A City On Mars

[SunlitZelkova]

13 hours ago, darthgently said:

This may be the crux of the disagreement.  This is not my understanding of "devil's advocate" nor is it the common understanding.  If your definitions vary so much from the norm communication is bound to be problematic.  Nearly every point they bring up in the book so far is valid for consideration, that is why I'm reading it.  But it is the apparent central assumption of the book, and in comments here, that "we" should decide collectively to try or not try.  Humans explore multiple paths in parallel, as does life.  There is no "we" to get all on the same page nor a reason to browbeat some mythical collective "we" to toe a single line.  I don't grok the idea that a subset of humanity must get approval from the collective before proceeding.

The P-word may be at the heart of this disjoint, in which case this is the wrong venue for discussion and unlikely to be fruitful anyway

It’s not so much the use of that phrase alone as much as it is your accusation they are holding humanity back and may have ulterior motives.

And I disagree, there very much is a “we”. “We” live in a society with laws and ethics, not an anarchist free for all.

But there comes the P word, so…

13 hours ago, darthgently said:

I still think moving on for now is best, as stated before

Sure thing. I am only replying now because I felt my opinion wasn’t fully represented in your reply, but we have indeed hit the P word so I won’t continue.

[darthgently]

Moving on...

Spoiler

 

 

 

[AstroWolfie]

What about skyhooks? That could make space travel so much easier, because you use momentum

[tater]

On 11/14/2023 at 7:42 AM, KSK said:

For what it's worth, that pretty much sums up my opinion. Is somebody going to try building off-world colonies? Probably yes. Are off-world colonies important enough that they're worth rushing, cutting unnecessary corners for, and killing or injuring people for entirely avoidable reasons in the here and now? Certainly not.

They're only worth rushing to the extent that the people voluntarily engaging in the task wish to do so. People moving across oceans in sailing ships faced real risk, and even had there been no people on the other side of whatever ocean (which for some islands, etc was in fact the case), them living or dying based on their personal choices was their own business. There are no corners to cut without people at the sharp end choosing to cut them.

I'm fine with informed consent, but what's required? "This endeavor is incredibly dangerous, and you very well might die gasping for air, or after eating your dead companions on an alien world." That seems to cut it to me. Anyone who signs that, or honestly anyone committing to move to Mars without doing some rational amount of research can do whatever they like, my level of concern is basically zero as long as they are not actively recruiting people with cognitive impairment (THAT would be unethical).

Would I go to Mars in my lifetime? %$#@ no! My buddy has a good name for the first colony, New Donner. Do I care if someone else wants to take that risk? Not even a little, more power to them, not my decision.

My personal take is that as robots improve, best bet is to send them ahead to build a city, THEN send the people (with maybe a small group of humans managing them, which is far more sustainable/survivable).

Edited November 18, 2023 by tater

[KSK]

18 hours ago, tater said:

There are no corners to cut without people at the sharp end choosing to cut them

Disagree. The people at the sharp end of this endeavour are the people flying the spacecraft who, increasingly, will have to take it on  trust that the people building the spacecraft have  done a thorough job.

Even Apollo style astronauts, who knew every relay, valve, pipe, and switch of their particular part of the spacecraft, didn’t have that in-depth knowledge of the rest of the spacecraft, let alone the booster.

The people on the sharp end won’t have any choice in the matter of cutting corners or not. Hell,  the first time they’ll find out about it is when something goes wrong mid-flight.

And corners will be cut because that’s what private industry does. It cuts, and it cuts, in the name of doing things more efficiently, which usually means doing things cheaply.

Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn’t, but at least the people involved weren’t being criminally reckless or negligent. Sometimes the people involved just plain don’t care that they’re endangering people (see the various FDA inspection horror stories from the pharmaceutical genetics industry). Sometimes the people involved are fixated on disruption and established industry practices are nothing to do with safety and all about ‘incumbents protecting their market’ (see a certain recent submersible tragedy).

The folks flying out to any off-world colonies are going to be shouldering enough risk as it is. It would be nice to think that they weren’t taking on any extra risk because the spacecraft they’re flying was built by a company helmed by a ‘disruptor’ CEO with their head up their backside, or a Go Fever CEO fixated on pointless deadlines over safety.

Or, more briefly:

I am OK with people choosing to risk gasping their last on a godforsaken ball of rock if that’s what they want to do.

