Bill Nye: We Are Not Going To Live on Mars, Let Alone Turn It Into Earth (usatoday.com) 646
pgmrdlm writes: Bill Nye says the idea of Mars colonization and terraforming -- making a planet more Earth-like by modifying its atmosphere -- is science fiction. "This whole idea of terraforming Mars, as respectful as I can be, are you guys high?" Nye said in an interview with USA TODAY. "We can't even take care of this planet where we live, and we're perfectly suited for it, let alone another planet." As for living on Mars permanently: Sorry, Nye says that's not happening either. "People disagree with me on this, and the reason they disagree is because they're wrong," he quipped. The famous science educator and CEO of The Planetary Society appears on National Geographic Channel's series "MARS." While the series explores human beings living on the Red Planet and even mining it, that doesn't mean Nye buys into the idea. For starters, he points to Antarctica, where scientists are stationed even during the harsh winter months but no one lives permanently.
"Nobody goes to Antarctica to raise a family. You don't go there and build a park, there's just no such thing. Nobody's gonna go settle on Mars to raise a family and have generations of Martians," Nye said. "It's not reasonable because it's so cold. And there is hardly any water. There's absolutely no food, and the big thing, I just remind these guys, there's nothing to breathe." Plus living in a dome, then putting on a spacesuit to go outside will get tiring -- fast. "When you leave your dome, you're gonna put on another dome, and I think that will get old pretty quick," he said. "Especially the smell in the spacesuit 00 all the Febreze you can pack, I think it will really help you up there."
"Nobody goes to Antarctica to raise a family. You don't go there and build a park, there's just no such thing. Nobody's gonna go settle on Mars to raise a family and have generations of Martians," Nye said. "It's not reasonable because it's so cold. And there is hardly any water. There's absolutely no food, and the big thing, I just remind these guys, there's nothing to breathe." Plus living in a dome, then putting on a spacesuit to go outside will get tiring -- fast. "When you leave your dome, you're gonna put on another dome, and I think that will get old pretty quick," he said. "Especially the smell in the spacesuit 00 all the Febreze you can pack, I think it will really help you up there."
gratuitous insult (Score:2, Insightful)
In the interests of unity ... whatever our positions on various issues might be, can we all just agree that the guy is annoying as heck (on anything but very basic science education)? ;)
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Re: gratuitous insult (Score:5, Funny)
You'll get tenure in a fucking week.
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Spoken like someone who has no idea what it takes to get tenure.
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yeah, in the recent past he seems to have gone the way of a lot of our political leaders... if you're not with me, your wrong.
The way I had learned science was that most things are considered to be truth, though open to other ideas, and the idea that a new option might come up that brings about a different view.
his comments on this one just get me thinking of the comment in the past that nobody will ever use more than 265k of ram.
many of the things of science fiction have a strange way of becoming common ev
Re:gratuitous insult (Score:4, Insightful)
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The way I had learned science was that most things are considered to be truth
Um, no.
many of the things of science fiction have a strange way of becoming common every day items... look at cell phones, or microwaves, or any number of other common items, 50 years ago many were only science fiction...
99% of science fiction didn't come true (and probably never will). Make enough predictions and some are bound to work out.
PS: The first handheld cellphone was 45 years ago [theatlantic.com] and commercial carphones have existed since 1946.
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Actually "we" already have several different models to choose from - you and I just can't afford to even look at the price tag.
Re:gratuitous insult (Score:4, Insightful)
In the interests of unity ... whatever our positions on various issues might be, can we all just agree that the guy is annoying as heck (on anything but very basic science education)? ;)
Yes, and also he's wrong as heck. Physics fundamentals dictate that Mars will never resemble Earth, but it's human nature that people will one day live on it in a self-sustaining manner.
Look at all the national claims on Antarctica. The only reason it's not colonized is that it's an international research park by treaty.
Re:gratuitous insult (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:gratuitous insult (Score:5, Insightful)
Physics fundamentals dictate that Mars will never resemble Earth, but it's human nature that people will one day live on it in a self-sustaining manner.
We could make Mars Earthlike in all but gravity and the blissfully longer day, but I'm not sure what the point would be. (Sure, that atmosphere would be lost in a million years, but so what?)
I don't think it will ever make sense. It will just be much easier to make huge orbiting habitats for those who want to escape Earth. Starting at big enough to hold 100k-1 million people, these start to make a lot of sense. You get the gravity and atmosphere you want, without the mind-boggling time that terraforming would take.
