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> Also, uh, why don't we just fix Earth? Oh, that's not sexy? No, of course not, because real problems are always more complicated than simple, inspirational ideas or a colony run by a dictator.

Go ahead and start "fixing earth" then, you're free to do so if you think it is "sexy". Meanwhile others will work on launching rockets, a task they seem to be quite adept at. Also, drop the nonsensical references to a "colony run by a dictator" or at least explain what made you write that piece of prose.

Humankind needs a frontier to strive towards, this has always been the case and will probably remain so. There used to be many frontiers but technology has developed as such a rapid pace that they're starting to become quite rare. A fully reusable space launch system has the potential to open up space exploration to a far larger extent than the current - soon to be previous - generation of expendable launch vehicles did. This is a good thing since it gives people something positive to look forward to instead of all the negatives which are being pumped in their heads by the media, politicians and, yes, by individuals like you who deal in negatives like "wiped ourselves out on Earth", "a colony run by a dictator", "There is literally no. point. at. all".

As said, feel free to "fix the Earth" but may I suggest framing this in a more positive and inspiring way? If you hit the right tone - yes, tone is important - you might inspire others who might inspire even more people. You may be able to open a new frontier that way, just like people like Musk do by working on reusable launch systems. Negativity and sour grapes do not inspire others, people who want that can simply watch a political debate.

> Go ahead and start "fixing earth" then, you're free to do so if you think it is "sexy".

I don't think it's sexy, at all. It's hard work, but it's also necessary.

> "colony run by a dictator"

A space colony is a pretty harsh environment. I'd be that it'll tend toward harsh, centralized leadership sooner rather than later, but, you know, maybe I'm wrong on that. In my defense, the things that make democracy possible -- plentiful resources, some level of societal trust, public safety -- are not going to be plentiful on Mars.

> Humankind needs a frontier to strive towards, this has always been the case and will probably remain so.

Agreed.

> There used to be many frontiers but technology has developed as such a rapid pace that they're starting to become quite rare.

Disagree. It is still the case that every question we answer in science leads to two more. Now, granted, not everyone needs/wants/can be a scientist.

> As said, feel free to "fix the Earth" but may I suggest framing this in a more positive and inspiring way?

Yeah, I probably should've, that would've probably been more convincing.

The "fix the Earth before archiving your dreams" fallacy would be way more convincing if Elon wasn't also behind Tesla.

And he also donated a hundred million dollars, literally a hundred million, to solving global warming. So the detractors don’t have a leg to stand on.

> Also, uh, why don't we just fix Earth? Oh, that's not sexy? No, of course not, because real problems are always more complicated than simple, inspirational ideas or a colony run by a dictator.

Fixing your run down car will never provide the same level of utility and redundancy that having two cars will. Preferably you do both.

If you live in a somewhat remote location, and your wife is pregnant and you know she needs to go to the hospital because of complications, you don't just make sure your somewhat run-down car is in better condition, and gassed up, you also make sure to find someone else in the area that you can rely on for a vehicle because it's that important. When it comes down it it, there are things important enough that you try to reduce thy impact random chance can have on it. Having all humans on Earth is one of those things to many people.

This argument would have a lot more merit if Earth and Mars were similar, but they're utterly not. The difficulty, expense, and risk of setting up life on Mars absolutely pales in comparison to cleaning-up life on Earth.

Suppose there were a Mars colony. How many years before that colony could go on indefinitely if it didn't have support from Earth?

> This argument would have a lot more merit if Earth and Mars were similar, but they're utterly not.

So where's the better choice for redundancy?

> The difficulty, expense, and risk of setting up life on Mars absolutely pales in comparison to cleaning-up life on Earth.

First, that's irrelevant, as a sustainable colony on Mars provides something that you don't get no matter how much you clean up Earth. It can be pristine, it still doesn't get you redundancy.

Second, I don't think it's true that the price is so far in that direction. Cleaning up Earth is monumentally expensive as well, depending on what you even mean by that.

> Suppose there were a Mars colony. How many years before that colony could go on indefinitely if it didn't have support from Earth?

Sustainable in that it can produce the materials needed for modern living? I very long time, I imagine. Sustainable in that it provides enough food and water that a group of people could survive without having to worry about modern conveniences? Much less, and that's always got to be the first step, so that's what we go for.

Even if people on a mars colony ended up living a more simple existence in the case of the loss of Earth, that's still a chance for them to advance and continue that wouldn't exist with the world ending disaster on Earth.

I don't think your redundancy is in the cards yet, technologically. You'd need a minimum of a few hundred people living on Mars long term and being able to sustain themselves.

That seems ... very far off. I dont necessarily disagree with setting a science mission up on Mars, but i'd strongly disagree with the notion that Mars is even a top priority for a diversification of baskets.

I'm not making any claim we can do this right now. I'm just making a claim that working towards this as a goal is important to many people for what I think are understandable reasons.

Also, the sooner you can get to Mars more reliable and more cheaply with larger payloads, the sooner that becomes a reality. Even if it never happens in my lifetime, that doesn't mean I think it's not worth working towards making all those things more real so it can be a reality at some point in time.