I am not OK with that happening because their spacesuit is a collection of single points of failure in a beta-cloth shell because building a proper one wasn’t profitable enough for the company involved, or would have taken too long.

And in the vast majority of cases, the person wearing the suit won’t be able to tell either way until it’s too late.

 

Edited November 18, 2023 by KSK

[tater]

1 minute ago, KSK said:

Disagree. The people at the sharp end of this endeavour are the people flying the spacecraft who, increasingly, will have to take it on  trust that the people building the spacecraft have  done a thorough job.

Even Apollo style astronauts, who knew every relay, valve, pipe, and switch of their particular part of the spacecraft, didn’t have that in-depth knowledge of the rest of the spacecraft, let alone the booster.

The people on the sharp end won’t have any choice in the matter of cutting corners or not. Hell,  the first time they’ll find out about it is when something goes wrong mid-flight.

And corners will be cut because that’s what private industry does. It cuts, and it cuts, in the name of doing things more efficiently, which usually means doing things cheaply.

Which is why you or I would not get on such a ship. How is "rushing" cutting a corner? It's OK in 100 years, but not 90? Or OK in 30 years, not 10?

Any sane person would assume early trips were incredibly dangerous—if the first trips were in 2030 or 2130, first trips are first trips. I'd assume the trip itself (ignoring survival once there) was at best the current flights in a row risk as a ballpark. Depends on if we are looking at new vehicles, or reused as well. The latter are proven, but then also have wear and tear—different failure modes, different probabilities of failure.

So I still think it's a choice. If you are literally betting your life, get all the data—and again, I'm not counting actual negligence here, which would be different. I realized LOC/LOM/LOV can be calculated making assumptions, but I'd not trust that at all for a trip to LEO, much less Mars.

 

13 minutes ago, KSK said:

I am not OK with that happening because their spacesuit is a collection of single points of failure in a beta-cloth shell because building a proper one wasn’t profitable enough for the company involved, or would have taken too long.

How would that not be already illegal or create huge liability? Would a scuba company get in trouble if some part claimed to work at a certain depth was not in fact useful at that depth? They'd get sued, right? Unsure, but if they knowingly shipped something they KNEW was deadly, might they face criminal charges? (no idea)

[tater]

For clarity: if someone was selling "Homestead on Mars for $500,000" trips to people, and the small print of the contract included safety estimates, and those were not in fact accurate for the offered product... jail. Not sure who checks the math, obviously (FAA?). I'd think it would be "experimental" for a long, long time (and hence should be judged by sane people as a kind of Russian Roulette).

[SunlitZelkova]

I think the disconnect between @tater and @KSK is that tater assumes SpaceX will actually give an honest safety assessment and not lie, whereas KSK is more skeptical.

My two cents in this convo is this: negligent, and irresponsible risk exists.

The Apollo 1 astronauts knew they were signing up for something dangerous, but that did not excuse North American’s shoddy craftsmanship that led to the fire.

[tater]

5 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I think the disconnect between @tater and @KSK is that tater assumes SpaceX will actually give an honest safety assessment and not lie, whereas KSK is more skeptical.

What would be an honest safety assessment? Serious question.

Giving people a safety assessment I think would create legal liability, not mitigate it.

We give each flight a 1 in XXX chance of death? Commercial Crew level is 1:270, right? Call it CC level safety. That means if they send 1000 in a synod (LOL) about 4 of them take all hands with them.

I'm making no assumptions at all, actually. I would personally not believe LOC probability estimates. As I said, the only sure number is the number of flights in a row, and even that is fraught. Even if someone believes the safety estimate, there is no reason you could not have multiple failures in any group of X flights, then no failures for a long time, then more again ending up with something like the predicted rate over long time frames, but over randomly selected spans nothing like that risk at all (apparently). Shuttle was pitched as safe, so safe they could send a teacher and televise it. It was the 25th Shuttle flight. Looking at the consecutive flights, that mean a 1:25 LOC. Retrospectively, they actually assessed the early risk as 1:9. By the end of the program, 1:90, even though the real number (LOV/missions) was 1:67.5.

If anyone was dumb enough to claim it was safe, I'd want operational use data to demonstrate that claim. Airliners have a major accident something like 1 in 6 million actual flights. So to even make a safety claim that "Starship to Mars is only 1000 times more dangerous than an airline flight" they'd need to have racked up several thousand safe flights in a row, IMO.

