The Mars Delusion

20 pointsposted 7 hours ago
by Tomte
(noemamag.com)

46 Comments

cosmic_cheese

6 hours ago

This topic is a bit of a sore spot for me.

I would agree that any notion of a large martian settlement (much less a comfortable one that people actually want to live in) on any shorter timeframe is not realistic and that Mars cannot be treated as a "plan B" in the case of climate change making Earth uninhabitable, but total dismissal of the idea (as well as the idea that humans will forever [and potentially should] be permanently Earth-bound) rubs me the wrong way.

Yes, it's an unfathomably difficult and complex project that should not be in any way underestimated. Realistically, it will take many decades at minimum and probably in excess of a century. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted however, and it's not as if any of it will magically get easier in all the time spent not trying. This could wind up being a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of situation if it's allowed to be.

tforcram

5 hours ago

I see this a lot too and it's frustrating to hear. Yes, it's clearly a near impossible problem, but when has that ever stopped us before?

The alternative I seem to see suggested most often is that we should be dedicating more of our resources to maintain the status quo as long as possible, which honestly sounds more insane to me.

Maybe the timeline is much longer out, but we don't have an infinite amount of resources on this rock and if we don't figure out how to get off it before we run out of those resources we may be stuck forever. Accepting that as inevitable feels wrong.

lapcat

6 hours ago

> Yes, it's an unfathomably difficult and complex project that should not be in any way underestimated. Realistically, it will take many decades at minimum and probably in excess of a century.

I think you've vastly underestimated the difficulty and the timeline, ironically. It's unrealistic to use the words "decades" or "a century". On the contrary, that's the delusion.

Consider: more than 50 years after putting a few people on the Moon very briefly, we're no closer to a colony on the Moon. And rocket technology won't help at all. Among the problems: the Moon has very little gravity, and we can't handwave like Q, "just change the gravitational constant of the universe."

rationalist

4 hours ago

> we can't handwave like Q, "just change the gravitational constant of the universe."

We can't yet.

cosmic_cheese

6 hours ago

Even if that's the case, I still don't think it does anything to validate taking the defeatist route and not even trying.

Ekaros

5 hours ago

I is lot less question of can we, but should we. The amount of time and resources needed are most likely so extreme that most other use cases would be better.

Sometimes it make lot of sense not to even try. I mean technically we could save a few lives in northern countries during winter by heating all roads in such a way that there is no ice or snow... Doable maybe... But not worth trying...

lapcat

6 hours ago

What exactly does “trying” look like to you?

We have limited resources, and every investment is a tradeoff. We can play with rockets, but how does SpaceX solve the problem of humans living with much less gravity than Earth, for example? It seems to me that this is a vastly greater problem than traveling to another celestial body.

Has anyone ever conceived a child off the Earth, much less given birth or raised one? Don’t talk to me about space colonies until we’ve done that.

cosmic_cheese

5 hours ago

We regularly expend vastly more resources on things that are far more frivolous and questionable than anything related to spaceflight has ever been, but nobody bats an eye about any of that.

As for the problems, we solve them like we always have: one at a time. Additionally, some of these things haven't even yet been studied to the extent necessary to take a crack at solving them. Taking the humans in microgravity problem as an example, we know it's a problem but have done precious little in figuring out things like exactly where the minimum threshold sits for gravity, whether simulated gravity via centrifugal force is adequate, etc.

I do think that SpaceX is jumping the gun a bit. I'd rather take it a touch more slowly and first do things like put a centrifugal space station in orbit to perform studies on. That said, after how crewed spaceflight beyond earth's orbit came to a screeching halt with the end of the Apollo program, it feels like a miracle to be getting anything.

adrian_b

4 hours ago

> figuring out things like exactly where the minimum threshold sits for gravity

Now there exists some evidence about that threshold.

Experiments with mice on the ISS have shown that at least for them a third of the terrestrial gravity is necessary for avoiding severe health problems and two thirds of terrestrial gravity is the threshold necessary for avoiding all health problems.

That means that even the gravity at the surface of Mars is likely to be insufficient for avoiding all health problems.

This does not mean that travel through the Solar System or life on Mars or on the Moon are impossible, but it means that for any of these it is necessary to use rotation to provide artificial gravity for the spaces where humans will spend most of the time.

