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Comment by wilg | Hacker News Reader

Entirely unconvincing to someone who thinks it would be cool to go to Mars. Honestly not even worth having the argument. Humans do things to explore or try to push ourselves to do something new all the time. That's the whole fun of being alive.

There's basically no real reason not to, despite this cynical laundry list of FUD. It's not trading off against any major Earth-based priorities. It's not that expensive. The only mildly compelling argument is the contamination one - but the only real alternative is simply never going anywhere but Earth in case there are microbes. No fun!

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> There's basically no real reason not to, despite this cynical laundry list of FUD

You seem to be ignoring one of the main points of the article, which is that sending robots to explore the solar system rather than humans is cheaper, easier, and more effective. That alone is a very good reason to not focus on putting more humans in space.

There's also the chance that those robots find something so compelling it reinvigorates human space flight.

That's not a reason not to. That's a reason to also send out robots.

Budgets are always going to be finite, and eventually you will have to choose. Until we run out of space to explore with robots, we don't really need to send out humans.

There is no "need" with exploring. Just do both. We'll learn more about living on other planets if we actually do it.

I can see how cheaper and easier can be viewed as 'not a reason not to' but the crux of the issue is that robots will do a better job than humans anyways.

Why spend more money and effort to do something less effective?

Because it is cool and inspiring. This doesn't have to be about min-maxing.

My thought exactly, well said.

Why not do both?

Because there is no benefit of sending a human rather than a robot. The article disuses this at length.

This quote is a reasonable summary, I think.

"The crew will not live in a Martian pueblo, but something resembling a level 4 biocontainment facility. And even there, they’ll have to do their lab work remotely, the same way it’s done today, raising the question of what exactly the hundreds of billions of dollars we’re spending to get to Mars are buying us."

My issue with it is that it distracts us from real problems. Obsession with Musk, NASA, and Mars keeps people's imaginations fixated on space instead of stuff that would really improve people's lives.

Instead of encouraging people to imagine how good life could be HERE, we are focusing people's imaginations on space where corporate profits aren't threatened.

In the article, the author quotes NASA on why we should go to mars and clearly it's an answer designed to tickle people's imaginations. Why aren't we hearing similar speeches about automating food production for example? Why can't we spend a trillion dollars on a mission to do THAT?

We can and should spend money on other exciting and useful problems!

> Why can't we spend a trillion dollars on a mission to do THAT?

because it's mostly a solved problem. It isn't really engineering, but economics that stops this from being a reality.

And to the contrary, i do think food production automation is being researched (by private entities, rather than gov't organizations) and slowly will become more common. You just don't hear about it, because it doesn't sound as exciting as space exploration.

In what way is automated food production a solved problem? Last I checked we still need plenty of humans to grow food.

In absolute numbers maybe - in relative numbers we have improved immensely from all people spending most of their time gathering food to survive to a couple percent of the population herding machines that make food for the rest.

Great then we should be able to provide food for everyone who needs it right?

In that case, we can pick another large engineering project to tackle. How about 3D printers for houses so that we can shelter people too?

We have been since at least the 19th century. Why we don't is apparently a sociological problem that we have not been able to tackle since...

> Great then we should be able to provide food for everyone who needs it right?

as long as those people provide 'stuff' for other people in exchange. That has been the economic model that works.

That doesn’t sound automated then, which was my point. I’m talking about bringing the cost of basic food items to near zero so people don’t have to exchange for it.

Wouldn’t that be a great “mission” for a large-scale NASA-like project?

Advancing technology for space exploration purposes has shown to overlap significantly with "practical" applications.

I think that’s going to be true of any large-scale engineering problem that pushes boundaries.

Then we can invest in practical applications instead of spaceflight, which is ancillary.

Remember that somebody is going to have to pay for it.

That's fine with me!

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