In short, making a safety claim would be goofy, and believing one before they've flown literally many thousand Mars flights would be insane.

Go, but only if you are cool with insane levels of risk.

[SunlitZelkova]

13 minutes ago, tater said:

What would be an honest safety assessment? Serious question.

Giving people a safety assessment I think would create legal liability, not mitigate it.

We give each flight a 1 in XXX chance of death? Commercial Crew level is 1:270, right? Call it CC level safety. That means if they send 1000 in a synod (LOL) about 4 of them take all hands with them.

I'm making no assumptions at all, actually. I would personally not believe LOC probability estimates. As I said, the only sure number is the number of flights in a row, and even that is fraught. Even if someone believes the safety estimate, there is no reason you could not have multiple failures in any group of X flights, then no failures for a long time, then more again ending up with something like the predicted rate over long time frames, but over randomly selected spans nothing like that risk at all (apparently). Shuttle was pitched as safe, so safe they could send a teacher and televise it. It was the 25th Shuttle flight. Looking at the consecutive flights, that mean a 1:25 LOC. Retrospectively, they actually assessed the early risk as 1:9. By the end of the program, 1:90, even though the real number (LOV/missions) was 1:67.5.

If anyone was dumb enough to claim it was safe, I'd want operational use data to demonstrate that claim. Airliners have a major accident something like 1 in 6 million actual flights. So to even make a safety claim that "Starship to Mars is only 1000 times more dangerous than an airline flight" they'd need to have racked up several thousand safe flights in a row, IMO.

In short, making a safety claim would be goofy, and believing one before they've flown literally many thousand Mars flights would be insane.

Go, but only if you are cool with insane levels of risk.

Consider the following.

NASA and NAA tell Congress there are no quality issues with Apollo ——> There are quality issues, and astronauts die. NASA and the NAA can be blamed for this.

(Interlude: it’s why Apollo Applications didn’t get much funding. They wanted to punish NASA, which knew about the issues at NAA but lied)

Now,

SpaceX tells people there are no quality* issues with Starship ——> There are quality issues, and Mars colonists die. SpaceX can be blamed for this to some degree, whether that be a factory foreman who hid the problems or a corporate culture level issue.

*I’m not necessarily saying there will be quality issues with Starship, I’m just using that particular hypothetical as a point of argument.

I think this a perfectly valid line of reasoning. Apollo 1 provides a good precedent.

It’s not about risk level or what minute details have you. It’s about responsibility.

[tater]

26 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

SpaceX tells people there are no quality* issues with Starship ——> There are quality issues, and Mars colonists die. SpaceX can be blamed for this to some degree, whether that be a factory foreman who hid the problems or a corporate culture level issue.

What does that even mean? "No quality issues."

My car claims no "quality" issues, and if it turns out that there is, and I crash and die, my family sues them. That's it.

This happens in the real world all the time.

26 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

It’s not about risk level or what minute details have you. It’s about responsibility.

Yeah, you do the thing, and if someone dies, you hire the best lawyer you can find. Done. That's it, that's the incentive.

This is if there is some sort of negligence in the design or production, but that legal risk would be atuned at some level to the claimed safety. If it CLAIMS it's totally safe, and isn't—that's a big fat lawsuit. If they say, "hey, there's a huge chance you're gonna die" then the lawsuit is much harder.

It's like that idiot submarine to the Titanic. The waiver said all over that they might die. It was a crappy design, crappy management/oversight, all the crappy things at once. Going into it made them (everyone one that got in it) morons IMO.

Colonizing Mars in the next XX years would be really dangerous. Fast forward any attempt 50 years. Colonizing Mars in 50 years? Really dangerous. Nothing changes unless you can posit that in 50 years they get Star Trek transporters or something. Fast forward 100 years before the first attempt... same risk. Physics is physics, and landing on Mars will always have some chance of lithobraking.

Edited November 19, 2023 by tater

[tater]

As I always say, I'm not a colonize Mars guy. I just don't see the SpaceX "City on Mars" as some sort of ethical concern.

Mars One—that was an ethical concern because it was self-evidently suicide. Not a high chance of death, certain death. It did not close, no way to become self-sustaining, and no way to supply it under the best conditions, much less some issue that causes the Dragons to stop coming. It was pitched to the credulous with no possible hope of being successful (ignoring that they could not afford to even start it, that was just old-fashioned fraud).