This will increase costs for spaceships or for surface bases, but technically it is a relatively easy problem to solve in comparison with the efficient recycling of all materials.

lapcat

5 hours ago

> We regularly expend vastly more resources on things that are far more frivolous and questionable than anything related to spaceflight has ever been, but nobody bats an eye about any of that.

This statement is too hand-wavy, and I doubt that "nobody" bats an eye. Do you have specific examples?

Also, there's no reason why overspending in some areas should be redirected to the space program rather than to vital, underfunded problems on Earth. Again, it's always a tradeoff.

hackeraccount

5 hours ago

How much do you think is spent on Golf every year world wide? 100 Billion? 200?

I'm probably as skeptical as most about a Martian colony - to my mind it's 100's of years but will almost certainly happen in that time frame. That said the amount that's being spent on it happening today seems about right.

I would also say that the money being spent now is working at engineering problems. Most (All?) of the vital underfunded problems on Earth that you allude to are political problems. I'm not saying money can't solve them but they are way more complicated.

lapcat

4 hours ago

> How much do you think is spent on Golf every year world wide? 100 Billion? 200?

I don't know. Too much, probably. Certainly there's too much land devoted to golf courses. However, "humans should not spend money on leisure activities" would not be a serious proposal. Should we never enjoy life? I suspect that even people who are hungry and homeless also aspire to enjoy leisure activities in addition to having food and shelter.

If we could go to Mars only by abolishing fun then to hell with Mars.

> I'm probably as skeptical as most about a Martian colony - to my mind it's 100's of years but will almost certainly happen in that time frame.

No, you are definitely not as skeptical as most.

cosmic_cheese

5 hours ago

The classic example is military spending. It's astronomical and in the US, higher than any other type, and much of that is owed to the cronyism in the military-industrial complex, regulatory capture by contractors, and endless chains of subcontractors with each link in the chain pocketing cash. The Pentagon can't even pass an audit.

Many things could be funded if that were cleaned up, and even if none of that cash goes towards space it reduces pressure to further cut existing funding toward it which would still be a massive win.

lapcat

5 hours ago

> The classic example is military spending.

No, because you said, "nobody bats an eye about any of that", which is not even remotely true of military spending.

It's worth noting that the Apollo space program was controversial in its day, simultaneous with prominent civil rights movements, because it was felt that the government was ignoring the economic problems of minorities, for instance, in order to put white guys on the Moon and play golf.

cosmic_cheese

5 hours ago

> No, because you said, "nobody bats an eye about any of that", which is not even remotely true of military spending.

I mean, it must not be taken that seriously because little has been done to change it. Instead, just about everything else gets constantly gets chipped away at to significant fanfare.

And yes I'm aware of the controversy that surrounded the Apollo program and to a large degree empathize, but even at that point in time we probably could've found a way to walk and chew bubblegum if we really wanted it.

EA-3167

6 hours ago

If you throw yourself off a cliff because only defeatists accept that they can't fly by flapping their arms, you aren't brave taking chances, you're committing suicide.

By the same token "we don't want to be defeated" isn't a good reason to create a planetary exploration timeline driven by false urgency. Mars isn't going anywhere.

cosmic_cheese

6 hours ago

There's a difference between something being extremely difficult and it being actually impossible.

And yes, Mars is not going anywhere, but the same cannot so confidently be said about our ability to get there. Our species has been capable of spaceflight for a tiny fraction of our existence and there is plenty of precedent for catastrophic loss of knowledge and capability.

EA-3167

5 hours ago

Mars is not a safeguard against Earth going to hell, even in the most extreme Mars fantasies you don't end up with something independent of Earth for an indefinite period of time. We're also more than capable of exploring our Solar System in immense detail without sending people or colonists. Our greatest achievements on Mars have involved rovers, and frankly suggest that as a planet it has little to recommend it.

tl;dr There is no reality in which it's easier or more reliable to "back up the species elsewhere" than it is to act in our interests here. That doesn't imply shutting ourselves off from space, but it means treating it more like the deep ocean where rovers and drones are simply a better fit for such hostile environments. I'm hopeful that will change someday, but anyone who's thinking in terms of decades doesn't understand the scope and depth of the problem.

My recommendation is to read some of the books and articles suggested in this thread before imposing your wishes on reality.

cosmic_cheese

5 hours ago

As noted in the original post, I don't really buy into the "backup" theory so much. It's more that it would be a shame to have gained the ability to put people in space and then lose it having done practically nothing with it.

