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Comment by wrsh07 | Hacker News Reader

Is that true of nuclear winter or a major impact event?

Wouldn't either of those render the Earth temporarily uninhabitable?

Is the argument that it would be easy enough to build on Earth places to survive such events rather than going to Mars?

Yes it includes all those examples. Humans could endeavor to build many vast underground or undersea habitats (mineshaft gap!) that serve as a protective function for, I dunno 1 millionth(?) the cost of sending a terraform crew Mars with probably a million X more capacity to support humanity, plus the ability to use it and iterate on it right now.

Doesn't sound very sexy though right? Kind of like all the data engineering, infrastructure plumbing I do to help our data scientists and ML folks do the sexy inference work.

I'll do a little pre-buttal here about what kind of science we're "losing out on" by not pursuing more space: Building for underground or undersea habitats has significantly less research put into it than space habitation, so you'd see an equivalent boom in research/technology development that has dual use as we did in the 1950s likely.

> I'll do a little pre-buttal here about what kind of science we're "losing out on" by not pursuing more space: Building for underground or undersea habitats has significantly less research put into it than space habitation, so you'd see an equivalent boom in research/technology development that has dual use as we did in the 1950s likely.

This is so absurd. You aren't losing anything by pursuing more space. What's up with all the binary stuff in theses discussions? Why every time someone talks about no doing something, the argument are that binary?

You know you can do both right? It's not space or water. We don't have a thresold where we have to choose between one or the other. Research into underground and undersea habitats doesn't happen because we are unable to make them happen, not because we love space.

Our society is interested into space, just like you said, it's "sexy". It's also filled with potential, space mining for example is worth trillions. It's also filled with unknown, there's reasons why stars are so much filled with legends, stories and mythology. That's what make space something that sell, unlike underground or undersea.

So the alternative isn't underground or undersea research, it's no research at all.

You can make undeground or undersea research sexy. Go for it! I'll be the first one to support your cause, more research is always better. Please stop arguing for less research....

Mars has a built-in advantage of distance from the hordes of desperate people who would destroy a too-small or half-done habitat if it helps them survive next week (if disaster strikes before you are ready for example). Nobody can blame them, yet it is a valid and expected hazard.

Nuclear winter is probably quite survivable. Its mechanisms are the same as volcanic winters, with the caveat that it requires the assumption that nuclear weapons will result in uncontrollably large fires in cities that are as effective stratospheric soot pumps as volcanoes. And the worst volcanic winter in recorded history was in 1816, and the fact that you probably never learned anything about it in your history class should give you some indication of how close it was to a humanity extinction event.

> Is the argument that it would be easy enough to build on Earth places to survive such events rather than going to Mars?

I'd say the argument is that Mars is currently a (much) less hospitable place for life as we know it than the Earth in any nuclear winter scenario that I know of.

The only thing that I can think of to make Mars a better option than Earth is if Earth is struck by some truly gigantic asteroid. But it would have to be big enough to seriously damage a 1,000 trillion metric ton ball (we'll take it as given that the Earth isn't flat) of iron. Merely stripping the atmosphere wouldn't be enough - you need to fundamentally compromise the structural integrity of the planet to make it as unlivable as Mars.

A massive, underground biodome would be cheaper and easier.

Can't fall behind on the mineshaft gap.

No, the Earth after nuclear winter or just about any disaster is still more hospitable than Mars. I still would like to live to see Mars colonized.

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