The city on Mars thing is predicated on a bunch of also goofy math, 1000 ships of 100 people every synod for 10 synods. Before that ever happened they would have had to have demonstrated mass flights of at the very least lesser numbers of Starships with 100 people. At the point they do that (lol), then it's much less the vaporware that Mars One always was. Still has hurdles, but maybe it's plausible. Until then fretting about it makes zero sense.

 

[SunlitZelkova]

37 minutes ago, tater said:

What does that even mean? "No quality issues."

My car claims no "quality" issues, and if it turns out that there is, and I crash and die, my family sues them. That's it.

This happens in the real world all the time.

Yeah, you do the thing, and if someone dies, you hire the best lawyer you can find. Done. That's it, that's the incentive.

This is if there is some sort of negligence in the design or production, but that legal risk would be atuned at some level to the claimed safety. If it CLAIMS it's totally safe, and isn't—that's a big fat lawsuit. If they say, "hey, there's a huge chance you're gonna die" then the lawsuit is much harder.

It's like that idiot submarine to the Titanic. The waiver said all over that they might die. It was a crappy design, crappy management/oversight, all the crappy things at once. Going into it made them (everyone one that got in it) morons IMO.

Colonizing Mars in the next XX years would be really dangerous. Fast forward any attempt 50 years. Colonizing Mars in 50 years? Really dangerous. Nothing changes unless you can posit that in 50 years they get Star Trek transporters or something. Fast forward 100 years before the first attempt... same risk. Physics is physics, and landing on Mars will always have some chance of lithobraking.

There was an understanding that there was a possibility of an accident on Apollo 1. It didn’t make what North American and NASA did right.

Just because current law would allow something like a waiver to wave legal claims and responsibility doesn’t mean that is right.

46 minutes ago, tater said:

Yeah, you do the thing, and if someone dies, you hire the best lawyer you can find. Done. That's it, that's the incentive.

This is if there is some sort of negligence in the design or production, but that legal risk would be atuned at some level to the claimed safety. If it CLAIMS it's totally safe, and isn't—that's a big fat lawsuit. If they say, "hey, there's a huge chance you're gonna die" then the lawsuit is much harder.

It's like that idiot submarine to the Titanic. The waiver said all over that they might die. It was a crappy design, crappy management/oversight, all the crappy things at once. Going into it made them (everyone one that got in it) morons IMO.

I am highly skeptical not claiming 99% safety or putting an asterisk and talking about risk waves any responsibility in any case.

A migration and living services company is very different from a tourist attraction.

If this is the case, why don’t all companies do it? Ford, construction contractors, and gun makers would never be sued and people would still buy their products anyways.

50 minutes ago, tater said:

Colonizing Mars in the next XX years would be really dangerous. Fast forward any attempt 50 years. Colonizing Mars in 50 years? Really dangerous. Nothing changes unless you can posit that in 50 years they get Star Trek transporters or something. Fast forward 100 years before the first attempt... same risk. Physics is physics, and landing on Mars will always have some chance of lithobraking.

What we, or at least I, believe is that colonizing Mars is incomparable to standard spaceflight. This isn’t a lander lithobraking with some astronauts onboard. It’s entire habitats full of ordinary citizens going up in smoke if one thing goes wrong.

There is risk in putting astronauts on rockets. Trained astronauts who understand the risks. But that doesn’t mean that risk should be extended to families, including children.

I don’t care if Sammy Rockwell III from Indiana who dreamed of being the first man on Mars dies in an EDL near Acidalia Planitia. That’s what he signed up for.

Maybe the first generation of colonists will sign up for that too. But not their children, or unborn children (if childbirth is even possible in Mars gravity). Society has a responsibility to protect them.

To sum up what I’m saying: 1:270 LOC is fine for a capsule with astronauts, not for a habitat with families.

29 minutes ago, tater said:

Until then fretting about it makes zero sense.

People tend to worry when people say things. It doesn’t matter when or where.

AI isn’t really near the level of controlling nukes or potentially turning on its creators, but we still have those conversations now.

[tater]

 

14 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I am highly skeptical not claiming 99% safety or putting an asterisk and talking about risk waves any responsibility in any case.

They'll flat out say it's incredibly dangerous, and not to go unless you are willing to risk your life. This is definitionally the first city on Mars, the initial colony. It's going to be stunningly dangerous, both to get there, and also to survive. Everyone will live their lives a few mm of metal/plastic (and maybe meters of regolith) from quick death.