If we can only get robotic asteroid mining started, so that heavy industry isn't at the bottom of a gravity well, everything else becomes practical. And mostly-self-directed robotic mining equipment no longer sounds like far-fetched SF. More like inevitable loss of all the mining jobs on Earth. Start making millions of tons of rocket fuel in high orbit and suddenly the Solar system is ours for the taking.
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Re: gratuitous insult (Score:4, Insightful)
Pull your lips off of Bill Nye's asshole for just a moment. Nye is inflammatory and alienates a lot of people who might otherwise be interested in science by mocking them. You don't get people to understand climate change by making them feel stupid or insulting religion, according to another science, i.e. psychology. He's also against nuclear power, which is potentially mankind's near-term best hope to quell CO2 emissions and air pollution. His knowledge is shallow compared to real scientists like Carl Sagan or Neil Degrasse Tyson.
So no, "pretty much" everything he does isn't so great.
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So, if one individual fails to rebut his points on the merits, then it necessarily must follow that no rebuttal is possible?
Really?
Wow.
Just wow.
Re: gratuitous insult (Score:4, Funny)
Why not? Our entire federal government is run by a reality television show host.
I kinda prefer the kids show host better.
Re: gratuitous insult (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: gratuitous insult (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't. It is actually a reasonable, if incomplete statement. A more robust expression would be that due to the nature of evil, there can be no reliance on Trump. In fact, however, Trump is not simply evil, but a selfish moronic blowhard asshole who is known to lie over even easily disproved matters. Not to mention his tendency to reverse his position based on whatever inanity goes through his brain.
Therefore, you should assume he is wrong until demonstrated otherwise, or even better, ignore him utterly. And you ought to have been doing this twenty years ago.
Re: gratuitous insult (Score:5, Insightful)
You should try venturing outside your echo chamber.
And you should try not to make assumptions about people like me.
I evaluate Trump, his surrogates, and his supporters based on whether what they are saying is *FACTUAL* - And whether their actions make sense based on the facts at hand. When Trump spends $120M of taxpayer dollars to dispatch 7000 troops to the southern border - Depriving those troops of their families at Thanksgiving and Christmas - Based on a threat that is not factual, then I judge him on that, because the facts do not support his actions.
The people who *are* in echo chambers are the people who haven't critically evaluated whether sending 7000 troops to the border is a good use of resources, or a stunt to inflame their fears.
That's one of many many many dozens of examples.
Re: gratuitous insult (Score:5, Informative)
He regularly engages them in very thoughtful and respectful arguments. That's why I like him so much more than many others.
You mean like the time he went all-in-for with 'gender identity' and pseudoscience surrounding it? Nah, sorry that shit doesn't fly. Guy's a hack, always was. Mr. Wizard was a far better role model, and challenged people to think. Not only that but encouraged "kitchen top science" you know the stuff that people used to do. Too bad, things are so screwed up that most of the stuff that came even in the early 80's science kits couldn't be sold these days.
Re:gratuitous insult (Score:4, Insightful)
OH MY GOD!
If they came out with a Science show hosted by Dolph Lundgren and Brian May, I believe I'd watch nothing ever but that show.
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He's a self-righteous douchecanoe - but his attitude doesn't change whether he's correct or not. All the same, I think he's wrong on this one. Just because we don't have the technology *right now* doesn't mean it is completely impossible
I have to agree with Bill on this one. For once, he's right.
People have been going to Antarctica for 200 years now and we still aren't able to live there permanently due to the harsh conditions. So, maybe ~500 years from now we'll figure it out, but in the mean time maybe we should focus on other more realistic things.
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People have been going to Antarctica for 200 years now and we still aren't able to live there permanently due to the harsh conditions. So, maybe ~500 years from now we'll figure it out,
Oh, I don't think it's going to take 500 years for us to solve that problem. At the rate we're going, Antarctica should be a pretty nice place to live within the next 100-200 years. Downright balmy.
Re:gratuitous insult (Score:5, Funny)
Shhhhhhhhh: don't tell them that our 3rd rock has been secretly colonized by denizens from the 2nd rock, who have already begun terraforming...errrr...venusforming(?) it, and have made tremendous progress in that direction in just a bit less than a single century, local time...
Re:gratuitous insult (Score:5, Interesting)
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We should terraform Antarctica just to piss Bill Nye off.
Who's up for that?
