Mars One is a cute prospect when it's just a dream, once reality sets and those people realise that the novelty of being in an inhospitable place, millions of kilometres away from any semblance of a life (air, water, food, nature, hobbies, loved ones, etc.) wouldn't be a good choice to live for 20-50 years I highly doubt that even 1% of those millionaires would still choose to be shipped off.
"In other words, isn't the threat to the human species mostly within itself, and finding solutions to those issues much more impactful (and attainable) than dreaming of building such fantasy structures?"
Society will break down, once there is no more hope.
Good sci-fi stories, like a colonisation of mars (like in the mars trilogy from Kim Stanley Robinsons) gives people hope, that a different world is possible, therefore (helping) preventing that breakdown in the first place.
This is the reason, why so many otherwise smart people ignored reality and signed up for Mars One for example. It is the dream of having the chance to start over in a clean way.
"The fraction of idiots in a society on Mars is unlikely to be lower than here on Earth. "
And when you have colonists with that altruistic mindset, then yes - the idiot rate of that society has the potential to be significantly lower. This is why people would sign up for one way tickets - exactly to get away from the idiots here on earth.
But yes, a real mars colony is very far away and would likely stay a hellhole for a long time, until either terraforming becomes realistic, or big domes, that protect enough from radiation, but gives people freedom to move in sunlight.
No one wants to go to mars, to become a mole in a bunker, even though this is what the beginning most likely will be. It is the dreams, that attract us Mars enthusiast. I would argue, if there would be more people dreaming, instead of mindlessly watching netflix over and over, there would be a better chance to make those dreams real. Also here on earth.
Absolutely. I really admire the human spirit and how it's gotten us so far, so fast. People will absolutely be willing to sacrifice their lives for Mars, and some people will go to Mars not expecting to die, but will anyway.
However, I think these people should know that they might actually be dying in vain, because only a smattering of people will actually end up living on Mars, IMHO. Mars has a reputation as being a real planet but really it's a barren rock that's not practically habitable. Not excited about living on the Moon? Than likely you won't be excited about living on Mars.
There is a good argument to be made that humans should live on Mars if only as insurance against some apocalypse on Earth. IMHO, we'd be better off investing in spinning colonies in space (a.k.a. Ringworld) where it's easier to construct something that provides artificial gravity, sunlight, and radiation shielding via artificial iron cores, perhaps mined from asteroids.
I think more importantly: civilisation on Mars is a pipe dream without figuring out a significant motivation to live on Mars.
Mars is an inhospitable place, but technology allows us to live in inhospitable places.
In many ways, I expect Mars is like Antarctica. Once the initial romanticism of pioneering fades, it will have only very niche attractiveness for specific scientific causes. It used to be a popular idea that technological advancement would see us populating Antarctica and underground / undersea environments, yet despite that being possible with modern technology (e.g. nuclear powered greenhouses), we've not justified the endeavour.
Indeed. I look at the effort required to get a teeny tiny solar powered helicopter to Mars, and while the achievement itself is noteworthy the difficulty in doing so is illuminating. Dreams of human colonization of Mars are largely coping mechanisms to help with the fears that arise when considering the very real apocalypse humanity faces.
Wanting to visit Mars is one thing, wanting to live on Mars is quite another.
Mars has nothing to offer humanity as a place to live - you would be better off living on a ship on the ocean if you truly want to get away from people - but it would be nice to check it off our collective bucket list.
It brings up many interesting challenges and unknowns of living on Mars, but it comes across as a naysayer's rant. Humans are capable of (and perhaps wired for) incredible personal sacrifices for the sake of exploration and progress.
Nothing in the article will stop individuals from trying, only government policy can stop that.
I think most people who want to live off-planet have a very romanticised notion of what that entails. Mars isn't going to be terraformed within our lifetimes, even if it was possible. Living on Mars = living permanently in a tunnel. And if you don't get along with the small community you'll be living with, you'll be screwed. And if you don't like living a fairly regimented lifestyle, you'll be screwed as well; there'll be no equivalent of "let's see what cafes are down this alleyway!".
I think far more people actually want a 'holiday' off-planet, than actually live off-planet.
Saying it that way makes it sound like a new retirement community. Why not say he would like to live on Mars? Maybe because it's a dead planet and not very livable.
This is the thing. Living on mars is something for the strong. Something that forces us to focus on what's important. With earth we may quickly swing from paradise to a total catastrophe. Which would be worse than mars and only reach mars-level after some time.
Things that incentivize lazing away do not incentivize progress.
We have made our earth worse for habitat, in the name of doing "cool things" and "make life worth living". But still we can live here and find happiness, unlike Mars. Living in Mars and building cities there is wonderful. The project might even succeed completely. But people will find more "emptiness" in space than on earth.
I'd be excited to see someone living on Mars, or at least visiting. Just like I'd be excited to see someone climb a previously unconquered mountain or invent an innovative new technology. I want to be part of a species that never stops pushing the boundaries of what's possible - I bet that if we keep persisting, we can go far further than most people today can even imagine.
There's an alternate timeline out there where everyone always listened to the "experts" telling them their dreams are stupid or impossible. No-one in that timeline has ever even run a four-minute mile.
I can appreciate that no one wants to hear cautionary words about our loftiest ambitions. However, I believe it's worth reflecting carefully on the topic.
One way to look at the dream of escaping the planet and colonizing space is in mythological terms. One comparison in particular is good and this is the idea of the afterlife or heaven which for centuries were as real and attainable as a Mars colony to you and I.
For advanced technocultural civilizations and the religious institutions that hold them together it seems that an imaginary place of escape automatically becomes normalized into existence.
The illusion grows proportionally to the sense of futility that individuals feel as a social structure calcifies around the protection of class hierarchy. The consequent protective buffer against meaningful experience of complex ecology and culture that results is the proverbial bottle which constrains the human spirit, until it is ready to explode in unrealistic directions.
So the suffering and anxiety of individuals trapped in a top-heavy social structure lends energy and reality to unrealistic visions.
Thus we dream of terraforming mars while in the midst of terrastroying earth into an unlivable nightmare, mass extinction, unbalanced population growth, global chemistry change, etc.
Like, we can't even prevent our rainforests from being raised, losing countless complex organic systems forever, yet we imagine ourselves spawning new life on distant planets.
And the destruction of our own planet is made possible with only the tiny drops of energy we can dig out of the ground. What will become of our planet surface when we have tapped the energy of the sun in earnest?
That said, if we do survive the current paradigm, and do manage to protect our surface biofilm or otherwise survive the next few hundred years, nothing will prevent us from colonizing the solar system and beyond. But we are ahead of ourselves, and that's the result of poor social/cultural order.
There's some irony there. The engine of malcontent that destroys us also propels is forward.
However it's safe to say that most of the energy and excitement we feel for terraforming planets and exploring space right now ought to be redirected towards building a conservationist earth culture that can support slow technological accretion and a long-term template for extra planetary adventures. Heaven is real but it takes real work to get there.
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