 

11 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Society has a responsibility to protect them.

No, it doesn't.

 

13 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

To sum up what I’m saying: 1:270 LOC is fine for a capsule with astronauts, not for a habitat with families.

Anyone stupid/brave enough to head off on the starting flights to a someday city on Mars should know better than to bring a family.

Their children? By the point that there's an actual colony on Mars, the number of ships will be high enough that there will be real life data on accident %s. They won't have to guess.

 

 

If space travel becomes as safe as airline travel (major accidents per trip being 1 in millions), then that;s a different story—but it will have to go through a period like air travel, or auto travel did first. It;s not "cutting corners" to get to a world where space travel risk is not calculated abstractly (and inaccurately), we'll need to be in a world of "spaceworthiness," as the way of calculating risk. Vehicles used over and over that are known entities, not one-offs, where 1 part from a subcontractor showed up out of spec, and kills everyone the only time the vehicle would ever fly. It will require millions of flights first. Some of those will kill people. Learning from those will decrease the number of people killed in the future—as it did with aircraft and cars.

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, tater said:

This is definitionally the first city on Mars, the initial colony. It's going to be stunningly dangerous, both to get there, and also to survive. Everyone will live their lives a few mm of metal/plastic (and maybe meters of regolith) from quick death.

Muskuerade vs Camarilla _{idk, who's the latter}

2 hours ago, tater said:

Their children? By the point that there's an actual colony on Mars, the number of ships will be high enough that there will be real life data on accident %s. They won't have to guess.

Children are state property. Parents get social points for them.

SP are used for air, water, food, political loyalty stats.

[KSK]

Some clarity required here, I think, because I’m not sure how well (or even if) I explained  myself.

When I say’rushing’, I mean having the procedures in place to do something safely but having a workplace culture where the procedures aren’t followed because getting the job done now is more important than getting it done correctly.

In Pharma terms, it’s being unsure whether a batch was manufactured properly  but letting it slide because it’ll probably be OK, and ditching this batch and starting again isn’t an option because you’ll be fired. Or it’s falsifying QC measurements either because the measurements weren’t done at all or because they were done but gave the unacceptable answer.

Corner cutting in other words.

Also, I’m quoting this because it gets to the heart of what I’m trying to get across.

8 hours ago, tater said:

t's like that idiot submarine to the Titanic. The waiver said all over that they might die. It was a crappy design, crappy management/oversight, all the crappy things at once. Going into it made them (everyone one that got in it) morons IMO.

If the passengers getting onto that submarine knew about all the crappy things at once then - well, I think that calling them morons is harsh, but yes, they knew what they were getting into.

It’s the situation where they don’t know what they’re getting into that I’m concerned about. They don’t know about the crappy management and oversight (because how could they?). They don’t know enough about submarines to be able to judge whether it’s a crappy design - and if they ask about it because they’ve seen stories in the media - then they’re told all about this wonderful safety system that monitors the hull and sounds the alert if it becomes unsafe. Or they’re fed a lot of impressive sounding but meaningless  information about the window thickness. Both of which are which are also a load of crap - but how is the passenger supposed to know that?

Edit. Re the above, and more importantly, expecting the customer to know whether the design was bad shouldn’t absolve the company concerned from putting customers on a bad design.

Because if the customer is supposed to be able to tell whether the design is bad (to make a judgement call as to the risk involved in getting on board), then for damn sure the company should be able to tell too.

 

Edited November 19, 2023 by KSK

[tater]

6 hours ago, KSK said:

It’s the situation where they don’t know what they’re getting into that I’m concerned about. They don’t know about the crappy management and oversight (because how could they?). They don’t know enough about submarines to be able to judge whether it’s a crappy design - and if they ask about it because they’ve seen stories in the media - then they’re told all about this wonderful safety system that monitors the hull and sounds the alert if it becomes unsafe. Or they’re fed a lot of impressive sounding but meaningless  information about the window thickness. Both of which are which are also a load of crap - but how is the passenger supposed to know that?

Edit. Re the above, and more importantly, expecting the customer to know whether the design was bad shouldn’t absolve the company concerned from putting customers on a bad design.

Because if the customer is supposed to be able to tell whether the design is bad (to make a judgement call as to the risk involved in getting on board), then for damn sure the company should be able to tell too.

