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Comment by simias | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if I agree. Creating a self-sustainable colony on Mars will take a very long time and even if we manage to do it can we really afford to "lose" the earth? Mars is an inhospitable hell for humans and practical terraforming technology is still in the realm of science fiction. Maybe if we manage to destroy earth completely out of selfishness and hate we don't really deserve to spread the virus throughout the galaxy?

And running away won't solve our problems. How long until our current earthly political and environmental issues are reproduced on Mars? We have "human" issues, not "earth" issues, simply moving the problem is not a solution. If we can't sustain our development in a civilized manner on a lush and hospitable planet I don't think we'll fare much better on Dune.

Not that I'm against colonizing Mars but I'd prefer if we did it out of a shared dream of a trans-planetary humanity rather than out of fear of self-destruction.

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Very unlikely that we could do anything on Earth that would make Mars look like a better place to live.

"Very unlikely that we could do anything on Earth that would make Mars look like a better place to live. "

Humanity: Hold my beer....

Runaway global warming or global thermonuclear war will still leave many parts of the Earth far more habitable then Mars.

Even if the biosphere were to go to hell, it would still have an atmosphere, and a magnetic field. Fantasists have wildly impractical ideas for fixing the former on Mars, but nothing for the latter.

There is a solution to both, and it's not impractical: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13796364

The universe is full of planet destroying events, why single ourselves out and say we are a virus?

Sure, we need to be better stewards of our environment, but I fail to see how our species is inherently worse then a meteor destroying a planet.

>If we can't sustain our development in a civilized manner on a lush and hospitable planet I don't think we'll fare much better on Dune.

Arrakis at least had an oxygen and nitrogen rich atmosphere.

And a valuable natural resource to make the whole colonization thing worth it.

Well, heh, when you look at the events that unfold afterwards, "worth it" is debatable.

True. I didn't read that series far after the first book, so I will not presume to debate you on that. :)

I agree about self-created problems, but what about annihilation through any other "natural" mass extinction event? I'd argue that to be a good motivating factor.

That's an interesting proposition, but how realistic is it really?

If we're talking about something like a huge asteroid colliding with the earth and/or a huge volcanic episode that would trigger a mass instinction, wouldn't the pale blue dot still be more hospitable than Mars? We have access to technology the dinosaurs didn't have, our chances of survival would probably be much better overall.

Even in case of man-made devastation, such as mass pollution or a nuclear winter I think it's safe to assume that Earth would still be more habitable than Mars.

How about something even more destructive? Maybe something like a gamma ray burst? Well then Mars is probably not far away to put it out of harm's way, although maybe they would be more likely to be unaffected by it if it hit the other side of the planet due to its very thin atmosphere? I'm not sure.

If an event happened that caused the Earth's atmosphere to not be breatheable in a number of hours, would anyone survive? We may have the technology but do there already exist any artificial independent self-sustaining human habitats on Earth that would survive? We could try to build such habitats now -- it would probably be cheaper than going to Mars -- but I think we would have trouble forcing ourselves to spend the money and effort on it and have trouble keeping it honest (avoiding any cheats where it's mostly independent but still dependent on the Earth's ecosystem for some specific uses) without a separate goal (being on another planet) and a hard forcing factor (an environment that doesn't allow any cheats).

The fear of self-destruction (or phrased as its complement, the drive for survival) is one of the most potent motivators that humans have.

The argument could be made that Martian humans would be supremely motivated to move the environmental parameters there toward a survivable state for lightly-outfitted humans.

Contrast this with Earth, where space exploration is a four-order or fifth-order concern for most people, and long-term environmental issues are treated as abstract exercises in reducing economic externalities. This is because Earthlings have (mostly) had it easy. We're biologically evolved and culturally adapted to survive here, and thus don't have a strong intrinsic motivation (yet) to maintain the long-term health of the biosphere.

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