Ice court tennis, anyone?
Re:gratuitous insult (Score:5, Insightful)
You're technically correct, but missing the bigger picture.
Sure, we can't live in Antarctica permanently. But we haven't spent any of the last 200 years there trying to make the outposts there permanent either. So of course we can't.
If we had wanted to, we probably could have. We could have built giant underground farms with grow lights, dropped in a nuclear power plant, built an underground infrastructure, etc. And we could most likely be pretty self-sufficient there, since it's got oxygen and a lot of ice to melt for water. (I'll note that Mars doesn't have either. At least, not relatively pure water ice, not mixed with perchlorates.)
You can't use Antarctica as proof we can't live permanently on Mars since we didn't try to live permanently there. If we had tried and failed, that would be another story.
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Re: gratuitous insult (Score:3)
Life isn't a video game.
Come on, now; it's very much an RTS for the decision makers of this world.
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If we read the literature about serious terraforming and stuff, it's a slow, meticulous process that would take centuries with cost overruns.
You know, kinda like getting Lockheed Martin to build a fucking outdated F-35.
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Like he said, why would anyone with a family willingly to move to a hostile environment like Antarctica?
A statement like that tells be someone doesn't have the slightest clue as to human nature.
Re: gratuitous insult (Score:4, Insightful)
The only way people will move to Mars is if something is actively driving them away from earth.
The way we're polluting the Earth, it could still happen.
We could pollute earth beyond the most dystopian imagination, and it would still be better than living on Mars. Sorry.
I find the Antarctica comparison convincing. Sure we want a scientific base, and a few rich tourists will go. But nobody wants to live there in a permanent colony. It'll be easier and more useful to colonise the bottom of the ocean than Mars.
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Sure, I'd love to believe we'll terraform Mars. It'd be cool. I can't say it won't happen in 10,000 years. But it certainly won't happen in even 200.
With you 100% there.
Crazy 'ol Elon Musk think we're going to establish colonies there in the next 30 years!
Maybe his definition of 'colony' isn't the same as yours (or his is the definition the newspapers want to hear.
It would be pointless to send some guys to mars for just a few hours like they did with Apollo. I'm thinking more like the pressure domes in the martian movie. The technology to build that and send it to Mars will certainly exist in 30 years at the rate Elon is advancing his rocketry.
Artificial gravity so that people can survive the two month flight isn't too difficult - a long
It's also poisonous... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Wait! If we're not going to live on Mars?
Where will everybody have to go, when we all live forever?
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How many people would go to Antarctica if the snow was made of perchlorates.
Probably a lot more than we put in orbit.
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Aside from being cold, barren, and lacking an atmosphere... The place is covered in chemicals that are hazardous to humans. How many people would go to Antarctica if the snow was made of perchlorates.
And there's lots of radiation that will have a strong tendency to not-so-slowly kill humans because Mars doesn't have a magnetosphere to protect us, like the Earth does.
There are substantial challenges to permanently colonizing Mars. Does that make it impossible? I'm not convinced. Does it make it difficult, quite certainly, yes. Does it make the effort not worthwhile? No. Time and time again, the pursuit of society-scale technological challenges has proven to be beneficial.
Re:It's also poisonous... (Score:5, Informative)
Its not a minor issue - you'd have to fully wash and decontaminate a spacesuit each time it came back into the facility Even a tiny amount of dust that got in would soon make people sick and clog up machinary. These arn't the sort of problems you can hand wave away.
Re:It's also poisonous... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Beyond some unknown future economic potential that Mars could provide that the Earth simply could not, once you go past the scientific/adventure angles, there's really only one compelling reason to go to Mars - survival of the species. We are presently a one-planet species, but even if we cleaned up our act and made the Earth a sustainable place to live for the very long term, we're one catastrophic event away from oblivion. Pick any time horizon that you like, we're eventually extinct. Once we're a viable
Re:It's also poisonous... (Score:4, Interesting)
Why would you bring your spacesuit inside the facility? Seems like all the recent spacesuit designs developed for Mars, the Moon,etc. are designed to remain permanently outside the habitat - the entry hatch on the back of the suit mates with a similar hatch in the habitat airlock, minimizing habitat contamination.
Re:It's also poisonous... (Score:4, Insightful)
These arn't the sort of problems you can hand wave away.
Sure you can. Every clean room on Earth copes with this minor inconvenience every hour of the day.