This isn't however many thousand flights a day, like aircraft regulatory bodies have to deal with. Where Joe Blow spends $79 to visit his mom a few states away on a 737, though. At the point where space travel is so routine that's closer to the truth, then a company "cutting corners" on their for-sale Mars colony might be an issue. Not sure how that tracks at all to the reality, because the number of flights (total) will not be enough to have a good statistical take on danger assuming catastrophic failures are pretty low in spaceflight terms. If the failure rate is kinda high, then everyone will know right away it's not very safe. If the number of flights so far was really low—they've successfully sent 10 missions to Mars, all successful, say—then people might have the false impression it's safe (Challenger), but all they really know is that the odds are probably better than maybe a 80% chance of success?

It's a mass market vs cadre of expert pioneers thing I think. Initial colonists will necessarily need to be smart, skilled people after all.

I wouldn't characterize my own view as not caring at all, but I just can't imagine someone who is of a mind to move from Earth to a dead world, likely for the rest of their lives, as not doing a little research first. If they are SOLD this, then yeah, the outfit selling them faces some liabilities, and the first major failure likely results in some legal action (this is America, after all, lol, we sue people for literally everything).

[KSK]

Unless a state actor decides to get involved with this, I would have thought that the selling part almost goes without saying? I can't see SpaceX for example (not ragging on them specifically for this, but they seem like the only outfit that will be capable of shipping people to Mars in the near future) letting people book flights on their spacecraft free of charge out of the goodness of their hearts. Not outside of marketing stunts anyway.

I agree with your expert pioneers comment and for sure they'll need to be smart and skilled. However, I don't think we can assume that they'll necessarily be smart and skilled at aerospace engineering, since it'll presumably take a lot of specialists in different fields to get an off-world colony going. I'm also still reminded of the Apollo astronauts. Very smart, very skilled - in most cases at aeropsace engineering - and they were still only trained to be experts on particular parts of their spacecraft, rather than the whole vehicle.  TL: DR, I honestly don't know how much information one would need to do a decent assessment on a spacecraft design, and whether that would be possible even for a smart, skilled, expert pioneer, even assuming that the company building and/or operating the spacecraft was inclined to give them that information.

But I'm spinning my wheels here.

I'll sign off by hoping that private spaceflight will be the domain of companies that do it right. That's not saying that I expect them to be omnipotent and magically account for all possible risks before putting people on their spacecraft, but that I hope that if and when accidents happen (which they almost certainly will), they'll only be because of the "unknown unknowns" in the situation, to paraphrase Secretary Rumsfeld.

Unfortunately, I think that OceanGate is the more likely model. With lots of hiding behind waivers.

Humans gonna human, and humans have been screwing each other over for a profit since... well probably since the notion of 'profit' was conceived.  Even - in fact especially - in a field like medicine, where one would kinda hope that anyone with half a scruple of scruples or humanity, would not sell their fellow humans any old crap (sometimes, quite literally, I'm sure) to ingest, for the sake of making a quick monetary unit or two.

Sadly, I don't see why space travel should be, or will be,  an exception.

 

 

Edited November 19, 2023 by KSK

[tater]

Fair point, assuming SpaceX is selling it. You'd expect they'd have legal people write some sort of waiver that is pretty explicit about the risks. Musk himself says it every time he's asked, that it will be super dangerous, and people will die (not might die).

[SunlitZelkova]

15 hours ago, tater said:

No, it doesn't.

You are correct in that technically, society doesn't have to do anything. It can just be a way for analysts to group humans who live in the vicinity of each other and maybe say hi from time to time, but otherwise leave each other alone.

But historically, society does indeed have a responsibility to protect children. This is why the whole concept of adulthood exists, because children below a certain age are not ready to do things on their own and need to be watched over by both the parents and tribe. Parents alone cannot be trusted, which is why things like Child Protective Services exist.

No one under 18 can sign a waiver. Sending children to Mars would be unacceptable (see below for more explanation of this belief).

15 hours ago, tater said:

Anyone stupid/brave enough to head off on the starting flights to a someday city on Mars should know better than to bring a family.

Their children? By the point that there's an actual colony on Mars, the number of ships will be high enough that there will be real life data on accident %s. They won't have to guess.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, SpaceX has said they want to skip a Mars research base and start right off the bat with a town on Mars. Given... certain aspects of human nature, this is going to result in pregnancies sooner rather than later.

