A City On Mars

[farmerben]

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

 

If European colonists were capable of building massive habitats right off the bat and sustaining them at great expense, sure it’d work, but that isn’t realistic. Neither is trying to run a Mars colony based on Earth metrics like profit. It will take something new and innovative- not the idealist utopia I seemed to describe in my post, reminiscent of a certain 19th century economist and philosophers beliefs, but rather something never before seen in the history of humanity.

 

A Mars settlement will have to run off donations in one form or another for quite some time.   It does not have to be taxpayer funded, if you can find other ways of raising donations.  Including lotteries, endowments from the deceased, and patron support for making videos, etc.  

[tater]

8 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I personally haven’t seen anthropological evidence supporting this notion. My understanding it that the idea that capitalism is the end all be all of civilization comes from philosophy rather than a scientific look at the history of the world. It’s still a theory, of course.

The alternative is always enforced with state power (generally maniacally lethal) for groups larger than a tribe (tribes can probably be collectivist). And even then, those states still have black markets—the purest form of commerce (completely unregulated). Heck, even in prisons (or POW camps) there is a black market. Hence my statement it is the natural condition for larger groups of humans in a world with limited resources. Also, the people in charge of such a system invariably get to live like the CEOs while telling everyone else everything going to plan. Maybe if the Mars city is post-scarcity we could dream otherwise (here as well)... but that's not likely given the need of supplies from Earth for a looong time.

Honestly, send the bots first, build the city, then send people... maybe everyone can just live with the hard work done by the bots. The trick is then what do the people do? Tough life, living inside most all of the time.

8 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Now, on the other hand, if we could prove traditional Earth economic systems could work on the Moon before attempting to build a Mars colony, I’d think different.

The Moon can't be a colony I think, gravity probably too low. Not sure there is any real interplanetary economics possible at all. It is certainly true that living on the Moon or Mars requires a flavor of collectivism—since the result of a failure to take care of the canned environment they live in is not that 100 years from now it might possibly be a barely different temperature—they could literally all die immediately with a failure for everyone to do their jobs. So it's not exactly the same as Earth, obviously. The question is what motivates people, and what will they do there? If the goal is self-reliance, they need everything. A chip/electronics industry along with medical, bioscience, etc. Much easier to attract the number of baristas required—course they'll need someone to get coffee plants to grow as well for long term sustainability (til then coffee would be a precious cargo from Earth (I say that while sipping my Americano)).

1 hour ago, farmerben said:

A Mars settlement will have to run off donations in one form or another for quite some time.   It does not have to be taxpayer funded, if you can find other ways of raising donations.  Including lotteries, endowments from the deceased, and patron support for making videos, etc.  

I dunno how such a thing ever gets bootstrapped economically, tbh. I've never been a colonize Mars person, dunno how to make it self-sufficient economically. As hard as it would be to build a completely self-reliant colony on Mars such that they don't all die/decline if the Earth ships stop coming (really really hard to do), I think an interplanetary economy is probably harder still.

[darthgently]

The basis of free markets are an emergent reality of life.  Even animals and plants engage in trade

 

 

[tater]

I want a science fiction future where humans live all around the solar system... I just have difficulty imagining how this could be a thing. Startup period has money lit on fire to build the place. Then it becomes self-sufficient (somehow). Now what? Presumably they want something from Earth sometimes. Some nice wine, or frozen steaks, or whatever. Cool, they buy that... with what?  They have their own economy/currency, what's the exchange rate unless there is actually trade? Why would anyone on Earth want Martian dollars, even a bank?

Someone needs to genetically engineer sandworms so the spice can flow.

[kerbiloid]

Most of futuristic plans have the same weak place.

They treat the biological nature of the human mind container as self-valuable.
Actually, they just plan to pet their old weaknesses with new impressions.
But the monkey body is not made for space. It's made for trees and bananas.

On the other hand there are the technofetishists, who neglect the biological nature of the human mind container.
Actually, they just plan to pet their old weaknesses and sociopathy with fantasized technical superiority over other people, who didn't count with them enough much.
But the human motivation is totally ruled by hormonally caused emotions, while the robots don't have a motivation, they follow others' ones.

Unless another species possesses the human species and explains to it its future way, only symbiosis of cybernetically augmented hives-based society with unified minds and emotions, and grown on demand custom bodies, has a future, farther than nearest centuries.

