust into Human nature. We are greedy and highly destructive. If there is something on Mars and it is not viable for military or commercial purposes it is probably going to be destroyed at some point.

Maybe. But really there are three options for what happens if we encounter alien microorganisms in a place like Mars.

Most likely scenario: Alien bacteria have little defense against our own microorganisms, who have the advantage of living in the bacterial equivalent of Fury Road where everything is a tough son of a gun, and as a result get annihilated by our super Earth bacteria.

Next most likely scenario: Alien bacteria are able to take advantage of us having no immune defenses and run rampant.

Least likely scenario: Alien bacteria can provide a beneficial advantage, like a super vaccine.

4th option; Mars and Terran bacteria hybridise and form a new, superior strain and...well, have you seen Prometheus?

 LumenPraebeo wrote:
Throughout this entire conversation, you're making the assumption that human civilization and infrastructure evolves and develops along a linear path. This is wrong. Infrastructure expands and contracts, or becomes redundant based on what civilization wants or needs. Without an infrastructure and demand to sustain the size of the market/economy/society, yes it gets really hard to make a profit or sustain an operation for a long period. But with the infrastructure in place, history has shown that even the costliest enterprises become relatively easy to what it was at the beginning.

Well yes, infrastructure happens to fit needs. The point is that there will never be any need for industry on mars that would drive the creation of infrastructure. Infrastructure may make the problem easier, but only in that relative sense. Delta-V numbers are still going to be exactly the same, far greater than the alternatives. And that will continue to make it so overwhelmingly expensive that it never becomes a viable or appealing option.

There are also certain minerals and rocks that are becoming exponentially harder to find and extract. This is one of the larger reasons why people like Elon Musk is trying to get into space. There IS a point where mining deeper into the Earth is going to cost more than going into space.

Sure. Mining in space has potential. But we're talking about asteroid mining, not planetary mining, where the delta-V requirements are immensely lower.


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 Jadenim wrote:
The key motivator to me is species survival; all it takes is for Earth to get whanged by one rogue asteroid and we’re done (and asteroids are one of the easier threats to deal with). Having self-sustaining populations on more than one body, even within a single system, dramatically increases our long term resilience. As I understand it, it could even work against gamma ray bursts, as they’re short enough duration that some areas of the solar system would likely be missed.

But why do we really care about this problem? If earth takes a gamma ray burst and everyone on earth dies those billions of people are still dead. Is it really going to be any consolation that some kind of similar people elsewhere exist? IMO, not really. Dead is dead. Individuals matter, not the species. And colonizing other planets does nothing to help individuals survive.

Mostly the benefit of a mission to Mars would be the technological advancements that would need to be made to make such a trip feasible, and then the refinements made during further trips.

Same as the benefits of the moon missions. Nothing of value was gained from the moon's surface, but tons of advancements were made during the space race to get there that are the foundations of things today.

Although frankly nothing can be initially gained by placing a functioning base on Mars, other than development of the technology for atmosphere generation and the like, that can't be done by first attempting the same thing on the Moon, with the Moon having the added morale-based benefit of a possible rescue if things went wrong. The PR nightmare of watching astronauts die on the transit towards, or on the surface of, Mars would likely cripple any such space industry for good.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Mostly the benefit of a mission to Mars would be the technological advancements that would need to be made to make such a trip feasible, and then the refinements made during further trips.

Same as the benefits of the moon missions. Nothing of value was gained from the moon's surface, but tons of advancements were made during the space race to get there that are the foundations of things today.

Although frankly nothing can be initially gained by placing a functioning base on Mars, other than development of the technology for atmosphere generation and the like, that can't be done by first attempting the same thing on the Moon, with the Moon having the added morale-based benefit of a possible rescue if things went wrong. The PR nightmare of watching astronauts die on the transit towards, or on the surface of, Mars would likely cripple any such space industry for good.

The Moon is much less interesting than Mars though. The moon is not a planet. It does not even have an atmosphere. If you are going through all the expenses of placing a base on some extraterrestrial body I am almost 100% they will pick Mars over the Moon. As much for the prestige as for the additional scientific benefits that it would bring.
That said, I think a base, or even a manned mission to Mars is still a long way off. There is just too much we do not know yet. We don't even know if Humans can physically handle the trip to Mars with all the radiation they'd be exposed to in space, let alone stay there for any extended amount of time.