And yes, you can argue there will be a research base and plenty of study on how best to build a Mars city first, but that's only speculation. What we know is that SpaceX wants to build a Mars City as quick as possible to the point of proposing something as ludicrous as people living in the landed ships on the surface right off the bat.

They said they wanted to catch Super Heavy with the tower equipped with "chopsticks". And they actually did it. I think I myself and anyone else who thinks SpaceX has the potential to be negligent in how they handle going about building their city are not unjustified in doing so.

15 hours ago, tater said:

If space travel becomes as safe as airline travel (major accidents per trip being 1 in millions), then that;s a different story—but it will have to go through a period like air travel, or auto travel did first. It;s not "cutting corners" to get to a world where space travel risk is not calculated abstractly (and inaccurately), we'll need to be in a world of "spaceworthiness," as the way of calculating risk. Vehicles used over and over that are known entities, not one-offs, where 1 part from a subcontractor showed up out of spec, and kills everyone the only time the vehicle would ever fly. It will require millions of flights first. Some of those will kill people. Learning from those will decrease the number of people killed in the future—as it did with aircraft and cars.

Why are you blowing this up to include space travel as whole?

I said I didn't care if adults on research expeditions get blown up. Yes, that will continue to happen no matter what, and I don't believe there is a point in stopping just because of that.

What worries me is colonization, which will entail moving people and their families, in all likelihood including children, to Mars. SpaceX is known for moving fast and breaking things, and that's fine with the lives of adults who sign waivers, but not for children, whether they launch from Earth and journey millions of miles or are born into a situation they had no choice in in a small habitat on Mars.

Actually, I will back off on the children who on born on Mars. Just as it is simply nonsensical to use regulation to prevent people from being born into inhumane situations on Earth, that notion that allowing people to have children on Mars would constitute a negligence society needs to intervene in was wrong.

However, I don't believe children should be allowed to be colonists insofar as there is a possibility of true negligence (negligence they could be held legally accountable for). I do think any Mars colony would involve sending families to Mars. They aren't going to just pick bachelors or 20 something year olds. They're going to want "millions" as they say, and they are going to need people with various different skills, some of which can only be gained after having lived enough of life to have had a family. I don't believe anyone would dump their family for living on Mars, and therefore would desire to bring them along. Musk doesn't really seem to like ethics, preferring efficiency, and I could see him allowing children to travel there. And then if the Mars hab explodes because of some defect brought about by a lack of care purposefully overlooked, the blood will be on our hands for having failed to prevent this. This would be as irresponsible as allowing children to participate in some exotic tourist attraction that is normally reserved for adults who can understand and sign a waiver.

If Musk does indeed limit colonists to bachelors and 20 something year olds, neither without children, my concerns will be addressed. But there is no reason to believe that will be the case. I think he would value skills over demographic questions and just send whoever is willing*.

Is there reason to believe Musk will send children to Mars as colonists? No, but as I said, we hold these discussions even if the scenario in question is purely hypothetical, just as we talk about the possibility of AI rising up and turning on humanity.

*To illustrate this concern, let's say as part of making the city a backup for humanity, he wants to send five physicists to Mars. Maybe he finds one who is a bachelor, but if there are four others who say yes but want to bring their families, is he really going to say no?

[tater]

4 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

No one under 18 can sign a waiver. Sending children to Mars would be unacceptable (see below for more explanation of this belief).

Do you expect this would happen? Seems unlikely.

As for kids born there... they would be outside of law here anyway. Ask the Martian courts I guess <shrug>.

8 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

What worries me is colonization, which will entail moving people and their families, in all likelihood including children, to Mars. SpaceX is known for moving fast and breaking things, and that's fine with the lives of adults who sign waivers, but not for children, whether they launch from Earth and journey millions of miles or are born into a situation they had no choice in in a small habitat on Mars.

I have concerns about this as well. We have no idea if Martian gravity is even safe long term. We have an N of ~78B for humans in 1g, and an N of a few hundred (times whatever the average stay in space is) for microgravity, and an N of a few days times 12 guys in 1/6g.

If I were working on Mars as a plan, I'd build a space station with a couple Starships tethered, and spin them up to 0.38g and raise some animals, breed them, etc, and see how it goes. Otherwise send the human exploration teams (adults would would want to go anyway, even if just to visit), and raise animals as part of the research. The early colony dev missions build infrastructure, and raise mammals to test for bone loss, etc. This lasts enough synods to get good data before people talk about having kids on Mars.