Partially because when you mind yourself as an expendable part of the hive, you don't care if your spaceflight lasts for a century or for millenium.

And the same about the local planetary colonies.

From troglodyte tribes to hi-tech tribes.

Edited April 11 by kerbiloid

[SunlitZelkova]

7 hours ago, darthgently said:

Even animals practice free market principals.  But scientists call it symbiosis or coevolution. 

The idea that one can't see one being voluntarily trading with another being for mutual advantage as anything other than philosophical requires ignoring evidence right before our eyes. 

Free markets are natural, "organic", and emergent.  No political system anywhere or at any time has been able to keep them from happening and when those political systems collapsed it was emergent free markets that picked up the pieces.  Naturally. 

Two beings trading is not some crazy abstract concept dreamt up by philosophers.  Every cell in your body has mitochondria trading services for security.  It is built in and emergent.  Completely natural and proven by billions of years.  Full duration tested many times! 

When I have more time I’ll PM you. This no longer applies solely to the City on Mars discussion.

[PakledHostage]

7 hours ago, tater said:

Someone needs to genetically engineer sandworms so the spice can flow.

Flippant,  but with a grain of truth... the colony would need to be able to supply something that we need here, but that's difficult or impossible to get here. Mining helium-3 on the moon for use in fusion reactors on Earth is the first idea that springs to mind. But then your "colony" is just a mining community in an inhospitable environment,  the likes of Nanisivik. It'd be a place people would go for work, not because they dream of living there. Sure there might be some associated tourism infrastructure for people to go see the sights and experience 0.15 g... (Heck, swimming in 0.15 g would be fun - supposedly it'd be possible to leap like a dolphin or whale, depending on your physique...). But the economic activity generated by that tourism and helium-3 extraction would be a tendril of the Earth's economy, it wouldn't be a stand-alone lunar economy. 

Likewise, I think a colony on Mars would struggle to be able to provide anything other than a tourism experience.  They'd just be a space banana republic or real world Canto Bight... people would go there for a visit and spend some money, but the colony wouldn't have anything useful to sell. 

Edited April 12 by PakledHostage

[darthgently]

6 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

Flippant,  but with a grain of truth... the colony would need to be able to supply something that we need here, but that's difficult or impossible to get here. Mining helium-3 on the moon for use in fusion reactors on Earth is the first idea that springs to mind. But then your "colony" is just a mining community in an inhospitable environment,  the likes of Nanisivik. It'd be a place people would go for work, not because they dream of living there. Sure there might be some associated tourism infrastructure for people to go see the sights and experience 0.15 g... (Heck, swimming in 0.15 g would be fun - supposedly it'd be possible to leap like a dolphin or whale, depending on your physique...). But the economic activity generated by that tourism and helium-3 extraction would be a tendril of the Earth's economy, it wouldn't be a stand-alone lunar economy. 

Likewise, I think a colony on Mars would struggle to be able to provide anything other than a tourism experience.  They'd be a space banana republic... people would go there for a visit and spend some money, but the colony wouldn't have anything useful to sell. 

As pointed out in the thread at the X post any information based product could work.  Design, engineering, whatever.  One couldn't telecommute in real time with Earth but a lot of work is done remotely, and often performed better in relative isolation.  Maybe Game of Thrones  would actually be completed if GRRM were isolated in a studio on Mars?  

Once the second, third, and subsequent Martian cities emerge along with a Martian orbital city and a Mars-Earth Cycler city perhaps tourism from those places to Earth could become a decent market sector important to Earth.  Stop being so Earth centric, Earther

[tater]

Information/tech is not Mars specific though. The only way this makes sense is with substantial population. Ie: the new colony has enough added humans that we have more smart humans than just Earth would have had minus the colony.

[darthgently]

40 minutes ago, tater said:

Information/tech is not Mars specific though. The only way this makes sense is with substantial population. Ie: the new colony has enough added humans that we have more smart humans than just Earth would have had minus the colony.

Off-world data backup?

Honestly, I'm more of a colonize space guy than a colonize Mars guy.  I would like to see modified terrestrial life, even lichens, get a grip on Mars, because i do think it important to spread life.  If Mars can sustain even microbes, we should make it so.  But given the vast resources available out there I do think orbitals with spin gravity will end up being far more practical than living on Mars or Titan. 

