Why Musk Is Wrong About Mars

Elon Musk wants to build a colony on Mars with at least 1 million people. While this might sound like an exciting and worthwhile goal, many prominent voices in science are skeptical about it. What does Musk want to do, what are the problems, and why is he facing criticism? Here’s a brief summary.

0:00 Intro
5:14 Background Facts
8:15 Scientific Merit?
9:09 Economic Benefits
11:24 Future of Consciousness
15:18 Is it the right time?
16:56 Planet Wild

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#science #space

[tsbrownie]

Best quote of the day pertaining to Mars settlers: "Some of them will die in novel ways."

[markdowning]

It's simple to generate a breathable atmosphere on Mars: you might remember Arnold Schwarzenegger demonstrated this at the end of Total Recall (1990).
You just find an ancient alien installation, press your hand on the sensor, and voilà!

[barrystockdoesnotexist]

The thrill of living on Mars is envisioned in Philip K. Dick's "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, " where life is so grim a powerful hallucinogen is used to give colonists a reason to live.

[gmenezesdea]

When william shatner went to space he said this: "The beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound (...) The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness."

[thomasw]

„If you want to spend your days wondering „Why am I here?“, maybe Kansas is enough“ 😁😁😁 Made my day, Sabine, thank you! 🙌

[peskyfervid]

As a practice run they could terraform the Sahara desert. Plenty of oxygen, relatively easy to supply with food and water (compared to Mars), and protected from harmful radiation.

However difficult it would be to terraform the Sahara, Mars would be many, many times harder. If we can't terraform the Sahara, there is simply no way we can do Mars.

[tsbrownie]

For starters, ask yourself the following about living on Mars: "Would I trust that politicians to continue to fund me when the shine wears off? Do I believe that war, financial crisis, or similar will never interfere with the supplies to Mars? Will billionaires funding me on Mars never go bankrupt and will put my life / welfare ahead of their own interests? Are all the support systems going to remain intact until we are self-sufficient in 300 to 800 years?"

[killdeerperiland]

the average temperature on Mars is -81°F (-60°C), but temperatures can range from -225°F (-153°C) to 70°F barely work in antarctica btw.

[BenjaminGatti]

Sadly, humans are not great at solving problems that can be postponed. Having a goal can be a means in itself.

[Taomantom]

I am at a loss as to why The Moon is not a given. Caves and built shelters and supporting supplies are so much easier. That should be done RIGHT now.

[andrewwilks]

Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids, in fact, it's cold as hell.

[RobertoRomieleMiele]

I love how, for certain individuals, the idea of changing an entire planet atmosphere from basically 0 is more credible than us having an impact on our own climate.

[brothereye]

A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!

[SafeBandicoot]

I believe its ancient Greeks who said “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit”.
We lost this kind of thinking & investing in the last 100 years. Mars & Lunar mega projects are such things. But I do agree the best we might see in the next 30 years is something close to the Antarctic research base.

[frasercain]

The problem with AI as an existential threat is that robots love to go to space. Even if you flee to Mars, your toaster will chase you down.

[natsuiro_shiroi]

I totally agree with Sabine. The more than 1, 500 people who disliked this video imagine a big city with that million inhabitants, or how wonderful the idea of ​​colonizing other worlds is. Those ideas are all very well, but nothing could be further from the reality with the technology we currently have.

If we already have problems trying to solve the problems of a single planet, I can't imagine what two would entail, and if we already have problems with the propulsion systems that would take months to get there, I can't imagine how far we are still from really developing efficient terraforming technologies.

I understand the enormous interest that many show in space because I also share it, but I feel that it is time to sit down and reflect on the "exponential growth of humanity" that he speaks of, because on this planet, our only planet for the moment, is not going well for such a long list of reasons that I will not go into each of them.

I simply believe that there are tremendously more relevant things to focus on right now, here on Earth, than spending countless resources with primitive colonization technology on a project that could be pursued in the future with technology that would make a mockery of the current.

[mrroboto]

In the 1980s I was a member of the L5 Society. I think building large rotating space colonies is much more feasible than colonizing Mars. imho, one of the biggest problems colonizing Mars is that it only has 1/3 G whereas a space colony could have 1 G.

[peterhemmings]

What's all the buzz about Mars? If we wanted to go somewhere red and inhospitable to life, there's loads of room left in Australia which is like 5 times closer.

[pavellangweil]

I think waiting for a good moment to have technology at high enough level is tricky. Often these technologies will get developed because you're doing something amibitious. If you waited instead, its possible they would never get developed in the first place.

[chrisanderson]

Claim: We should sort out problems on Earth first:
Why can't we do both? Elon has shown that the cost to do his plan is a tiny fraction of Earth's economic output. Further, advances in space always improve technologies that help us here on Earth, a good example being the amazing advancements in computer miniaturization that Apollo missions induced. This is a false either/or dichotomy. This isn't "mass migration to avoid the Earth's problems", that is a misunderstanding. This is a mass migration (though still a tiny fraction of Earth's overall population) to set up a second foothold among the stars for humanity. It very much in fact depends completely on Earth still being a thriving populated place. The whole idea is that if something happens to Earth or Mars, we will have the other one as a backup, so that they can then go reboot things on the failed planet. It goes both ways. It's like having your data backed up onto two hard drives: if either one fails, you can recover data from the working one and restore it onto a new drive. In short: once we have thriving Mars colony, if Earth fails, we have Mars. If Mars fails we have Earth. It would (hopefully) be very unlikely that both would fail at the same time.