De-terraforming (Score:5, Insightful)
At the moment we're showing great dexterity in de-terraforming Earth.
I think as long as we don't tackle this one we should be at least careful with prospective terraforming projects.
Re:De-terraforming (Score:4, Interesting)
Mars is not a candidate for terraforming, but it would make an excellent radioactive landfill.
Why not just put them at the Lagrange Points? Much less delta-v required to get there.
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Which ones? There are more than Carter has Little Liver Pills.
You got yer Moon/Earth, Earth/Sun, Any one object/Any other object.
The delta-v is different for each, and the closer ones had damn well better be stable or we could Cretaceous our asses.
SPACEFORCE CAN DO IT! (Score:4, Funny)
Because.... SPACEFORCE!
(Go ahead and down rank me. I deserve it. Sorry.)
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Every time I hear the term "Spaceforce" I think of "Salesforce", which fills me with loathing.
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So maybe the whole "global warming" thing is a hoax to scare us into volunteering to get on giant rockets to go live on the colonies in Mars! Thank you! I'll NEVER volunteer to do THAT!
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What about the moon? (Score:4, Interesting)
The moon would require roughly 1,000 comets to terraform. Comets would provide both water, oxygen, and momentum (spin). Due to its weaker gravity, the moon would hold onto its atmosphere for tens of thousands of years.
Moving 1,000 comets seems not too far off from our capabilities today. Reaching the moon is definitely possible - we've done it. The only difficulty is social - as far as I know, we haven't pulled off such a multi-generational project.
Re:What about the moon? (Score:4, Funny)
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The moon does not have an magnetosphere to protect you from things like solar radiation that would fry you like a microwave, or provide you with some not fun Fallout mutations. Or just lots of cancers.
The only way to live long-term on the moon would be in domed cities or underground structures with thick layers of regolith to stop that radiation. That is if humans can even survive long-term in 1/6th gravity.
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One thousand comets, and the Moon's low gravity still wouldn't hold the water. But import just one comet, and it would provide water for a large earth-sheltered mining base. Something similar will happen on Mars.
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Moving 1,000 comets seems not too far off from our capabilities today
Uhh, yeah, no. We can reach comets, but not affect them enough to move them. And definitely not 1,000 of them.
Also, we would need to slow down their orbital velocities enough so they are not hitting the moon with Chicxulub-like speed; unless we want to run the risk of several extinction-level events a year.
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Helium 3 extraction? Production of goods meant for consumption in space? I mean, use a little imagination. The gravity well is significantly lower on the moon. If you need a significant amount of manufactured goods in space, it's not hard to imagine how the moon could eventually become viable just because launch costs would be much lower.
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Why though? Why leave Earth other than to feel like you're important? (Hint: You aren't important, no one is)
Mostly, to get mining and other dangerous ecological practices off the planet we do live on.
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Mostly, to get mining and other dangerous ecological practices off the planet we do live on.
No, we can do with that with robots without even visiting other planets. The best reason to put humanity on another planet is that this one may eventually get hit by a big rock or dirty snowball.
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as far as I know, we haven't pulled off such a multi-generational project.
Pyramids & Great Wall come to mind
I'll give you the Great Wall, but not the Pyramids, unless you're talking about the span from the beginning of the first one until the finishing of the last one. Egyptologists believe that the pyramid was built as a tomb over a 10- to 20-year period [wikipedia.org] concluding around 2560 BC.
The Grass Is Always Greener . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
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We may live on Jupiter.
It's difficult to take you seriously when you fail to recognize that Jupiter is a gas planet so as far as Jupiter goes, there is no "on" to be.
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. . . on the other side of the solar system. Obviously, he is right in the very short term, nobody is moving there today and, likely, not in the next decade or three. Will there be a base on mars in the next century? Maybe. Will we go there to live once we have mastered genetic engineering to adapt to any environment? Duh? We may live on Jupiter. Of course, that might be centuries away, so who gives a fuck?
"May" != "Will". A lot of these things are "Wouldn't it be cool?!?" type discussions, but the practical matters will make it really really hard. Yes, you _could_ genetically engineer people to live on Mars without as much need for terraforming, but ... keep in mind we are only now starting to address genetic engineering for very very slight changes to single genes.
This is a huge project. How many kids are you willing to have to get ones that work? How many stillbirths are you willing to tolerate
As long as there are ships coming back... (Score:2)
... there will be enough people to try.