It is not unrealistic that in 1000 years there may be as many people living off-world as on.

What was human population and tech level 1000 years ago?

Each step on that path will look silly to many. 

[tater]

2 minutes ago, darthgently said:

Off-world data backup?

Honestly, I'm more of a colonize space guy than a colonize Mars guy.  I would like to see modified terrestrial life, even lichens, get a grip on Mars, because i do think it important to spread life.  If Mars can sustain even microbes, we should make it so.  But given the vast resources available out there I do think orbitals with spin gravity will end up being far more practical than living on Mars or Titan. 

It is not unrealistic that in 1000 years there may be as many people living off-world as on.

What was human population and tech level 1000 years ago?

Each step on that path will look silly to many. 

I'm not a Mars guy, either. I keep trying to make it work in my head.

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, darthgently said:

One couldn't telecommute in real time with Earth but a lot of work is done remotely, and often performed better in relative isolation

A remote job paradise. Makes sense.

A colony for the medium-level managers, too. No meetings, no team-building...

3 hours ago, darthgently said:

Maybe Game of Thrones  would actually be completed if GRRM were isolated in a studio on Mars?

Without his assistance, they would fail the last seasons and sequels.

Wait... Oh,...!

Edited April 12 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

17 hours ago, tater said:

The alternative is always enforced with state power (generally maniacally lethal) for groups larger than a tribe

I'd disagree. The alternative often starts grassroots, although it can be a product of misaligned incentives; the root of collectivism is self-dehumanization, including a disinterest in the products and outcomes of one's labor. Usually such people just wallow in nihilistic misery, but in turmoil or a bureaucracy they may be able to seize power and subject others to the quest for an impossible utopia.

The problem with collectivist societies - true collectivist societies, rather than tight-knit ones, where seeming altruism is actually a very utilitarian investment for one's own rainy day - is that they rarely get much done. When everyone is a cog in a machine, no-one can be Gagarin, no-one can be allowed to be Gagarin... and no-one wants to be Gagarin. Contrary to their "marketing", collectivist societies are inert, stale and very atomized, even when everyone wears bright colors, makes worries go away with... pharmaceutical methods, constantly lovebombs each other, and forces a smile on their face.

Edited April 12 by DDE

[darthgently]

6 hours ago, DDE said:

I'd disagree. The alternative often starts grassroots, although it can be a product of misaligned incentives; the root of collectivism is self-dehumanization, including a disinterest in the products and outcomes of one's labor. Usually such people just wallow in nihilistic misery, but in turmoil or a bureaucracy they may be able to seize power and subject others to the quest for an impossible utopia.

The problem with collectivist societies - true collectivist societies, rather than tight-knit ones, where seeming altruism is actually a very utilitarian investment for one's own rainy day - is that they rarely get much done. When everyone is a cog in a machine, no-one can be Gagarin, no-one can be allowed to be Gagarin... and no-one wants to be Gagarin. Contrary to their "marketing", collectivist societies are inert, stale and very atomized, even when everyone wears bright colors, makes worries go away with... pharmaceutical methods, constantly lovebombs each other, and forces a smile on their face.

Thus the "lie flat" movement among the younger crowd in the PRC where they just don't give a shoot about anything anymore.  More and more I think nihilism may be the great filter the alien civilizations we aren't seeing among the stars may have failed to pass through.  Maybe it is a kind of nasty civilizational quicksand that commonly emerges eventually with sentience.  They all gave up

Edited April 12 by darthgently

[tater]

7 minutes ago, darthgently said:

Thus the "lie flat" movement among the younger crowd in the PRC where they just don't give a shoot about anything anymore.  More and more I think nihilism may be the great filter the alien civilizations we aren't seeing among the stars may have failed to pass through.  Maybe it is a kind of nasty civilizational quicksand that commonly emerges eventually with sentience.  They all gave up

A localized "dark forest" strategy. Huh.