Under the assumption you are not a parent, I seriously doubt any parents would knowingly put their kids at extreme risk. So I don't see a family moving to early Mars habitats (once it's safe as airliners to get there, and decades of people living there, maybe). Choosing to have kids on Mars? Maybe some will as long as returning to Earth is an option, but if the safety of that is marginal, who would take the risk?

[darthgently]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Do you expect this would happen? Seems unlikely.

As for kids born there... they would be outside of law here anyway. Ask the Martian courts I guess <shrug>.

I have concerns about this as well. We have no idea if Martian gravity is even safe long term. We have an N of ~78B for humans in 1g, and an N of a few hundred (times whatever the average stay in space is) for microgravity, and an N of a few days times 12 guys in 1/6g.

If I were working on Mars as a plan, I'd build a space station with a couple Starships tethered, and spin them up to 0.38g and raise some animals, breed them, etc, and see how it goes. Otherwise send the human exploration teams (adults would would want to go anyway, even if just to visit), and raise animals as part of the research. The early colony dev missions build infrastructure, and raise mammals to test for bone loss, etc. This lasts enough synods to get good data before people talk about having kids on Mars.

Under the assumption you are not a parent, I seriously doubt any parents would knowingly put their kids at extreme risk. So I don't see a family moving to early Mars habitats (once it's safe as airliners to get there, and decades of people living there, maybe). Choosing to have kids on Mars? Maybe some will as long as returning to Earth is an option, but if the safety of that is marginal, who would take the risk?

Mars fanatics have addressed childbearing on Mars.  It isn't like they haven't thought about it.  One of the proposed solutions is a railway running in a banked large circle to create spin gravity on the ground.  A big centrifuge with maternity wards, nurseries, kindergartens, etc.  And apartments available for anyone deemed medically requiring some earth g therapy.  I don't know.  I definitely lean to orbitals with constant spin gravity as a better near/mid term approach until low g effects are better understood and mitigated.  Ultimately I think martians, both human and other species in the biohabitats, will be physiologically different in 5000 years from molecular modifications mostly and Mars gravity will be fine for them

[tater]

2 hours ago, darthgently said:

Mars fanatics have addressed childbearing on Mars.

Yeah, I was specifically referring to the TRIP to Mars with kids. Obviously once a "colony" there will be kids ON Mars... that's the business of the Martians, their people/government can decide.

2 hours ago, darthgently said:

I definitely lean to orbitals with constant spin gravity as a better near/mid term approach until low g effects are better understood and mitigated. 

Yeah. Course then just build 1g habitats in space like god and O'Neill intended and skip Mars!

 

[SunlitZelkova]

6 hours ago, tater said:

Under the assumption you are not a parent, I seriously doubt any parents would knowingly put their kids at extreme risk. So I don't see a family moving to early Mars habitats (once it's safe as airliners to get there, and decades of people living there, maybe).

Yeah, this is something I didn’t take into account.

I know the average parent wouldn’t, but I would still be concerned about the odd apple out.

3 hours ago, darthgently said:

Mars fanatics have addressed childbearing on Mars.  It isn't like they haven't thought about it.  One of the proposed solutions is a railway running in a banked large circle to create spin gravity on the ground.  A big centrifuge with maternity wards, nurseries, kindergartens, etc.  And apartments available for anyone deemed medically requiring some earth g therapy.  I don't know.  I definitely lean to orbitals with constant spin gravity as a better near/mid term approach until low g effects are better understood and mitigated.  Ultimately I think martians, both human and other species in the biohabitats, will be physiologically different in 5000 years from molecular modifications mostly and Mars gravity will be fine for them

Have they made detailed hypothetical designs of these “railways”? Not likely engineering document level, but just a simple conceptual design.

I’d be curious to see them if there are.

[tater]

Just now, SunlitZelkova said:

I know the average parent wouldn’t, but I would still be concerned about the odd apple out.

There are loonie parents these days that do all sorts of insane things to kids. Maybe a mental illness screening, or simply, "I see you said you'd be taking your small kids with you. Application denied."

 

2 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Have they made detailed hypothetical designs of these “railways”? Not likely engineering document level, but just a simple conceptual design.

I recall the lunar bases conference I used to attend (was actually on the steering committee) there was some discussion of centrifuges for lunar bases that astronauts would use periodically for strength training, etc.