As for success of any permanent colonization attempts? I'm sort of with Bill on this one. Right now, with our current level of technology and environmental concern, all we'll do is shit all over Mars over a dozen failed colonization attempts before anyone gets one to stick. After that, I have a feeling that a Mars colony is going to be a money loser for a long, long time. And, if they make it past the economic hurdle, I have no doubt that they will be politically tied
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Right now, with our current level of technology and environmental concern, all we'll do is shit all over Mars over a dozen failed colonization attempts before anyone gets one to stick.
So, like a lot of earthbound colonization?
So sorry dissidents, no revolution from space is coming to foment building your {Libertarian, Socialist, Facist, No Assholes} paradise.
Considering the number of terrestrial political revolutions and upheavals, I find that assertion unlikely too, at least after any kind of self sufficiency is achieved.
(Oh they won't build a paradise, but I can't see nobody trying.)
I think he's right. (Score:3)
We will have used up this rock long before we have figured out how to go live somewhere else.
With all due respect to Mr. Nye: (Score:5, Informative)
Um, are you high? Perhaps the "Science Guy" should learn a little bit about Mars before talking about it. A large portion of the planet [researchgate.net] has permafrost at or near the surface.
I'm not actually that much of a Mars advocate, and think the simplicity of using water there is overplayed (people talk about it like it's some sort of pure snow that you just pick up and melt, but it's (mostly) a rock-hard toxic brine mixed with sand and clay) - but come on, if you're going to talk about something, learn the basics.
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This really is not true. It's so abundant in places that just scraping the surface [nasa.gov] reveals it.
Water is very common on Mars. Its just frozen. In rock-hard permafrost. And contaminated, both with salts and a number of toxic chemicals.
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Zubrin walks through many of these problems and their potential solutions in his book "Case for Mars", an interesting read. Biggest unknown is how much adsorbed CO2 is in the regolith IIRC.
Have to disagree on a point (Score:2)
He says we can't take care of Earth so how could we take care of Mars. The difference is the people to me.
People who live on earth are every kind of person. Most of them selfish, short-sighted, etc. I'm not trying to be insulting, but it's how it is. Just look at how we fund science and space.
But if we hand pick people who care about the sort of thing, then the greediness (for a time) won't hold people back. I'm sure if we teraform Mars we'll ruin it later once it's commercialized, but that's a different ch
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Earth produced generations of people who don't care to maintain their life support system because it produced the illusion that it required no maintenance.
Habitats on Mars will obviously require lots of maintenance, so they will produce people who care for their habitats.
He is not wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
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You are missing the point.
The idea of colonizing other planets (or moons) is so that if something happens to earth , whether our fault (global warming, nuclear war) or a natural event (another large asteroid impact or supervolcano ) , mankind can still survive elsewhere.
We will eventually have to move out of this solar system.
The point you are missing that it will be easier to fix the earth or alter the direction of an asteroid that colonizing Mars. I'd bet it would be easier to deal with a supervolcano that colonizing Mars. Sure, we'll hopefully eventually colonize Mars or other systems, but any reasonable timetable, centuries, is long enough that it is essentially science fiction. Terraforming is even farther out.
I'll take Arthur C Clarke for $100, Alex: (Score:5, Interesting)
"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
-https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/arthur_c_clarke_100793
It's pretty sad that a guy that used to be the poster-child for science education and the limitless possibilities of the future has become essentially nothing more than a strident leftist mouthpiece.
cf from Bill Nye Saves the World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Yes, that's serious. Not satire.
Re:I'll take Arthur C Clarke for $100, Alex: (Score:4, Interesting)
It's pretty sad that a guy that used to be the poster-child for science education and the limitless possibilities of the future has become essentially nothing more than a strident leftist mouthpiece.
The sad part is that he's forgotten one of the key rules of being popular, and popularity is his key to influence. That is, encourage, don't discourage. Don't shit on the Marsies, just go put your energy somewhere else. This is going to dissuade no one and will cost him some cachet.
So much for daring to dream... (Score:2, Interesting)
As much as I lament to say this the current Bill Nye that we have now is either a corrupted version or a mere shadow of the guy we had once known. I do not make these statements lightly as I had at once looked to him as a scientific role model of sorts. He is one of the people that set me on the path to being more of a man of science.
However...he has stopped dreaming apparently. Now do not get me wrong the idea of living on Mars "Currently" and I use that word as in currently we may not have the tech to d
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The problem is that this "dreaming" about a possibility that requires far-future technological innovations is becoming a dangerous anesthetic numbing us from problems that threaten us in reality. When an implausible dream becomes a dangerous fantasy that meshes well with a popular form of science denialism, a scientist should denounce it.