[magnemoe]

16 hours ago, PakledHostage said:

Flippant,  but with a grain of truth... the colony would need to be able to supply something that we need here, but that's difficult or impossible to get here. Mining helium-3 on the moon for use in fusion reactors on Earth is the first idea that springs to mind. But then your "colony" is just a mining community in an inhospitable environment,  the likes of Nanisivik. It'd be a place people would go for work, not because they dream of living there. Sure there might be some associated tourism infrastructure for people to go see the sights and experience 0.15 g... (Heck, swimming in 0.15 g would be fun - supposedly it'd be possible to leap like a dolphin or whale, depending on your physique...). But the economic activity generated by that tourism and helium-3 extraction would be a tendril of the Earth's economy, it wouldn't be a stand-alone lunar economy. 

Likewise, I think a colony on Mars would struggle to be able to provide anything other than a tourism experience.  They'd just be a space banana republic or real world Canto Bight... people would go there for a visit and spend some money, but the colony wouldn't have anything useful to sell. 

This, settlement has to produce something  to be able to import stuff they need who is a lot,  no it does not need to make an profit, firefighting department does not make any money but they are still funded. 
Science is the obvious one and I want something like the Antarctica stations on Mars.  But that is an research station not an city.
And you need a lot of stuff to be self sufficient on Mars. Solar panels or nuclear reactors, space suit and life support systems and the ability to repair and replace all this including the production equipment. I say millions of people at an minimum. 

And I can not find anything on Mars outside of science. On the Moon you have science, tourism. Down the line you have sending stuff to earth orbit, who could be anything from helium 3 to water or even just rocks as armor then you have an launch rail and its empty and we have power. 
In orbit you have repair and upgrades of satellites later construction. Obviously tourism and science. Manufacturing in micro gravity. 

[kerbiloid]

On 4/11/2024 at 8:32 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

On 4/11/2024 at 7:17 AM, tater said:

Humans are humans, and there are bottom-line incentives that drive us (all of us as a species). In the natural state for large groups—capitalism—people work to increase their own place in the world, with the most motivated being the higher end of the scale (these days CEOs, etc). Minus the "profit" incentive structure the same people exist (history has demonstrated this to the misery of 10s of millions)—but since they cannot create ways to generate wealth via commerce, they improve their lot by the only remaining outlet—personal power. I don't see collectivism being a way to innovate Mars into long term survival.

I personally haven’t seen anthropological evidence supporting this notion. My understanding it that the idea that capitalism is the end all be all of civilization comes from philosophy rather than a scientific look at the history of the world. It’s still a theory, of course.

As I said, I don’t think a collectivist utopia is the answer. That was wishful thinking on my part.

The capitalism is effective while most of people can produce a value.
Once the robots have devalued the human product, only a neglible part of humans will be able to produce the value, required by anybody.
Then the capitalism will mutate into the antiutopia when 1% of people are producing the (mostly immaterial) value, while other 99% are living on welfare, and can't compete to each other due to absence of a valuable product for the competition.
This makes the collectivism an inevitable way to withstand the 1%'s pressure and their attempt to physically eliminate those 99%, and thus survive.

Also, collectivism doesn't mean absence of competition.

[mikegarrison]

I didn't realize someone had restarted this discussion.

The romantic stories always pretty much come down to assuming that people go to these remote places because they want to leave society. They are trailblazers and explorers and individualists by nature, and that's the appeal for them. But the problem is that Mars is too hostile for individuals. You need the support of a society to live there.

Which leaves the other main reason, resource exploitation. Except, we don't actually know of or even expect any resources that justify the difficulty in going to Mars, harvesting them, and coming back.

So it kind of looks pretty bleak right now. More like a "scientific outpost" situation than a "colonization" situation.

Or maybe, there is a third option, which actually could be the most realistic one. Some super-rich people fund it just because they want to and they have nothing else to spend all their money on.

[tater]

51 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

But the problem is that Mars is too hostile for individuals. You need the support of a society to live there.

This is a pretty precise statement of the problem, and why historical comparisons are not useful.

[mikegarrison]

11 minutes ago, tater said:

This is a pretty precise statement of the problem, and why historical comparisons are not useful.

The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates. Written by Himself. would have been a book whose text was shorter than its title if he couldn't even breathe the air on his island.

Edited April 13 by mikegarrison

[PakledHostage]

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

Or maybe, there is a third option, which actually could be the most realistic one. Some super-rich people fund it just because they want to and they have nothing else to spend all their money on.

