this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Leave Mars alone. It is deeply immoral to send people there now. People have no business going there until we have thoroughly explored it and ruled out the possibility of indigenous microbial life. By studying such life, we may prove a second Genesis or prove the theory of panspermia. Either would have profound implications for our knowledge of the abundance of life in the universe. If we contaminate Mars, which sending humans would inevitably do, we may have to go all the way to another star system before we get another chance at answering these questions.
Let the billionaire space cadets stick to the asteroids and the Moon. Leave Mars the Hell alone. If after a few centuries of exploration we've thoroughly ruled out the presence of indigenous life, only then can we consider putting actual human beings on the surface.
It's much easier and more effective to do science with people and labs in-situ than with slow, complex robots. The first people to land on mars will be scientists. We won't be in a position to mess up the martian environment for generations. Stop spreading fear and propaganda. If finding life is what you're after, Europa, Enceladus, Titan and Ganymede are much safer bets than Mars. Those worlds are completely inhospitable to humans, so there's little to no chance that we mess them up. I'd much rather we start colonizing the moon, due to the relative ease of access, but due to its low gravity (and razor-sharp regolth particles) it isn't a great place for humans.
I'd argue it's actually immoral not to colonize mars. There will be no future humanity if we blow ourselves up here without a sustainable city elsewhere in the solar system.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. We have a viable planet that can sustain life right now. And if we take care of it, it can sustain life for a much longer time.
Also Mars is inhospitable to humans as well
Agreed. But unless we spread out, we could be dooming ourselves. Imagine hundreds of thousands of years ago. If early humans had stayed in a single valley, never venturing further, simply because that place had everything we needed, a single natural catastrophe could've wiped us out. The same logic applies here.
We have the resources, capabilities and collective willpower to spread ourselves among the stars. We've never had that kind of power, we should take it while we still have the chance. We can do two things at once.
Simple solution; reduce childbirth. Let the people who don't want to have kids not have kids and the ones that want kids have them. However, that would involve giving proper reproductive health rights. Childbirth is already in decline, which is why many world leaders are panicking, but just because a politician is panicking doesn't mean it's wrong, but I digress...
For some reason, we as humans believe that the only solution for overpopulation is to cut losses and run when we have enough knowledge on what to do to reduce the degradation of the planet. But to too many people, the solution is to go start overpopulatinh other planets. It's just rinse and repeat. If we can't even get our shit together here, then what cosmic right do we have to go do it to another planet?
Reduce childbirth all you want (and I support it, we've massively overexpanded our population, far beyond what Earth can support sustainably) but that won't help if we get annihilated by an asteroid, supervolcano or nuclear war.
And what's stopping that from happening anywhere else. What right do we have to overpopulate another planet?
We'll have reduced the chance of something wiping out everything we hold dear by a factor of two.
Be honest. Trying to exclude the basic animal instinct of survival, who will you hold dear that will be affected by any of that? Sure, we can predict cosmic catastrophic events, but we still can't stop them. And looking at a perspective that capitalists ((at least in the most recent history (current affairs)) have been the most interested in finding something off the planet and trying to figure out Mars.
Now, I also consider that going to Mars would be a long process. I bet my life that the first few crews that head toward Mars will either die or never be heard from again. There might be that one or two Wayland's, but the vast majority of people who can afford to leave the planet won't do so until they can be guaranteed a high chance of survival. Meaning that they'll let a multitude of people die before they'll allow themselves to be hurried off to a brand new start. You should know as well as I do that those billionaires aren't going to save the masses. So even if sustainable existence occurs in our lifetime, are you sure the people you hold dear are going to be saved? And what right do we have to overpopulate another planet?
Huh? Sure we can prevent some cosmic events (asteroid redirect) and even mitigate others, by having backup of life elsewhere in the solar system. We have the technology, would you rather everything dies because of some ideal? Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.
As to your last points, that's how it's been done during the last few expansions. But spaceships are expensive - tonnage to mars is insanely expensive. The incentive is to get a return on your investment: a sustainable colony. Sure, the billionaires won't be the first, but someone has to be. And what right do we have? It's our imperative to ensure the continuation of life by spreading it through the cosmos. Anything less would betray our base genetic instincts.
So people are investments? And we have to ensure life stays or humans?
Yes. Life >= humans.
What right do we have? It's our imperative to spread not just ourselves, but life itself throughout the cosmos. Anything less would betray our base genetic instincts.
So you're saying that life doesn't already exist in the cosmos?
That's the thing - we don't know.
It's highly probable that we aren't the only life in the universe. The only thing that makes it impossible is we aren't smart enough to know yet, but most signs point to that we can't be the only life in the universe
We only have one data point. Until we have conclusive evidence of life beyond this world, we need to operate as if we're the only ones.
Why?
Because that's what we know! Now you're just arguing for argument's sake.
No I'm not. Just say you don't have an answer for that haha
My answer is that we have to work with the best evidence available because informed decisions lead to better outcomes...
Is that so? And what does "informed decision" mean to you?
Making a decision based on the best evidence available... I feel like I'm repeating myself. Oh, I see. You're trolling.
Is everyone who challenges your ideas a troll? Sorry. I'm still not trolling you OR arguing just to argue.
And let's talk about the best decisions. Did Vlad The Impaler think it was the best decision? What about Ghengis Khan? Kubla Khan? Nobunaga Oda? Mitsuhede? Washington? King George? The list goes on and on... So who's right, and who's wrong?
They all had the best evidence available, yet thought that the best way was to oppose a different idea
Then what are you saying? That we paralyze ourselves?
What I'm saying is the best evidence available might not be the right evidence
So when do we make decisions?