The possibility of populating other planets has been floated as an alternative to addressing global warming by people ranging from Newt Gingrich to the late Stephen Hawking
just wait (Score:2)
Space/Musk nutters (Score:2)
it's a poor comparison (Score:3)
What an absurd comparison.
First.. Antarctica? People don't live there because of *treaties*.
Can you mine in Antarctica, without the international community stopping you? What about setting up a mining community?
You know there's loads of fish there, yes? What else do the penguins eat?
No, the reason people don't live in Antarctica -- is because there are no jobs, nor the possibility of a job (even self employed) there.
Look at the *North* Pole. There are resources. And there are loads of people living there. For research, for hunting, for fishing, and for mining/resources.
This is more like Mars.
If there is work there (and riches to be made!), people will go. Typically young men, which (according to everything -- including insurance company stats and rates for drivers) are more prone to taking risk. And who will follow? Why, the ladies! Hoping to land a man who struck it rich!
People will go. People travelled to the Yukon, where (guess what) you can't grow food, you have to import everything, and may as well be the South Pole before gold was discovered.
Nye? Make a real comparison. Not one where international treaties prevent resource exploitation.
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Mars has two big advantages: Far fewer people than the North Pole. Second, Mars kills stupid people much more quickly than the North Pole.
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Disadvantages: Lack of breathable atmosphere, the water there is vastly more difficult to convert to drinkable form, it gets unlivable levels of space radiation on the surface, and as such there is no edible life ready to be speared or fished there. Also the ground is made of a toxic superfine dust.
And last but not least, It probably costs more to send a small ship to or (theoretically) from Mars than the combined cost of all activity on the North pole throughout human history. Prove me wrong.
Bill Nye is forgetting about the Matt Damon factor (Score:2)
If we've learned anything from recent Sci-Fi movies, it's that you can send Matt Damon anywhere and he'll somehow survive.
Perhaps we should send him to Antarctica and have him make that place habitable before moving to Mars. Unlike Bill Nye, I think that people would miss having Matt Damon around if we lost him in space.
Why is he just mentioning solvable things? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cold? Well, you are going to generate power somehow, and most methods generate plenty of heat as a by-product.
Hardly any water? Well, collect some and keep reusing it. Sounds icky? Well, here on Earth we're doing the same thing, except that the water here has been recycled and reused for millions of years. That's even more icky than anything you'll find on Mars.
Absolutely no food? We've just talked about power, heat and water. If you have those three, you can make/grow food.
Nothing to breathe? There's CO2. There are plants (for growing food, see above). Why shouldn't there be oxygen?
Seriously. Dismissing life on Mars and then talking about the things that are among the easiest? What about radiation, (temporary) dependence on supply flighty that take half a year to arrive, or how to build a production infrastructure (so you can build enough domes that taking a walk won't involve donning a space suit)?
Re:Why is he just mentioning solvable things? (Score:4, Interesting)
And the difficulty and expense of all those things you mention is orders of magnitude greater than living in the Antarctic, which nobody does. Even the ISS doesn't have proper permanent residents, and that's only a day away if there's anything majorly wrong.
Heat:
Antarctica lowest: â'89.2 ÂC
Mars lowest: â'153 ÂC
Heating something from -153 to room temperature is the same energy as boiling it twice over. And you're doing that all day, every day, constantly and hoping the insulation saves you some power.
Power isn't free either, you need a whole bunch of equipment with a limited lifespan in a very harsh environment (see above) producing an AWFUL lot of power just to keep the temperature up and the lights on.
Water:
Collect it from where? How do you get more when you start having kids and living there? Nobody cares about recycling what you have but the processes are not 100% efficient... you'll lose water every time you use some. You'll need regular water sent to you by Earth or someone, or a way to generate it en-masse that we don't really have yet.
Food:
Now that you have limited water stocks, you need more water. Lots more water. More water to sustain the food year-round than you drink as pure-water yourself.
And that food doesn't grow out of nothing. It requires energy. From the soil, fertilizers, the sunlight, etc. It gets an awful lot of energy on Earth. It gets NOTHING on Mars except what you bring with you. E=mc^2. Though I'm slightly misusing it, you need an awful lot of solar power to make anything approaching a physical thing you can eat from the raw materials around you (which you will use up and need to be replenished from off-world sources unless you're literally synthesising food from pure energy, which you're not going to be for a few centuries yet). Watch/Read The Martian - terrible movie/book, precisely because you only need look at the calculations done in it to realise the amount of stuff you need for even one human to live any length of time.
