A City On Mars

[HebaruSan]

Thanks for the book recommendation. I suspect it has already been gift-purchased off my wish list.

[KSK]

I'm genuinely curious about the extinction level disasters that people have in mind that will selectively affect the Earth and not any putative off-world colonies. A dinosaur killer sized asteroid is about the only one that springs to mind. I would have thought  that a gamma ray burst or other cosmic catastrophe, would be a solar system scale event that 'making life multiplanetary' isn't going to do a whole lot to mitigate.

In which case, spending more on asteroid detection and deflection would seem to be a higher priority than some cockamamie Mars colony.  I guess if the space billionaire crowd want to take a shot at building a city on Mars, there's probably not much we can do about it, but excusing it as a backup plan for an 'extinction level event' seems like... well it comes out of the north end of a southbound cow, in my opinion.

Then again, I'm kinda soured on the whole manifest destiny thing. Can't imagine heading off to live in a radiation blasted toxic desert with essentially no air, for the greater enrichment of some billionaire and their shareholders, as being anything other than an act of pure desperation for most people.

 

[farmerben]

The idea that a city on Mars can be self sufficient is pretty far fetched.  It might be better to shoot for Earth dependent O-Neil cylinders first.  And also foundries on asteroids and the moon.  An outpost on Mars would be a good thing.  I just don't think self sufficiency is practical with our current technology.  

[kerbiloid]

12 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Going by this logic airplanes were never going to be invented because no one pushed for studying the possibility of men flying after the story of Icarus was written.

Icarus didn't have a propeller...

Spoiler

... like Karlson has.

Btw, this unexpectedly explains the character background.

Karlson is actually Ikarlson.
Icarus, arisen after his Fall. Lost his wings, but received something better.

This also explains, why Karlson lives on the roof top. 
The sun. He's doomed to be as close to it, as possible.

The substance in his jars is actually not a jam. It's nectare.

Edited November 12, 2023 by kerbiloid

[StrandedonEarth]

What's the rush? Well, let's not wait until Earth is nigh uninhabitable before starting. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, yadda yadda,  and didn't a wise man say not to put all your eggs in one basket?

[magnemoe]

18 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Going by this logic airplanes were never going to be invented because no one pushed for studying the possibility of men flying after the story of Icarus was written.

Obviously they were invented, even if no one really worked on it for thousands of years.

The idea that if we don’t do it immediately, no one ever will is absurd.

It should be noted that unlike space exploration, which is for “you” (a science and exploration lover, also astronauts and engineers and what have you) and thus the consequences of a disaster would be limited to those who really wanted to participate, space colonization is for society. It will entail affecting the fates of people who just want to live life, as well as children who have yet to be born.

Any time one clique tries to shove society in a certain direction by force, imposing their own will on others without discussion amongst society of the way their plans should be executed or the way it might effect things, needless death occurs.

I’d go as far as to say that any space colonization project that doesn’t involve all the “speculation” that seems to be despised will go down in history like agricultural collectivization. It won’t be like when the Americas were settled. The settlers built their own homes and own society when they landed in America, while with the way things are going, it seems any pitiful Mars colonist will have their and their children’s lives dictated by either one man or a small group of men 145 million miles away, hellbent on “saving humanity” like humans were their pets and not independent beings with rights.

One more thing- I feel this sense that an extinction level disaster is going to happen at any moment is borderline end times prophesizing.

Airplanes was useful pretty early on, they was very useful in WW 1, 10 years later, then it was air mail who was obvious useful and the rest is history. 

Now I can see multiple ways we get an city in orbit, on the moon and it being profitable and grow.  I see this a bit more likely on asteroids than on mars. 
All will start as an small research station, add commercial use as in manufacturing and tourism, it grows and then population get larger say 1000 you get people living there constantly and independent business not associated with the station owners. 
And not space based stuff, like someone repairing satellites, my guess the first one will be an bar. 

But it will not be self sufficient, that is very hard in space as you need to be able to build everything you need to survive in space or mars forever. Life support, space suits and robots is the hard ones here. Hard to do and not economical. Much cheaper to skip in spacesuits and computers from earth even if you grow all the food you need and repair spaceships. 
Rater focusing on climbing the Kardashev scale, and it comes naturally. 

[mikegarrison]

10 hours ago, farmerben said:

It might be better to shoot for Earth dependent O-Neil cylinders first.

The book is titled A City On Mars, but they discuss the Moon, Mars, and space habitats.

