You still got water you can drink though right? Normal gravity? Oxygen? Fire wood? You don't have any of that on Mars.

Nobody will "live on Mars" in our lifetime.

I think Elon Musk says a lot of things because it's good for his brand (and his stock) to be perceived as a visionary. I get it. But Tesla hasn't turned a profit. He can't afford for the stock price to take a tumble.

Redundancy just means having more than one in case you lose one. It's a pretty straightforward, cut-and-dried debate here on BT that it's always better to have two.

In seriousness, even if Mars isn't a great place to live, it does provide a way for the human race to persist in the event of a catastrophe that wipes us all from the face of the Earth. Hopefully the humans on Mars would have what they need to then return to Earth and re-colonize it!



If we venture out into space an find them, most likely it'll be the other way around. Which points to another reason to pursue Mars as a first step in interplanetary travel: do you want to be the race that's acknowledged as intelligent life, or do you want to be the one that's discovered here on Earth and considered dumb as a stump?

If you found a beautiful island free for the taking, perfect in every way, except overrun by cockroaches, what would you do....

Take the time to learn how to communicate with cockroaches?
Try to understand their plight?
Find a way to live together?

Or...

Exterminate the cockroaches and enjoy the island?

That is the most likely way an alien intelligence capable of space/time travel will view us.

I remember someone saying many years ago that 'the most compelling evidence that intelligent extra-terrestrial life-forms exist, is that they haven't yet tried to contact us!'

How do you figure?

I say it's no easier to "live on Mars" than it is to live on a space ship orbiting the Earth.

"Living on Mars" means you are subsisting without help from the home planet. Growing your own food, hunting, producing your own power etc. If you're waiting on a cargo ship from Earth every month you're not "living" there.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/m7AMbqO8pa4[/youtube]

How do you figure?

I say it's no easier to "live on Mars" than it is to live on a space ship orbiting the Earth.

"Living on Mars" means you are subsisting without help from the home planet. Growing your own food, hunting, producing your own power etc. If you're waiting on a cargo ship from Earth every month you're not "living" there.

I really don't think this is realistic. Whatever cataclysmic disaster it takes (natural or man-made) to wipe out the human species on Earth, it's unlikely that the planet will be suitable for re-colonization for millennia at the least. We're talking about asteroid-impacting, nuclear wintering, black death plaguing kind of armageddon. All species are resilient, humans arguably more so than most. We might be reduced to primitive subsistence, but to render us completely extinct? There isn't going to be much left. Nobody on Mars will be able to do anything for Earth in a situation like that except rope it off.

Hey, I didn't mention a timeline.

You're right. Depending on the catastrophe, Earth may be uninhabitable for humans for a very long time. Or even forever.

Does EVERYTHING in the US have to have some sort of financial ROI? Are you only being taught at school that your life is worth however much you make?

Because I can see the reason to go to Mars just to go to Mars, and experience what it is like. The psychological shock of NOT being on Earth. Of realising that you are stepping on another &&$^@* planet!
In the same way that we travel the world and meet people, or look at sceneries. Experience.

Also, training to go to Mars, or any endeavour like this, even if you end up not going, makes you a better, more educated person, and you will have to surround yourself with people who are at the top of their field.
I can't imagine doing anything better in my life than learning from them!

And if in the process you end up inspiring people to push further...All the better.

So you agree with me now?

Even if the ROI isn't $$$$....... Do you really think someone will spend probably Trillions of $$ for an "amazing experience" knowing what we already know about Mars?

IMO, I truly believe you'd spend years of prep time and trillions of $$ and you'd get there and you'd say..... "what am I doing here"? I think the money would be much better spent building a space station like the one in the movie Elysium if that's even possible.

If they had a way to "terraform" Mars into an Earth-like planet like in the movies and you knew you could do it that would be a big reason to go to Mars. But I would not go to Mars to spend the rest of my life in a space suit or live inside some indoor "habitat".

That would be great ... for about an hour.

I do not remember Kennedy saying, "I believe that we can go to the moon and return safely..." But I do remember watching it happen, and the impact that Kennedy's words have had on our world is nearly immeasurable....

Think about it... All the technology that came as a result of 60's space program.... It has had a profound impact on Earth, not on the moon....

The tech hurdle of going to Mars is not how to get there, or how to get back, we know how to do that... The hurdle of going to Mars is how do we but 6 people in something slightly larger than a mini-van and have them live together for 18 months without killing each other....

Solving that could affect world peace....

Kennedy did not know that the technology created in going to the moon would impact every aspect of our lives, but he knew that we needed an inspiring goal that would bring us together in a common purpose. There is a word for that, it's called leadership...