Hacker News Reader

Comment by runarberg | Hacker News Reader

I am not a fan of String Theory, but as far as fringe science theories go, String Theory is probably one of the more innocent ones. If you are going to pour money into a fringe science theory, I would much rather it goes to scientists trying to discover some properties of the universe which may or may not exist (and probably doesn’t exist; lets be honest here), than many of the awful stuff which exists on the fringes of social sciences (things like longtermism or futurism) or on the fringes of engineering (a future Mars colony, AI singularity, etc.).

View on HN

Genuinely curious: Why do you consider a future Mars colony to be «awful stuff»?

Yes, I do. It is engineeringly possible, but societally a horror prescription. I maintain that even the moon landing was an engineering dead end, it resulted in no major breakthrough which we wouldn’t have reached otherwise (for much cheaper) and the humanity benefited nothing but bragging rights. It was then used to further nationalism and exceptionalism by one particular society which went on to conduct many horrible acts of atrocities in the decades that followed.

The prospect of a Mars colony would be that except a million times worse. Humanity will never migrate to Mars, we will never live on Mars, we have nothing to gain by living there, and it may even be impossible for us to live a normal human life over there (e.g. we don‘t know if we can even give birth over there). The only thing it will give us are bragging rights to the powerful individuals which achives it first, who will likely use that as political capital to enact horrible policies on Earth, for their own personal benefits, at the cost of everybody else.

Why colonize Mars? Why not Moon?

The moon has no atmosphere. It is regularly hit by meteorites. Not sure it’s a very safe place to set up a colony.

Not like Mars is an amazing trip either, but the Moon is simply unsafe long term.

Plus Mars has a far more interesting history so the people living there can do more fun science than stare out at dusty grey rock.

Mars has larger deposits of water and volatiles, which help with early space expansion.

You can start with a single Moon base but generally it isn't worth the mission control investment once you start to build out Mars.

As others have noted, the moon has significant limitations, in terms of resources and atmosphere. I do think it may have utility, not for anything we might consider settlements or habitats, but perhaps domed science outposts.

Saying "working toward a martian colony" is akin to saying "working toward a way to colonize the solar system". Mars is not very interesting once you have a methodology. The Moon is a much more practical place to start the process. Then aim at the asteroid belt.

Mining asteroids is a goal that makes sense. I can picture a future where spacecrafts are regularly sent to the asteroid belt and come back to earth with some minerals. Living on the moon does not make sense. There is nothing to be gained from humans living in a future moon base. Not any more than cities built in Antarctica, or in orbit with a constellation of ISS like satellites.

We won’t build a city on the Moon, nor Mars, nor any of Jupiter’s moons, nor anywhere outside of Earth, and we won‘t do this even if engineeringly possible, for the exact same reason we won’t build a bubble city inside the Mariana Trench.

Mining asteroids makes no sense whatsoever with any currently imaginable practical tech, especially not economically. The numbers for even the most basic solutions just don't work, and anything cleverer - like adding thrusters to chunks of metal and firing them at the Earth - has one or two rather obvious issues.

The Moon is interesting because it's there, it's fairly close, it's a test bed for off-world construction, manufacturing, and life support, and there are experiments you can do on the dark side that aren't possible elsewhere.

Especially big telescopes.

It has many of the same life support issues as Mars, and any Moon solutions are likely to work on Mars and the asteroids, more quickly and successfully than trying to do the same R&D far, far away.

Will it pay for itself? Not for a long, long time. But frontier projects rarely do.

The benefit comes from the investment, the R&D, the new science and engineering, and the jobs created.

It's also handy if you need a remote off-site backup.

> Mining asteroids makes no sense whatsoever with any currently imaginable practical tech, especially not economically.

With current tech, it's practical enough to extract rocks from a rock. We've already done this on a comet, which I think is much harder to do. With current economics, not practical to fund such an endeavor, even if it was to haul back an asteroid made of solid gold. Regardless, we're discussing the far future, rather than current state.

If raw materials (again, an unknown) continue to become more scarce, it's hard to say what economics might support extra-planetary resource collection. What's for sure, is mining Mars will be harder than mining asteroids for water or metals, et al.

Mining asteroids makes no sense in the current economy with our current technology. But working towards engineering solutions which makes mining asteroids make sense makes sense (if that makes sense).

However, it is much easier to see us send robots to mine these asteroids, or send robots to the moon to build a giant telescope on the dark side (if that makes sense), then it is to see us build cities on the moon to build said telescope, and to mine those asteroids.

You see the difference here is that the end goal of mining asteroids are resources being sent to earth and exploited, while the goal of space settlements are the settlements them selves, that is some hypothetical space expansion is the goal, and that makes no sense, nobodies lives will improve from space expansion (except for the grifters’ during the grift).

> nobodies lives will improve from space expansion (except for the grifters’ during the grift).

Aspiring to goals and accomplishing them makes life worth living to a lot of people. Furthermore, humanity seems to have an innate drive to explore and learn.

Even to those left at home, it's inspirational to think that there are people who are taking steps to explore the universe.

Maybe it won't help anyone live but it will give a lot of people something to live for.

Mining asteroids wouldn’t be for Earth - it would be for satellites or LEO or possibly even Mars, which is a lot closer to the Asteroids than Earth and may need some extra raw materials we don’t want to spend the horrendous cost of lifting out of Earth’s gravity.

The Moon has nothing to offer Mars explorers as everything will be different and solutions for the unique lunar conditions (two weeks of darkness, temperature extremes, moon dust, vacuum) do not apply to Mars at all. It’like saying living under the ocean is good practice for living in the Artic, but we should start under the ocean because it’s closer.

Mars costs the same as the Moon to reach and return from (delta-V) and is a much easier environment to stay in, even over as short a period as a month. Mars makes much more sense than the Moon, which has little of interest and isn’t a stepping stone to anywhere.

> Mars costs the same as the Moon to reach and return from

0/1

If you stay out of gravity wells, traveling anywhere in space is the same cost, minus the non-trivial life support issues, which only come into play on a trip to Mars and back.

> (Mars) is a much easier environment to stay in, even over as short a period as a month

0/2

> (the moon) isn’t a stepping stone to anywhere.

0/3

Humanity has gotten there before Mars for the precise reason that it is a stepping stone.

None of what you posted is factually true and, in good faith, I have to wonder why you might believe these things.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com