[SunlitZelkova]

4 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

What's the rush? Well, let's not wait until Earth is nigh uninhabitable before starting. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, yadda yadda,  and didn't a wise man say not to put all your eggs in one basket?

As I mentioned earlier, expansive fallout shelters would be a better option. Especially because the city will probably located on the surface, Mars is not a safe haven from either asteroid strikes or gamma ray bursts.

Fallout shelters can also be constructed immediately, whereas it would take a century to build a self-sustaining city even by the most optimistic timelines. Especially if nuclear war is a fear, fallout shelters make the most sense.

[darthgently]

28 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Especially because the city will probably located on the surface, Mars is not a safe haven from either asteroid strikes or gamma ray bursts.

Most settlement plans involve starting in subsurface lava tubes and tunnels.  Don't underestimate the possible eventual future of the Boring Company on the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

[kerbiloid]

Pompeians are voting for lava tubes.

[monophonic]

8 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

What's the rush? Well, let's not wait until Earth is nigh uninhabitable before starting. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, yadda yadda,  and didn't a wise man say not to put all your eggs in one basket?

Right, let's get to it! We must build a thousand Orion ships to get enough mass to Mars to build that self sufficient colony, prompt! Never mind what launching all those does to Earth. We don't need Earth when we can have Mars!

Yeah, that's reductio ad absurdum for you. Mind that not rushing does not mean sleeping in the bushes as the turtle crawls past either. It is just way too early to try to run (build planetary colonies) when we have only just learned to roll over (build LEO space stations). There is so much we must learn before we can build a Mars colony that can be learned much closer to home i.e. cheaper and safer.

Worst thing to do right now would be to build a colony that fails and kills its inhabitants. That would make any and all funding and support shy away for generations if not forever.

[KSK]

1 hour ago, monophonic said:

Worst thing to do right now would be to build a colony that fails and kills its inhabitants. That would make any and all funding and support shy away for generations if not forever.

Depends who's funding it and whether anyone ever hears about the failures.  Cis-Mars space is a very large rug to sweep things under.

Assume that this article has been discussed elsewhere. I'm taking it with the requisite grain of salt, but if even half of it is true, it doesn't speak well for privately funded Mars city efforts. Which I imagine they'll mostly be, since I can't seen any government being too keen to sink funds into that size of Mars-doggle.

A short life awaits you in the off-world colonies.

Edited November 13, 2023 by KSK

[darthgently]

30 minutes ago, KSK said:

Depends who's funding it and whether anyone ever hears about the failures.  Cis-Mars space is a very large rug to sweep things under.

Assume that this article has been discussed elsewhere. I'm taking it with the requisite grain of salt, but if even half of it is true, it doesn't speak well for privately funded Mars city efforts. Which I imagine they'll mostly be, since I can't seen any government being too keen to sink funds into that size of Mars-doggle.

A short life awaits you in the off-world colonies.

A short life likely faced those who crossed the land bridge between Asia and the Americas and the later settlers of the Americas.  What puts the concept of space settlement into an entirely different context is that *every* settler is volunteering with no illusions.  And they are still lining up. 

Thought experiment:

One part of human civilization is ready to explore settlements outward and are taking steps toward that goal.

Would the other parts of human civilization that would like to do so but aren't technically or economically ready, or merely view themselves in competition, use social engineering to attempt to make the first group slow down and take more time out not?

Take with a grain of salt the purported intentions of those calling for putting on the brakes is my advice.

Edited November 13, 2023 by darthgently

[KSK]

4 hours ago, darthgently said:

A short life likely faced those who crossed the land bridge between Asia and the Americas and the later settlers of the Americas.  What puts the concept of space settlement into an entirely different context is that *every* settler is volunteering with no illusions.  And they are still lining up. 

Thought experiment:

One part of human civilization is ready to explore settlements outward and are taking steps toward that goal.

Would the other parts of human civilization that would like to do so but aren't technically or economically ready, or merely view themselves in competition, use social engineering to attempt to make the first group slow down and take more time out not?

Take with a grain of salt the purported intentions of those calling for putting on the brakes is my advice.

Not going to bother rehashing the 'settling the Americas isn't remotely like settling Mars' arguments yet again.

No part of human civilization is technically or economically ready for settling other planets. We have a couple of billionaires talking about it, but one has failed to make much progress at all so far, and the other is focused on one part of the endeavour, namely building the rockets to get there, and mostly ignoring (as per the original post here), the vast swathes of other technical, economic, sociological, political, etc. parts.

