both are not mutually exclusive
Yep. People definitely want to colonize the first one. The only thing keeping apartments off that location is strict governmental regulation of space like that. The desire is definitely there though.
The poor moon, it gets skipped over. Doesn't it deserve to be colonized too? Maybe we could put an amusement park there or something.
Ooh! It could have animatronics that sing songs about what it was like being a whaler on the moon!
Or farming space beetles on the half of the planet your family owns
We would eat our way through in no time
I don't think space travel is inherently a bad idea. But I don't think it'd be the billionaires to get us there, especially not someone like Elon.
SpaceX is a rocket ship manufacturer, NASA outsourced that like the US military outsources aircraft manufacturing to Boeing or Lockheed Martin.
Elon is not going to/was never going to "get us there" he's just the guy who owns the company that makes the vehicles. Idk what this huge miscommunication is and how people got to the idea that he's personally going to be the one who pushes humanity to mars, he doesn't even have a say in the operations NASA uses his spacecraft for.
He very definitely would pull the same shit as the bad guys in Total Recall while pretending he's a hero
Me (a sysadmin): We need an off-site backup. Preferably in a completely different "availability zone".
I love the thought of being one of the only programmers on Mars. Being able to say: "I'm gonna do it my way. What are you gonna do, travel to Mars?", when some comes up with a stupid request, would be absolutely priceless.
Okay, but The Planet Crafter is really cool for exactly that reason. You slowly but surely make a barren wasteland livable, it's extremely rewarding
Edit: I may have misunderstood the intention of this meme, but I still stand behind Planet Crafter being a fun game
It's not about prime real estate, it's about increasing the redundancy of humanity's survival. Two planets are better than one.
There seems to be a large amount of overlap between people who say things like "It's hubris to think that humans can change the atmosphere of the earth enough to make a noticeable difference in 400 years" and "we can make Mars inhabitable by humans in 50 years"
It's also not about Terraforming! That's a goal for a few thousand years down the line. For now, just spreading out our habitats is a good idea.
In order to colonize mars, having a good space station in orbit would help out immensely. We're talking big enough to stretch out and hold a few hundred people.
The station would need to grow crops and have minor but flexible manufacturing.
At that point, why would you colonize mars vs just make more stations?For real, resource extraction is a big one. Finding ice means they can make, besides water, oxygen and rocket fuel. Not to mention that shelters for radiation are incredibly hard to make without a huge amount of mass, which we cannot efficiently get into orbit without a space elevator. Hence being able to extract it from the location of the colony, say dig into the ground or build thick walls with bricks made from soil, is necessary for long term survival of the inhabitants. I think it is cool that due to these reasons having air balloons over Venus might even be a better option due to it having a protective atmosphere.
Space stations don't produce raw materials, even if they could self sustain their human populations with food grown onboard they'd require the resources of earth to build and expand, so they're still dependent on Earth.
A space station wouldn't make anything inherently easier, unless it was attached via space elevator just having a chunk of metal in orbit doesn't change how much energy you need to get things out of the gravity well.
Mining is a big reason. And radiation shielding, as others have said.
Right now, even with water recycling systems, we still have to ship water to the ISS. A planet or moon also offers way more radiation protection by tunneling underground than any spacecraft at this time could provide.
I'd say we go for Deimos and Phobos first and set up mining operations there before spreading to the Martian surface. Their super-low gravity will make shipping materials easier. They essentially are natural space stations, just add infrastructure.
Space colonies are cool but we're nowhere close to being able to make a self-sustaining colony
Who cares about human survival without Earth?
Doesn't sound like a life to me
Star Trek even without Earth would be pretty nice.
While I fundamentally agree, it's inevitable that Earth and Mars would go to war in that scenario.
Why is it inevitable? We don't even have a colony there let alone a government and you think it would inevitably lead to war?
Put down the sci fi novels for a second.
That's Kirkjufell in Iceland
You could have just slapped any combination of letters together in that name as long as there's a J and I'd still believe this sentence.
Lol so true.
Villia Starlight strikes again.
I wouldn't mind leaving a lot of Earth's natural beauty alone, as much as SpaceX's mission doesn't resonate with me very much
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- That's not the reason Space Karen and other billionaire are pushing for space colonization. They want to make their own kingdom where they don't need to follow Earth's rules, Elon pretty much said it himself.
- Space mining is cool, but you don't need to go to Mars for it, mining the Moon and captured asteroids would be far more practical.
As for point 2. For any space project for resource gathering you want to stay FAAAR away from any major gravity wells as escaping them is currently 99% of the cost for our current rocketsm it's genuinely wasteful in terms of fuel and most of the rocket is shed afterwards too.
Gravity wells would be one way delivery only while resource gathering operations, as you said, would stay on dwarf planets, asteroids and lesser moons like our own.
Just felt like giving an explanation to your post for anyone who reads by and doesn't understand why mining asteroids/ the moon is a plainly superior option.
Economics Explained recently published a video explaining how using space as a way to get resources will never be economically viable. It doesn't matter how cheap you can produce something if the shipping cost is $5,000 per gram. We'd sooner syphon gold out of ocean water than get it from an asteroid.
Space travel is a great investment when it comes to discovering new technologies that revolutionize life, but a terrible investment for resource extraction.
It's great if the resources go from space, to space and stay the hell away from major gravity wells.
So space station colonies or colonies on dwarf planets and smaller moons.
Remember, a good 90% of the cost is "how do we leave the planet" and then most of the rocket is shed. All that waste wouldn't be needed if we never touch down on planets to begin with.
Ooh! It could have animatronics that sing songs about what it was like being a whaler on the moon!
However, Mars has mountains 10 times higher, Deeper and larger canyons. In general it would be suitable for megalophobic scenarios.