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 Peregrine wrote:

But why do we really care about this problem? If earth takes a gamma ray burst and everyone on earth dies those billions of people are still dead. Is it really going to be any consolation that some kind of similar people elsewhere exist? IMO, not really. Dead is dead. Individuals matter, not the species. And colonizing other planets does nothing to help individuals survive.

That makes no logical sense. You are saying that the people that would be on Mars are not individuals. Well, they obviously would be. Colonising Mars would help the individuals that move to Mars survive should any kind of disaster happen on Earth. A species is made up of individuals. If you say that individuals matter, than you are also saying that the species matters.

Maybe the space elevator would be a better bet for Mars.
Falling down and whipping the snot out of half the equatorial counties in its path is a bad thing, but when there's no-one there to land on, it's not as big an issue. So, talk of delta-Vs and such, there are alternatives we avoid looking too far into for Earth. I don't know what tidal pull the moons exert on Mars though, as that could be a problem, for elevators in particular.

[Not good:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28426-mars-is-ripping-its-beanbag-moon-phobos-apart/]

 Skinnereal wrote:
Maybe the space elevator would be a better bet for Mars.

If you can get past the small problem of requiring materials far beyond anything we can produce.


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 AegisGrimm wrote:
Mostly the benefit of a mission to Mars would be the technological advancements that would need to be made to make such a trip feasible, and then the refinements made during further trips.

Then do research into those things. If you want to advance technology fund research programs targeted at doing that. You don't fund some random project and hope that it generates side businesses purely by accident.


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 Iron_Captain wrote:
That makes no logical sense. You are saying that the people that would be on Mars are not individuals. Well, they obviously would be. Colonising Mars would help the individuals that move to Mars survive should any kind of disaster happen on Earth. A species is made up of individuals. If you say that individuals matter, than you are also saying that the species matters.

The people on mars would be individuals, but you aren't going to save individuals by moving them to mars. There's just no plausible scenario where we have enough transport capacity to move any non-trivial number of people there. So you're talking about the difference between 100% death and 99.9999999999999999999999999% death followed by the few survivors committing suicide out of grief after everyone they care about dies. Any effort that could save a few individuals currently on earth by transporting them to mars would be far better spent saving a larger number of people by solving problems on the planet we already occupy.

When people talk about a mars colony saving us in case of disaster what they mean is that everyone on earth will die, but humanity as a species will live on because we spawned a whole separate population on another planet. If you don't create a mars colony then those people never exist and don't matter. It isn't about saving lives, it's about saving some abstract concept of humanity.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
Maybe the space elevator would be a better bet for Mars.

If you can get past the small problem of requiring materials far beyond anything we can produce.

You need such materials for an Earth based elevator, but I know that ordinary steel is technically sufficient for the Moon. Mars would be somewhere in between, so may not be as difficult as you think. Honestly don’t know how it compares.

 Peregrine wrote:

When people talk about a mars colony saving us in case of disaster what they mean is that everyone on earth will die, but humanity as a species will live on because we spawned a whole separate population on another planet. If you don't create a mars colony then those people never exist and don't matter. It isn't about saving lives, it's about saving some abstract concept of humanity.

Personally, despite all our flaws, I think the abstract concept of humanity is worth preserving, YMMV.

 Peregrine wrote:

But why do we really care about this problem? If earth takes a gamma ray burst and everyone on earth dies those billions of people are still dead. Is it really going to be any consolation that some kind of similar people elsewhere exist? IMO, not really. Dead is dead. Individuals matter, not the species. And colonizing other planets does nothing to help individuals survive.

If all of humanity is on the Earth and it is destroyed, it's not just individuals that are lost. Culture is lost. History is lost. Art is lost. And if we're the only sapient form of life in the universe, sapience is lost too.

Yes, if the Earth is destroyed, Martian colonists will be devastated. But they'll be alive... and so will the memories of what was.

Then do research into those things. If you want to advance technology fund research programs targeted at doing that. You don't fund some random project and hope that it generates side businesses purely by accident.

Need generates technology. No one is going to fund all the sorts of things needed for a trip to Mars, or any other stellar voyage, without the massive PR element of a definitive goal, and the potential capitol gains involved therin. Nothing of the space race likely would have been developed inside that decade at all without the spectacle of beating the Russians to drive it.

 AegisGrimm wrote:

Then do research into those things. If you want to advance technology fund research programs targeted at doing that. You don't fund some random project and hope that it generates side businesses purely by accident.