> i'd strongly disagree with the notion that Mars is even a top priority for a diversification of baskets.

Without even knowing specifically what you think would be a better choice, my guess is that cheaper, more reliable launch capabilities with bigger payloads will help that too.

Setting up a self-sustaining colony on Mars is orders of magnitude easier than fixing all the problems on Earth.

> because real problems are always more complicated than simple, inspirational ideas

Colonizing another planet 'is' a real problem?

Also, if we can 'just fix Earth' tell us how we convince all nations to come together and sing Kumbaya, put aside our resource differences and disarm all nuclear missiles (I'm looking at you North Korea)

That's a silly strawman argument; no one is seriously asking for this.

The point being made by GP is that there are very many reasons why modern civilization on Earth may be shortlived: climate change, biological war (or lab accident!), global thermonuclear war, economic failure modes, AI or AGI, large impact, etc. Fixing any one of these doesn't solve the same problem that redundancy would solve, and some of them require solving seemingly impossible coordination problems.

North Korea is nowhere close to the major issue there.

ya, def not as big as climate change etc.. i just finished lex fridman podcast on north korea so it was on my mind

Man belongs wherever he wants to go – and he'll do plenty well when he gets there.

Quote aside, I haven't found the heavy industry statement you seem to be talking about. Is it about that Bezos tweet or whatever? There's some great promising manufacturing techniques in zero-g, but it seems incredibly obvious sending anything in space or low orbit now and in the near future requires expending more energy than whatever its refinement or manufacturing will be worth. Furthermore, no, you can't fix Earth now. The only possible way to achieve that is eradicating humanity. Don't start talking about war, famines or whatever without imagining the disastrous consequences they may have (overpopulation, et cetera). The best humanity can do is continue experimenting and developing new technologies to at least improve the lives of the majority of people.

> Man belongs wherever he wants to go – and he'll do plenty well when he gets there.

I find this level of optimism completely unwarranted. Plenty of people have died trying to go places they hadn't gone to before, or if they simply had to leave where they were. Explorers, places with overpopulation, refugees, I mean, the list really goes on.

> Furthermore, no, you can't fix Earth now. The only possible way to achieve that is eradicating humanity.

I disagree, and I think this is far too pessimistic. Food security, climate change, politics, all huge, huge problems, but there's real progress being made on all those fronts.

>"Heavy" industry, pretty much by definition, means it's way cheaper to do it on Earth than in space

There are things that you just can't do on Earth because of gravity. And if price of putting things into orbit goes down it will open door to a lot of innovations in space manufacturing and within a decade it will have it's first "killer app". I can bet on it.

> no amount of rocket development will ever overcome those physics

This is simply not true. Your saying sounds like "Heavier than air flying machines are impossible". There's way more resources outside of our gravity well than inside of it and moving things from space to earth is cheaper than other way around. Yes, moving all heavy industry to space is complicated and very expensive, but it will be eventually done.

Really confused on why you're critiquing the guy who's commercialized and popularized the electric vehicle (Tesla), setting up a crucial switch away from fossil fuel to save earth, for not saving earth?

What am I missing here?

You should run a comparison. If you could wave a magic wand and erase the startup costs with mining space resources to produce our heavy industry, would the operational costs (transport costs/etc) be less than they are right now? I think it would be, it's just the startup costs are ridiculously high. So it's likely to be the case that you never make back the initial investment. However if someone's driven and has the capital, they could get that set up and then beat out the rest of the industry.

Now I'm not saying it's a foregone conclusion that it'd be cheaper, but just that it maybe can be.

I am equally stunned at the level of "pesimism" in your comment. We used to do things just because, just for the thrill of exploration, and pushing the limits of human civilization. If Elon wants to spend his money on this, and the government as well for their own reasons, why are you so frustrated? Plenty of money gets spent on fixing problems on Earth.

I don't believe this is true.

Undertaking the risk of exploration has -- I would venture to say -- almost always had some economic, political, or military motive. Someone had to see some potential gain for the risk they were undertaking.

To be clear, I'm not frustrated at Elon for spending his money like this. I mean, if it were his money, because it's not. He's spending his investors' money, which he raises for himself by selling these ideas. I'm less excited by my government spending money on this, but, yes, it's not really that much.

What frustrated me more were the comments that appeared to be divorced from reality about what space exploration will bring.

> What frustrated me more were the comments that appeared to be divorced from reality about what space exploration will bring.

There's not a single comment in this thread that does anything of the sort.

> He's spending his investors' money

All large, institutional investors that invest not because of some hypothetical Mars colonization, but because SpaceX is dominating the launch market, including government contracts, and has a potentially very large upcoming revenue stream with Starlink.

In terms of any sort of GDP comparison, space activities and employee numbers are a tiny, tiny fraction of economic output, so I really fail to understand such complaints.

If we had our priorities right, we first need to engineer humans capable of living there, and until then send robotic missions. The way things are going, sending humans to mars for a second moon landing tells me this is all a vanity show.

> why don't we just fix Earth?

If you’re truly interested to know the answer to this, you can find it aplenty online. And it’s not because it’s “sexy”.