All the time, but every aspect should be considered. For example, there was one commenter in this chain that mentioned the potential of bacterium on Mars. If they exist and we land on Mars then we inadvertently impact said bacterium and potentially impact Mars on a scale that we can't comprehend or at the very least understand. Is that right or wrong?
Sure, we should consider the possibility of life on Mars. But we've already impacted possible organisms by sending spacecraft there. Even if you sterilize your craft in an autoclave and send it through the vacuum of space for months to years, there's no guarantee that all terran organisms will be inert. Samples taken from an asteroid during the recent Hayabus-2 mission were found to have terrain organisms on them. If you want to completely cordon off martian ecology, you should've convinced NASA and the Soviets back in the 70s.
Bottom line is, we've already irreversibly changed the course of martian ecology, if there is any. What remains? Check if there's actually anything alive over there. The best way to do that is with boots on the ground. The best places to look for life on Mars are:
All of which are much easier to explore with humans.
Why is it so important to keep humanity going?
Because we're the most complex beings capable of the greatest changes to the environment anywhere in the universe, as far as we know. That's worth keeping around, IMO.
We are also fucking up the planet we live on like a cancer. The planet would be better without us, and there is no reason to think we wouldn't fuck up any other planet we went to. Just because we have abnormally large brains doesn't make us anything special.
I agree with everything you said up until your last point. The fact that we can fuck up the planet this bad is a testament to our ability to build, solve problems and work together. That isn't just a byproduct of large brain size (dolphins and whales have larger brains) but also our status as social animals, invention of language and writing.
Wouldn't the earth and all its creatures be better served if we put heavy industry into space? Better yet, most of humanity? I'd love nothing more than for us to scour the asteroid belt and build a ringworld. But before we do that, we need an outpost on Mars.
Damn people have no room for nuance here. The Elon hate is eclipsing rational discussion here and your getting mad down votes. Sucks.
Mostly, I agree with you.
But, I do have a really really big fear that once Elon gets space x in a position to be NASAs only outsourced transportation contractor, they will have a monopoly on hardware and NASA will have a budget that got reduced to pennies of what it is now.....
He's gonna extort them to let him do whatever he wants or he'll take his toys and go home. The first people on Mars will be scientists, but musks bullshit will be right behind them and he won't have to listen to a fucking thing they tell him.
I hope that doesn't happen but realistically there's nothing we will be able to do to stop it if he wants to.
IMHO it's his end goal. His reason for being trumps piggy bank right now. He's positioning himself to be untouchable as a space transportation company in 15 to 25 years. Spacex will be the most valuable company ever if it happens. Asteroid mining is going to be a multi trillion dollar industry and he wants to be the company that develops the infrastructure and can get out there and actually become capable of actually doing it. But this last bit is just a hunch
I think you're right. Bit if we want a spacefaring civilization, this is the path to get there. I really wish someone else was leading the charge, but this is the world we live in.
Sometimes it feels really lonely here on Lemmy, when it comes to space exploration. People are really negative about it, as if doing that takes away resources from making the world a better place. But it doesn't! It's a technological innovation program; the insights gained here can help improve life on Earth. And if we can move industry to space, Earth will be thankful.
Musk is not the path to space. I can't believe anyone would have such a limited imagination. I would hope we could do better than some childish capitalist.
Musk may not be. But SpaceX is closest to quick, cheap and reusable access to space.
You cannot sterilize a human laboratory. Even our gut bacteria represent an unavoidable risk. Much better to build robots that we can stick entirely in an autoclave and sterilize, from surface to core, before sending to the Mars surface.
And there is a severe contamination risk. We know of bacteria that exist deep with the crust of Earth that, if you were to transport them to far beneath the Martian surface, would be able to live just fine. We know of extremophile bacteria that live in rocks on the surface of the most arid deserts of Earth that could likely survive just fine in a similar Martian environment.
You need to be thinking on the scale of millennia here. I think Mars should be explored by humans in Mars orbit, tele-operating humanoid robots on the Martian surface. Think Avatar except regular robots. Look at the state of how humanoid robots are developing right now, with remote presence via haptic suits or similar. Think of where that technology will be in a hundred or two hundred years. It's very plausible that we will be able to operate such a machine in a way that feels indistinguishable from actually being there. And humans in Mars orbit would be able to operate them in real time.
I'm sorry, but your vanity is not worth the sacrifice of a world. Your pride is not worth us giving up what may be our one chance at finding a second Genesis in this star system. Realistically, it will take literally thousands of years of development of a human colony on Mars before it could credibly serve as a true backup to Earth, able to actually survive the destruction of Earth. Realistically, if you want a backup of Earth, you're much better doing it in some mile-deep bunker on Earth, in a deep ocean settlement, or on the surface of the Moon. It will take a thousand years of development to turn Mars into a true backup of Earth. And I'm not even talking terraforming here, just the time to build up the population and truly independent supply chains. Waiting a few centuries to make sure we're not ruining our one shot at this is not worth your pride. Yes, that means we in our time lose the glory of landing the first human on Mars. But that is a sacrifice we make for our children and our children's children. We do not have a right to take that risk, just for our own vainglorious pride.
And yes, there may be other chances of life around Sol, but we have no idea of the habitability of those ice shell moons. We don't know if life can even get going in such an environment, as we don't really know how life got started on Earth. We do however know that life got started here, and we do know that early conditions on Mars were much more similar to the conditions on Earth's surface than some ocean world buried under miles of ice. Mars is the only other terrestrial world in this star system that could plausibly have extant life near its surface. We should not sacrifice what may be our only chance to find it, for the sake of our vanity.
Leave. Mars. Alone.
I appreciate your enthusiasm, but we don't know if we're going to be around in 200 years.
A leading theory on the genesis of life is that it first evolved around deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Outer planets' icy moons have prime conditions for such structures.
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21377
https://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2020.2394
https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL104016