That's what I had tried to say yesterday.  I don’t see a Mars colony as viable,  other than as a sort of tourist destination for wealty adventurers. Maybe eventually it would turn into a real-world Canto Bight, but that's probably a few centuries off. The idea that it could be a colony of highly educated remote workers doesn't sit well with me, because what highly educated individual is going to want to live in a box under 6 feet of Martian regolith? Highly educated workers tend to gravitate towards more desirable places to live, with outdoor recreation opportunities,  etc.

[SunlitZelkova]

3 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

That's what I had tried to say yesterday.  I don’t see a Mars colony as viable,  other than as a sort of tourist destination for wealty adventurers. Maybe eventually it would turn into a real-world Canto Bight, but that's probably a few centuries off. The idea that it could be a colony of highly educated remote workers doesn't sit well with me, because what highly educated individual is going to want to live in a box under 6 feet of Martian regolith? Highly educated workers tend to gravitate towards more desirable places to live, with outdoor recreation opportunities,  etc.

If it's a tourist destination it's not really a colony. Tourism involves going and coming back.

[Little 908]

On 4/11/2024 at 9:34 AM, tater said:

I want a science fiction future where humans live all around the solar system... I just have difficulty imagining how this could be a thing. Startup period has money lit on fire to build the place. Then it becomes self-sufficient (somehow). Now what? Presumably they want something from Earth sometimes. Some nice wine, or frozen steaks, or whatever. Cool, they buy that... with what?  They have their own economy/currency, what's the exchange rate unless there is actually trade? Why would anyone on Earth want Martian dollars, even a bank?

Someone needs to genetically engineer sandworms so the spice can flow.

If you acknowledge what we have right now. We literally have robots that are capable of doing all your chores, fighting . We have constructed a few billion dollar space station in LEO. We have sent probes near every planet. We have done a lot of things that we dreamt of in sci-fi movies back at the start of the space race. So its likely we will have stuff we say is fiction now.

[tater]

4 minutes ago, Little 908 said:

If you acknowledge what we have right now. We literally have robots that are capable of doing all your chores, fighting . We have constructed a few billion dollar space station in LEO. We have sent probes near every planet. We have done a lot of things that we dreamt of in sci-fi movies back at the start of the space race. So its likely we will have stuff we say is fiction now.

Robots are better for all the science, but it's not the same as people. I was at a conference at Caltech years ago (Voyager Neptune encounter, actually) and in a discussion someone asked what humans could do that probes couldn't, and a guy yelled, "Have children!"

I want to see humans actually living in space... I'm just not seeing a great reason. I think @PakledHostage is probably on the right track. We have a couple guys who really want this—Bezos is one of "Gerry's Kids" (Gerry O'Neill), and Musk is the Mars bro. I still think for LEO and even cislunar space, tourism is in fact the "killer app." O'Neill thought space based solar power beamed to Earth was the answer—but even if that math is made to close, it will NOT require the 10s of thousands of construction workers O'Neill imagined. As a result, no colonies to house them are needed. Tourism could actually scale—but the travel piece needs to be airline safe, and at least as affordable as business class and up (or same economic class of passengers, anyway). That's an incredibly high bar, airline travel is amazingly safe. For Mars? tourism to mars would be another class of people—the sort who 100+ years ago took The Grand Tour around Europe (as seen in period films/shows). The sort that might have servants. Actually rich people, not just the affluent professionals who are the business class customers for LEO/cislunar.

Mars, like everywhere else humans might go in the solar system, is only a destination once someone BUILDS the destination. It's all 100% built, humans die quickly off Earth otherwise. So the super rich need to build the destinations, "because," then they can maybe get people to visit. Mars is really hard for tourism, though, it requires 1.8 to 2.5+ YEARS of time allocated (opposition vs conjunction trips). I don't see tourism as much of a driver for Mars.

22 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

If it's a tourist destination it's not really a colony. Tourism involves going and coming back.

I would argue that since the place has to be built, and the workers need to be there (even service workers), it can still be a colony. To me the definition of colony is that humans live there as their home, and have kids.

[PakledHostage]

26 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

If it's a tourist destination it's not really a colony. Tourism involves going and coming back.

That's kind of my point.  I don’t see a colony being viable on Mars. Moon, yes. Mars, no, because the Moon has potentially useful resources (helium-3 for use in fusion reactors and ice to make rocket fuel in reasonabe proximity to Earth), while Mars has...