As per my previous post, justifying a Mars city as a backup plan for an extinction level event is a flimsy argument at best, and I would argue that the economic case  is even less substantial than that. I say city, because optimistically, I could imagine a small, internationally funded, scientific outpost on Mars, or a small mining outpost /control centre for monitoring the robots that are doing the actual mining. That's making the bold assumption that offworld mining becomes economically viable of course.

At this point in time, a city on Mars is basically one big Elon Musk vanity project which he's driving hell-for-leather with a 'move fast, break things, and damn the health and safety' company culture. If there was a good, waste-anything-you-like-except-time, reason for  building a Mars city, that attitude might be justifiable, but I don't believe there is. 

As for the fact that every putative Mars settler is volunteering with no illusions?  Even assuming that's correct (I certainly wouldn't trust Musk to be impartial about the potential risks), having a bunch of eyes wide open volunteers lined up is no excuse for slapdash corporate corner cutting. If anything, it makes that carelessness even more reprehensible.

I'm dumping on Musk here but if we end up with more companies competing to go to Mars, I doubt they'd be any better than SpaceX.

Edit.  To answer your thought experiment - almost certainly but possibly not in the way you had in mind. We've already seen Bezos' legal shenanigans over the Artemis lander bid. I fully expect any private actors in this space to deploy their full panoply of lawsuits, FUD, and lobbying tactics against each other, in the name of competition.

 

TL: DR.  Take with a grain of salt the purported intentions of those calling for putting on the brakes is fair advice, but I'd take the purported intentions of those who resist any calls to put on the brakes with two grains.

Edited November 13, 2023 by KSK

[farmerben]

A Mars colony devoted to self-sufficiency is not going to grow very fast.  Maybe the goal should be to expand habitable/vegetated area.  Or to increase construction materials like glass and aluminum.  Those are related goals anyway.  Haul vitamins and microchips from Earth.  The survival of an interplanetary transport system should be high priority.  The motive of having insurance if Earth is destroyed, is not the most reasonable.  

[magnemoe]

5 hours ago, farmerben said:

A Mars colony devoted to self-sufficiency is not going to grow very fast.  Maybe the goal should be to expand habitable/vegetated area.  Or to increase construction materials like glass and aluminum.  Those are related goals anyway.  Haul vitamins and microchips from Earth.  The survival of an interplanetary transport system should be high priority.  The motive of having insurance if Earth is destroyed, is not the most reasonable.  

Agree, but then it just become another research outpost like the one at Antarctica. And yes an permanent base on Mars is an good idea. 

[SunlitZelkova]

19 hours ago, darthgently said:

Most settlement plans involve starting in subsurface lava tubes and tunnels.  Don't underestimate the possible eventual future of the Boring Company on the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

But why on Mars? If the goal is to save humanity, it would make much more sense to do what is fastest- building a self-sustaining underground city on Earth.

Heck, how… on Earth… do people expect to build expansive underground habitats on Mars when we haven’t even done that on Earth? Cheyenne Mountain and the like don’t really count, because they are command bunkers, not towns.

13 hours ago, darthgently said:

Thought experiment:

One part of human civilization is ready to explore settlements outward and are taking steps toward that goal.

Would the other parts of human civilization that would like to do so but aren't technically or economically ready, or merely view themselves in competition, use social engineering to attempt to make the first group slow down and take more time out not?

Take with a grain of salt the purported intentions of those calling for putting on the brakes is my advice.

As KSK said, the people calling for destroying the brakes and going full steam ahead are equally suspicious.

I wasn’t going to say this originally, but given how Musk seems to be focused on survival in the event of an extinction event but is choosing the most dangerous option possible instead of fallout shelters, I can only wonder if he has something else in mind. Maybe get people far away and then control them, build his own little society worshipping him?

I don’t find that notion anymore far fetched than the anti-progress conspiracy you suppose.

[darthgently]

2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

But why on Mars? If the goal is to save humanity, it would make much more sense to do what is fastest- building a self-sustaining underground city on Earth.

Heck, how… on Earth… do people expect to build expansive underground habitats on Mars when we haven’t even done that on Earth? Cheyenne Mountain and the like don’t really count, because they are command bunkers, not towns.

As KSK said, the people calling for destroying the brakes and going full steam ahead are equally suspicious.

