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Comment by thangalin | Hacker News Reader

"Some of the reasons for exploring space, when there are numerous social problems on earth, were described recently by Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, Associate Director of Science at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville. His beliefs were expressed in his reply to a letter from Sister Mary Jucunda, O.P., a nun who works among starving natives of Zambia, Africa."

Source: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19730015241/downloads/19...

HTML: https://lettersofnote.com/2012/08/06/why-explore-space/

"Space flight, without any doubt, is playing exactly this role. The voyage to Mars will certainly not be a direct source of food for the hungry. However, it will lead to so many new technologies and capabilities that the spinoffs from this project alone will be worth many times the cost of its implementation."

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This is an excellent defense of space exploration. But the point I make in the article is that we should stop identifying the project of sending people to Mars with space exploration. There are other ways to do it that lead to cooler spinoff technologies and better science.

The problem with your argument isn't lack of rationality, it's that it signals a lack of faith (destructive narrative). As others have mentioned, you can't "kill Mars" because who is going to be the hero then? You have to replace the idea of Mars with a better one, which allows for a constructive narrative in people's minds. BTW, that's essential in any constructive criticism of anything really. Simply saying "it's bad" isn't sufficient if you actually want people to think about alternatives - you have to present a better constructive narrative that could be accepted as "even cooler" by believers. I fully agree with almost everything you write in the article btw - IMO Pheobe, Titan, or Ceres could be a viable long-term goal for colonization after the moon. I'm sure there are many others, but we need to actively talk about and analyze these to identify the best option.

> you have to present a better constructive narrative that could be accepted as "even cooler" by believers

The article mentions some alternatives.

>> One path forward would be to build on the technological revolution of the past fifty years and go explore the hell out of space with robots. This future is available to us right now. Simply redirecting the $11.6 billion budget for human space flight would be enough to staff up the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and go from launching one major project per decade to multiple planetary probes and telescopes a year. It would be the start of the greatest era of discovery in history.

Personally, I find that idea inspiring!

If your space software project is late, just throw more people at it - it will be done that much faster!

Like really, even if you indeed made the JPL budget 100x bigger, at least short term you would indeed have the issue if not enough people being available to build and run all those robotic missions.

Exactly!

I'd think that "send modern probes to every one of the interesting moons of saturn and Jupiter" would be pretty amazing. For all we know one of them could be crawling with life!

Humanity has no back-up.

Compelling reasons to venture beyond this single, solitary rock include: Catastrophic volcanic eruptions. Devastating climate change. Extinction-level asteroid impact. Gravitational shifts from a rogue celestial body. Directed supernova blast. Coronal mass ejection. Unknown cosmic cataclysms. Loss of magnetosphere. All-out thermonuclear war. Unyielding plagues.

Back up your data, back up your species.

Putting your backups in a garbage can doesn't do much for you.

Most of the issues are already a problem on Mars, and the rest would affect earth and Mars at the same time. No less, the earthlings would be more likely to survive each of those situations because earth is way better in a general case.

Living on Mars is like living on Earth after a very, very, very protracted global thermonuclear war.

You can argue the other way: If we figure out how to live on Mars, global thermonuclear war on Earth is not a big deal anymore, it becomes an option.

And Mars can even cause it! ;-)

(at least in the Earth-Mars cold war of The Expanse universe)

And a lot of the survivors from Earth would head over to Mars to overwrite your backup.

Will there be a chapter on this element?

It’s always been unclear to me how much a Martian civilization would improve humanity’s odds of surviving Seveneves, what with humans being involved and all. I think it’s the article of faith I’ve seen the least substantive critique of— maybe because it’s so depressing to think critically about.

I would say quite a bit, as it implies substantial space infra being in place. Still not pretty, but at least you would avoid things like cramming 20 kamikaze welders in space suits inside a Proton fairing per lunch to turn ISS to a space arch.

BTW, on this note I can recommend The Ring of Charon[0] and its follow-up books. In this case, its Earth suddenly vanishing due to some ancient alien technology being activated by mistake. The book then follows the consequences for the advanced but still partially Earth dependent space habitats in the Solar system as well as people on Earth figuring out WTH their planet has ended up and why.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ring_of_Charon

This is a great point, but I think it goes towards the cost-benefit analysis. The relevant comparison isn’t a sophonically-suppressed humanity which is never inspired again, but rather Maciej’s new age of exploration— a humanity very much conquering local space and reaching to the stars, just not with their own fleshy pestilent mitts.

The open question I have is does a planetary colony help per se, once the technical problems have been solved on an emergency basis, and what’s left are social problems which are far too late to cure?

> However, it will lead to so many new technologies and capabilities that the spinoffs from this project alone will be worth many times the cost of its implementation."

I would be curious who believes that today we don't have the technological capability to feed, to well beyond basic sustenance, every human on earth today. I include both growth, storage, distribution, and preparation.

I would be curious who thinks insufficient technology is the reason people starve today, and why they think that, despite philosophers arguing since the mid 1800s (with numbers to back it up) that we have the means to ensure none should go hungry.

> However, it will lead to so many new technologies and capabilities that the spinoffs from this project alone will be worth many times the cost of its implementation

How people are still fooled into believing this is beyond me

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/nasa_ec...

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