> I'm hopeful that will change someday

And part of my point is that these things don't just magically change on their own, but because a lot of smart people are actively working on changing them. Absent those efforts, the status quo remains.

applfanboysbgon

5 hours ago

If you're banking on "we will lose the knowledge to put people on Mars" as the reason for going to Mars, what exactly is the purpose of putting people on Mars? In this knowledge-loss scenario, we will lose any knowledge gained from putting people on Mars, and also if there are any people still on Mars they will all die when their support systems on Earth collapse.

cosmic_cheese

5 hours ago

I'm not banking on anything and I'm not even really that focused on Mars specifically. Mars is just a good first step in establishing self-sustenance outside of Earth's gravity well, feeding into the goal of greater spacefaring capabilities.

In the case that we don't lose our ability to get into space, cool, development in that field gets a bit of an earlier start. If we knock ourselves back into the Stone Age, well, at least we can say we tried our best in that small window of time. The worst outcome is losing the ability without having even tried.

hackeraccount

4 hours ago

I liked‘A City On Mars’. That said I think it didn't have the right sense of scale. The Weinersmith's offered up a bunch of reasons why the eponymous city would never be possible but I think the most important bit - which they would concede I think - is that it's not Never but rather not any time soon.

200 years? 300? Timescales like that are going to create solutions to all the problems they listed. It's why they spend time knocking people suggesting we'll have boots on the moon in 50 years.

The modest stuff being done now - say setting up something equivalent to the various Antarctic bases on the moon seem like a reasonable step today towards something in the future.

jodrellblank

6 hours ago

See also Idlewords’ essays “Why not Mars” and “The shape of a Mars mission”

https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm

https://idlewords.com/2025/02/the_shape_of_a_mars_mission.ht...

““”Twenty years of tinkering with the much simpler systems on the space station have brought them no closer to reliability. And yet to get a crew to Mars, we’d need to get this stuff working like a Swiss watch. Humanity does not need a billion dollar shit dehydrator that can work for three years in zero gravity, but a Mars mission can’t leave Earth without it.“””

and his article l’affair siloxane:

https://mceglowski.substack.com/p/laffaire-siloxane

And Charles Stross’ “The High Frontier Redux” (2007)

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high...

“”” Mars is ... well, the phrase "tourist resort" springs to mind, and is promptly filed in the same corner as "Gobi desert". As Bruce Sterling has puts it: "I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live.””””

cosmic_cheese

4 hours ago

The problem with the ISS is that its potential was hampered by it and the Shuttle Program that enabled it being one of the largest design-by-committee compromise soups in history. Its successes were in spite of so many things dragging it down. If iterative development of spacefaring tech is the goal a very different approach would need to be taken.

gumby

3 hours ago

I am extremely excited and supportive of the exploration of our solar system and beyond.

But what’s with the obsession of sending humans?? Robots already do the important space science (at least the data collection parts) and are well adapted to working in space, unlike humans who have to drag a chunk of Earth around with them everywhere. Robots are leaving the solar system, while no human would be interested in such a journey, no matter how interested they are in the data.

Frankly, the people who act as if it’s important to have humans in space, as rather embarrassing.

On the other hand, I’m perfectly supportive of human spaceflight for tourism and recreation. But let’s not pretend that humans should be involved in the important work out there, except from Earth.

Never send a human to do a machine’s job.

EA-3167

7 hours ago

It’s an interesting article, but my advice is to skip the middleman and get a copy of the book discussed, ‘A City On Mars’. It’s entertaining, informative and well researched/cited. It’s also my go-to recommendation for people coming at this from a layperson/enthusiast perspective because the reasons why “colonize Mars anytime soon” is comical and an obvious lie once you dig in are complex. Unfortunately said reasons are multidisciplinary to the extreme so an overview in digestible form can be helpful for people who’ve been emotionally invested in this fantasy.

Simulacra

6 hours ago

Related, which some might find interesting:

"Packing for Mars" by Mary Roach

ls612

5 hours ago

“We choose to go to /s The Moon /r Mars / not because it is easy but because it is hard.”

Kennedy was describing one of the most fundamental human ambitions; to try to achieve the impossible. Think pieces like this betray their fundamental lack of any ambition whatsoever

lapcat

4 hours ago

Kennedy was a politician, i.e., a liar.

We went to the Moon as a bit of Cold War posturing, to plant the American flag and demonstrate superiority over Soviets. After that was accomplished, we lost interest.