I wasn’t going to say this originally, but given how Musk seems to be focused on survival in the event of an extinction event but is choosing the most dangerous option possible instead of fallout shelters, I can only wonder if he has something else in mind. Maybe get people far away and then control them, build his own little society worshipping him?

I don’t find that notion anymore far fetched than the anti-progress conspiracy you suppose.

It won't even happen in Musk's lifetime and he knows it and has admitted as much.  But if we don't have some urgency it simply won't happen at all.  Because human nature.

You simply will not find a case where life has not tried to fill a niche and to extend its range.  With a living technological species entirely new niches open up and range extension leaps previous boundaries.  You can either go with the flow of life as we know it, or attempt to oppose the flow for "reasons".   I can't see the point of opposing such a fundamental aspect of existence

[darthgently]

This is a good demonstration of why we need to keep pushing outward.  Because that is what life does

 

Edited November 14, 2023 by darthgently

[monophonic]

21 hours ago, KSK said:

Depends who's funding it and whether anyone ever hears about the failures.  Cis-Mars space is a very large rug to sweep things under.

Assume that this article has been discussed elsewhere. I'm taking it with the requisite grain of salt, but if even half of it is true, it doesn't speak well for privately funded Mars city efforts. Which I imagine they'll mostly be, since I can't seen any government being too keen to sink funds into that size of Mars-doggle.

A short life awaits you in the off-world colonies.

Oh my, that was an appalling read. Anyway, it will be very difficult to sweep stuff under even that large a rug and not leave any bumps to tattle in today's society. Most people would have some family or friends expecting to hear back from them and start asking questions if they don't. So if stories of injuries can be suppressed, there would still be stories of people suddenly going completely unreachable for no apparent reason.

[mikegarrison]

OK, just finished the book, and in the end ... they make a plea to all their fellow space fans to forgive them for coming to conclusion that this will be really hard to do and possibly should even never be done, but definitely should not be rushed into.

[KSK]

5 hours ago, darthgently said:

It won't even happen in Musk's lifetime and he knows it and has admitted as much.  But if we don't have some urgency it simply won't happen at all.  Because human nature.

You simply will not find a case where life has not tried to fill a niche and to extend its range.  With a living technological species entirely new niches open up and range extension leaps previous boundaries.  You can either go with the flow of life as we know it, or attempt to oppose the flow for "reasons".   I can't see the point of opposing such a fundamental aspect of existence

So which is it? Something that isn't going to happen at all without urgency because human nature, or a fundamental aspect of existence?

Those two paragraphs look contradictory to me. Surely if it's a fundamental aspect of existence, then human nature isn't going to stop it? Conversely, if human nature is strong enough to stop it, then doesn't that imply that it's not actually fundamental?

[mikegarrison]

Oh, and also? You've got to love a book that is willing to discuss a hypothetical war on the surface of the moon between Muskow and Bezostralia.

[darthgently]

2 hours ago, KSK said:

So which is it? Something that isn't going to happen at all without urgency because human nature, or a fundamental aspect of existence?

Those two paragraphs look contradictory to me. Surely if it's a fundamental aspect of existence, then human nature isn't going to stop it? Conversely, if human nature is strong enough to stop it, then doesn't that imply that it's not actually fundamental?

Maybe for the same reason old elephants go mad or cancer cells form?  Not sure what point you are trying to make.  Of course we are capable of being stupid.  The contradiction is apparent only.  To say there is a fundamental aspect in no way implies that it is the only aspect nor that all aspects are of equal importance, utility, and primacy.  Living things make mistakes all the time.  Thinking too much and infinite looping in committees is a failure mode only intelligent species have to be wary of

[KSK]

1 hour ago, darthgently said:

Maybe for the same reason old elephants go mad or cancer cells form?  Not sure what point you are trying to make.  Of course we are capable of being stupid.  The contradiction is apparent only.  To say there is a fundamental aspect in no way implies that it is the only aspect nor that all aspects are of equal importance, utility, and primacy.  Living things make mistakes all the time.  Thinking too much and infinite looping in committees is a failure mode only intelligent species have to be wary of

The point I was trying to make is that your second paragraph was treating off-world colonisation as inevitable, something that was part of the flow of life as we know it, a fundamental aspect of existence that you couldn't see any point in opposing.  Whereas, in your first paragraph you were fretting that off-world colonisation would never happen, because of human nature.

They're both reasonable viewpoints, they're just opposed to each other.