A couple of astronauts hanging out on a dome on mars is not the same thing as an interplanetary civilization. I expect mars landings to follow the same trajectory as the moon landings: put a few people on there for the sake of showing off, then not bother about it for half a century, then half-assedly discuss putting people on there long term, again for the sake of showing off.
I recommend the book A city on mars for an explanation of the massive social and economic barriers to space colonisation.
I agree. While I find the spirit of the post and the question interesting, I’m not sure the original claim is supported. Colonizing other planets remains a goal which is very far away.
The same would have been said about reusable rockets and human-level AI 15 years ago. I don’t understand how one can look at a billion dollar company with concrete plans to colonize Mars and the technology to do so, and conclude that the probability of this happening is so low it can be dismissed.
Regarding arguments against A City to Mars, I found the link you gave under titotal’s post pretty interesting. It indeed lowers my credence in this book. Thanks for the link.
However, despite reading the post, I still fail to understand the economics of going to space long term -beyond what SpaceX is ready to fund- since everything would be so expensive, with no significant added value compared to what we can do on Earth. But maybe I missed something here as well.
That’s my point; that is explicitly not the plan. Elon wants to establish a colony right away, and he’s in the process of building up the infrastructure to do it. Frankley I think it makes no sense to compare the two; the US went to the moon as part of the cold war with the Soviet Union; the whole point was just showing off. The Apollo program was much too expensive to support a long-term lunar colony, and there were never serious plans to do so. The current space race is completely different. Elon is not trying to compete with anyone. He just wants there to be a civilization on Mars, and unlike the Saturn V, Starship is designed to be cheap and reusable enough to make that possible.
A couple of astronauts hanging out on a dome on mars is not the same thing as an interplanetary civilization. I expect mars landings to follow the same trajectory as the moon landings: put a few people on there for the sake of showing off, then not bother about it for half a century, then half-assedly discuss putting people on there long term, again for the sake of showing off.
I recommend the book A city on mars for an explanation of the massive social and economic barriers to space colonisation.
I agree. While I find the spirit of the post and the question interesting, I’m not sure the original claim is supported. Colonizing other planets remains a goal which is very far away.
The author of the book A City on Mars also appeared in the 80000 hours podcast to speak about the limits : https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/zach-weinersmith-space-settlement/
The same would have been said about reusable rockets and human-level AI 15 years ago. I don’t understand how one can look at a billion dollar company with concrete plans to colonize Mars and the technology to do so, and conclude that the probability of this happening is so low it can be dismissed.
Regarding arguments against A City to Mars, I found the link you gave under titotal’s post pretty interesting. It indeed lowers my credence in this book. Thanks for the link.
However, despite reading the post, I still fail to understand the economics of going to space long term -beyond what SpaceX is ready to fund- since everything would be so expensive, with no significant added value compared to what we can do on Earth. But maybe I missed something here as well.
That’s my point; that is explicitly not the plan. Elon wants to establish a colony right away, and he’s in the process of building up the infrastructure to do it. Frankley I think it makes no sense to compare the two; the US went to the moon as part of the cold war with the Soviet Union; the whole point was just showing off. The Apollo program was much too expensive to support a long-term lunar colony, and there were never serious plans to do so. The current space race is completely different. Elon is not trying to compete with anyone. He just wants there to be a civilization on Mars, and unlike the Saturn V, Starship is designed to be cheap and reusable enough to make that possible.
I haven’t yet read A City on Mars, but I’ve heard that it’s pretty poor. e.g. Peter Hague’s review: https://planetocracy.org/p/review-of-a-city-on-mars-part-ii.