You know what's really hard? Solving longstanding social issues. How about we try that instead.

ls612

4 hours ago

Let's solve the hardest social issue first: the crab bucket mentality that you exemplify that is so pervasive in society. The idea that anyone attempting something exceptional necessarily beggars all of the rest of us and should be cut down to size.

lulzury

4 hours ago

You and the person you responded to would make excellent politicians.

lapcat

4 hours ago

> necessarily beggars all of the rest of us

This is an exaggeration.

Nonetheless, it's true, is it not, that government budgets are not unlimited, and economic tradeoffs have to be made? Of course the government can engage in deficit spending, but that raises additional problems, creates another tradeoff.

There are literal beggars in the United States. What are we doing about that problem, and couldn't we do more, spend more? What exactly are you willing to sacrifice, which worthy causes, in order to achieve your very specific exceptional thing?

It's interesting that Kennedy did not choose to cure cancer, for example. That's a hard thing, isn't it? Though I've heard that LLMs may do it any day now.

jmclnx

6 hours ago

When I was young, I thought going to Mars or the moon would be awesome. But I wonder if even living or Mars is possible, even if water is found.

I remember reading a while ago if water you drink distilled water and only distilled water long term, it will do you harm. I wonder if the same could apply to water on other planets ? IIRC, it has to do with minerals or something in water here.

Ekaros

5 hours ago

It depends on wholesale diet. As long as you get those minerals from some source such as food itself you are fine. Or you can simply add them in as needed.

This might also be one problem as whole. Whatever food you eat must cover all needs or be supplemented. So there is need to ensure that either sufficiently varied items to fill needs are shipped in or whatever is produced locally covers absolutely all needs.

ck2

7 hours ago

it's not just "fraught with risk"

it's physically impossible with current technology for humans to survive a trip to Mars and live on the surface

space really, really wants to kill life

cosmic rays will kill humans before they even make it to Mars

there is no current technology that shields from cosmic rays

we should appreciate the earth greatly for its atmosphere and magnetosphere that shields us from them

best emulation idea so far is to surround astronauts with several feet of water

but we don't have the lift capacity for that much water weight

the total time on the moon outside the capsule per person maximum was 22 hours

the astronauts kept seeing bursts of light even with their eyes closed

when NASA inspected the helmets there were microscopic groove where some had made it all the way through

cosmic rays are physical particles traveling near the speed of light

the bursts of light were their nerves and other cells being destroyed by the cosmic rays

it was happening to their brains and CNS too

mice exposed to simulated cosmic rays became slow and stupid

criddell

6 hours ago

There are plenty of people who would trade twenty or thirty years of their Earth life for a final five or ten as a pioneer on (or in) Mars. I probably wouldn’t volunteer yet, but once I’m in my 60’s? Maybe… It’s one way of eliminating anxiety around living too long with dementia.

bot403

6 hours ago

Something nags at me the ideal mars astronaut would be more late 20s and 30s rather than 60/70.

r3trohack3r

7 hours ago

> it's physically impossible with current technology for humans to survive a trip to Mars and live on the surface

You seem to say this as if it’s some sort of enlightened reason to “not”

Instead, I suspect for many, enumerating, quantifying and solving the impossible is precisely the reason we venture into the unknown.

SubmarineClub

5 hours ago

It was “physically impossible with current technology for humans to survive a trip” to the Moon when the space race kicked off, too. The whole POINT of the space race was inventing the technology to solve those problems.

Space exploration nay-sayers really are the lamest people imaginable.

rf15

7 hours ago

[flagged]

lapcat

6 hours ago

Although fact checking is essential, I doubt that it will make a difference here. It clearly doesn’t make a difference in politics or religion. Much of the enthusiasm for Mars colonization is based on science fiction rather than science fact, childhood dreams not adult practicality.

I think it’s important to hold Mars enthusiasts to specific timelines. What will humanity do in a hundred thousand years, or a million years, if it survives that long? Who knows. Humanity hasn’t even had agriculture for that long. The relevant question is, what will humanity do with regards to Mars within the coming decades? Let's be honest: nothing much. Elon Musk had made predictions about the future that have already passed and proven false. How many times will you allow him to kick the can down the road before you stop believing lies? Let’s also stop pretending that launching some rockets now will somehow prepare for the hundred-thousand-year future. The best way to get to that future is to preserve the only currently habitable ecosystem in the solar system, by immediately stopping pollution and global warming on Earth. Sadly, Musk is financially backing politicians who are doing the opposite.