Plants give out O2. Presuming you have them. You'd need about 700 potted plants to generate enough O2 and, more importantly, consume the CO2 that you're exhaling and choking yourself with. Per person. For anything from 5-10 people, you would need an entire garden centre or thereabouts. 24/7. Lit up, growing, thriving, fertilised, sustainable, no disease, etc.
Small groups may be able to survive for limited amounts of time presuming they have a reliable supply of very expensive and heavy equipment coming from Earth all the time.
You can no more "live on Mars" than you can "live on the Antarctic", or the bottom of the ocean... you need a lot of equipment and a ton of support and hope like hell that nothing goes wrong, and do it for short trips, with people willing to risk their lives and accept an awful lot of compromise.
NOT "Hey, let's all move there and start a family."
So, he's exactly 100% correct.
Monkeys in a can (Score:2)
Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship A (Score:3)
He's not just a blowhard, he's an idiot. (Score:5, Interesting)
Antarctica is a pretty poor comparison as to why people don't settle there and make a living (there are these things called treaties, and they are worded in such as way to keep it as pristine as possible, limited personal and camp sizes, no mining, etc...).
He's also wrong about how much frozen water is available because truth be told no one knows for a matter of fact yet (but some argue there is actually a great deal locked away below ground).
There is nothing technically preventing people from living in a self sustained manner (from a constant resupply standpoint) so long as they are able to use the natural resources available on mars and have the energy they need (even if water reclamation is a major concern, it is possible to recycle most of the water needed).
Last but not least, exploration and pushing onward to new vistas is one of our defining traits. Ergo, I argue Bill Nye is no longer human. He was abducted after his tv show in the 90's and replaced with one of the prune people of planet asshole.
Re:He's not just a blowhard, he's an idiot. (Score:4, Insightful)
Last but not least, exploration and pushing onward to new vistas is one of our defining traits
Plenty of empty deserts on Earth where virtually nobody's pushing onward to new vistas, Antarctica included.
Antarctica (Score:3)
Most Tech Today was Sci-Fi (Score:3)
Are we going to go to colonize Mars in the next 10 years? Not likely. 300 years from now? Could be. If we don't blow the planet up in the next decade or two I'll be surprised but anything can happen. Thinking it'll be soon is crazy but thinking it can't happen is not science.
The question (Score:4, Insightful)
The immutable question is:
If we don't colonize Mars, the moon, space, or somewhere else other than this rock then what happens to our species when (insert catastrophic event here) hits and we have no backup plan?
We are an apex species, and evolution is not kind to apex species. There is literally an entire planet full of creatures evolving to kill us. It doesn't have to be that either. A giant meteor, nuclear despot, major tectonic event, biological weapon, or an as-yet unknown thing could pound off a big chunk of the population and we are back in the stone age finishing each other off with rocks and sticks.
If not Mars, where?
Re:There are those that agree... (Score:5, Insightful)
How can we ever hope to colonize the New World, when we can't even live at peace among ourselves here in continental Europe? The climate experiences wild swings, our ships are not reliable, and the land is populated with murderous savages. I know you all really like Queen Isabella, but this is all just fantasy. There may be riches in the New World, but it will never be worth the time or effort to extract them.
Re: (Score:2)
The ONLY reason companies want to push Mars exploration is a monetary reasons. To mine it and exploit it like we do this one.
During the "Gold Rush" of the mid 1800s the people who made the most money were not the miners. Most of them went broke and died mining for gold. The big money was made by the people selling equipment and supplies to the miners.
Mars is no different. A few companies will make a lot of money selling rockets, building materials and supplies. And all the people who die trying to live on Mars (or die just trying to get there) is none of their concern.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a problem, but one that is probably solvable even with current technology and a lot of engineering [medium.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Think of him as a science teacher for adults, very science illiterate adults.
Well put. I find him annoying as fuck, because he plays such a bad cliche. But, hey, if that's what sells to the cheap seats, go for it.
If you actually want to learn science as an adult, there are a ton of free lectures online from good schools, some directed specifically at older learners. Plus there are the commercial shops you'll see advertised on your favorite science and math YouTube channels.