Need generates technology. No one is going to fund all the sorts of things needed for a trip to Mars, or any other stellar voyage, without the massive PR element of a definitive goal, and the potential capitol gains involved therin. Nothing of the space race likely would have been developed inside that decade at all without the spectacle of beating the Russians to drive it.

But scientific development itself can be a PR goal for a government. That is why the Soviets embarked on their space program. Not because of the 'space race' they did not even know existed until the Americans declared it was over and they had 'won' (it not really a race if you are the only contestant and you set the victory conditions yourself). No, the goal was to show the entire world how amazing communism was by making all this great progress, by making all these great scientific breakthroughs. The scientific progress itself was the goal, because the Soviets viewed science as incredibly important and prestigious. They hoped that this prestige would then transfer to communism and make communism more attractive as a side effect.
Whether there is a need or not all depends on the government. That is why I suspect that China will be the first to put people on Mars. The Chinese feel the need to proof themselves equal, if not superior to Western powers after centuries of humiliation. What better way to do that than by beating them technologically?

I doubt Russia has much left to prove about space. The rest of world uses Russian space training centres for the ISS?
ESA seems too bureaucratic, and US is looking at the (lack of) profit. India and China are big, but I don't know how they are doing. Anyone else?

 Skinnereal wrote:
I doubt Russia has much left to prove about space. The rest of world uses Russian space training centres for the ISS?
ESA seems too bureaucratic, and US is looking at the (lack of) profit. India and China are big, but I don't know how they are doing. Anyone else?

Yes, and everyone also uses Russian rockets and spaceships, even the US. China is the only nation besides Russia who has the capability to put people in space. The Chinese program is still small, but it is growing and very ambitious. They have the political will and the resources needed for such an ambitious project. The US seems to have lost a lot of its ambition. NASA seems to limit themselves mostly to unmanned exploration nowadays (which they are pretty damn good at). Russia indeed doesn't have much left to proof anymore, and that is why I don't think they will send manned missions to Mars. And even if they had something to proof, they don't have the means. Russia nowadays mostly occupies itself with engineering projects. Maintaining and supplying the ISS, designing improved rockets and spaceships, working on satellites, finding ways to protect Earth from meteorites, mine asteroids and that sort of stuff. It has been ages since there last was a successful Russian mission to Mars (the 1980's iirc). The ambitious days of Gagarin are long gone. They still do scientific research, but not nearly as much as they used to. Their capabilities have decreased a lot with the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia is now just the space taxi for everyone else. That is where most of the budget goes to.
India's program is also ambitious, but also small. India is a very poor country. I don't think a country where a large part of the population lives in slums will have the resources needed to go to Mars. There is also several private companies, but they too lack the resources I think. ESA is huge, but it can't really pull off big projects like a Mars mission because expenses of that kind would undoubtedly lead to bickering among the member states.
No, I am pretty sure the Chinese will be the first to set foot on Mars. Not in the near future, but in 50 years or so? I think that is quite likely.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
NASA seems to limit themselves mostly to unmanned exploration nowadays (which they are pretty damn good at).

Because NASA has realized that manned exploration is pretty pointless outside of nationalistic flag-planting exercises. Using Russian rockets is less about capability and more about a choice to dedicate their resources to high-end robot stuff and let Russia (soon to be SpaceX) handle the routine space-bus flights.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
NASA seems to limit themselves mostly to unmanned exploration nowadays (which they are pretty damn good at).

Because NASA has realized that manned exploration is pretty pointless outside of nationalistic flag-planting exercises. Using Russian rockets is less about capability and more about a choice to dedicate their resources to high-end robot stuff and let Russia (soon to be SpaceX) handle the routine space-bus flights.

Manned exploration is good for more than just flag-planting. A manned mission is much more demanding than an unmanned mission, which means that manned missions naturally lead to the development of a lot more useful technology. And using Russian rockets is is a matter of capability. NASA has limited resources, and as you say, they have decided to put those resources into robotics and unmanned missions. The fact that it is a conscious choice does not change the fact that it was a choice made necessary by a lack of capability. Sure, NASA could have chosen to retain its space launch and manned capabilities. But then they would not have been able to do the work they are doing now. So they decided to give the rocket business over to the Russians and private companies (not entirely, they are still working on manned space programs as well, but at a very slow pace). It was a good move in their position, given that their space shuttle program was fundamentally flawed (and setting up a new program in the relatively short timeframe required would have been very costly), but it has everything to do with NASA having limited capability.