Why are STEM fags so obsessed with colonizing other planets,

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>>7804760
Mars has an atmosphere, even though it is extremely thin that is something very useful towards creating a sustainable human presence

There is also a lot of frozen water

If we created a thicker atmosphere on mars the temperature would rise, It could be very habitable within a century

I think it is important for Humans to lean to live off earth, In the long run we will have to spread throughout the Milky Way

Mars will be the first step towards that expansion, mistakes will be made and lessons learned that will serve invaluable in the next thousand years

>>7804795
>In the long run we will have to spread throughout the Milky Way
nah dog, you have NO idea how big the space is.
we will fucking die on/with this planet

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>>7804760
>Why are STEM fags so obsessed with colonizing other planets, in particular Mars?
Because, some days, the only way I can motivate myself to go to work is knowing that I'll make mad dosh, and that my work is bringing us one step closer to the time when Akari-chan and her friends can live happily in beautiful Neo-Venezia

>>7804760
i just want to be a space trucker tbqh familamadingdong

>>7804820
Yeah, what this guy said.

Colonizing other planets is the best insurance policy for the continued existence of the human species.

That said, the main point of putting people on mars would be to study it further, like we have base camps in Antarctica for research, but no real settlements or cities.

Terraforming Mars would involve crashing comets and it's adjecent moons into it and it's better if we know what we're bombarding before we try that.

>>7804795
How are we going to solve the problem that is Mars lacking a decent magnetosphere senpai?

>>7804760
>there are so many things we need to fix in our home planet before we are finally "done" with Earth and ready to expand our territory to outer space
stupid. Are you being cheeky or do you actually think there will be some watershed moment where everything becomes perfect and we hold hands and sing kumbaya?

Self-sustaining offworld colonies =

>more resources for humanity
>more space for humanity
>more leeway for humanity to fuck up
>more likely for humanity to survive an asteroid impact, plague, etc

Those all seem like pretty concrete, practical long term benefits to me. However in my opinion Mars is not the best spot for our first self-sustaining colony - I'd prefer an O'Neil cylinder (hollowed out asteroid towed to a Lagrange point).

Advantages of an O'Neil cylinder:

>can theoretically be rotated for artificial gravity, solving the problem of humans getting weaker over time in zero-g
>can be sealed with a breathable atmosphere, while still having plenty of space for the people inside
>hundreds of feet of rock and metal makes a great radiation shield
>can be set up much closer to earth. If there's an emergency, help can get there in days instead of months or years

Still a titanic engineering project of course, but probably more feasible this century than terraforming and colonizing Mars.

That said, establishing a much smaller semi-sustainable colony on Mars would still have value this century, in that it would teach us a lot about living in space and on other planets. This knowledge could then be applied to more ambitious projects in the future.

Also, the idea that we need to have perfected earth before leaving the planet is foolish. Earth will never be perfect; if we set earthly perfection as our criteria for leaving the planet, we will never leave. Better to get started now, since every day we don't leave fractionally increases the likelihood of our extinction. Plus, it's not a zero sum game. Some people can work on fixing earth's problems while other people work on getting us into space.

>>7804834
If they produced an atmosphere of around 40 bars, it would be habitable for tens of thousands of years at the least until the solarwind scoured off the atmosphere. It'd also absorb alot of the ionizing radiation.

>>7804795
We can eventually make it habitable, yes, but would anyone want to live there? Our planet trumps Mars in almost every way, and I don't think we are quite lacking space on Earth to justify sending a portion of the population to live in Mars; population control is a simpler and more effective solution to the problem anyway.

Besides, I share this view. >>7804805
Our planet is the best we'll ever see. Any planets that are remotely similar to ours in diversity and also resourceful is thousands of light-years away from us. We can claim the Solar System and all of its celestial bodies for ourselves, but that's most likely as far as we'll go as a species.

>>7804838
I'm not talking about social problems, not in particular. I'm talking about engineering and technological problems. It's 2016 and we still depend on petroleum. We have a long way to go in terms of mastering energy production before thinking about leaving our planet; having a reliable and efficient method of energy production is essential for space travelling.

>>7804886

A) why? Sure it'd be nice for a lot of reasons, space being just one of them, but why is it a must have?

B) you know what a great method of energy production is? Space based solar panels

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The issue with colonizing Mars is the low gravity.

>>7804860
There are plenty of places people live on Earth now, that would be a shithole in comparison to a terraformed Mars.

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>>7804934

>>7804860
>Our planet is the best we'll ever see. Any planets that are remotely similar to ours in diversity and also resourceful is thousands of light-years away from us. We can claim the Solar System and all of its celestial bodies for ourselves, but that's most likely as far as we'll go as a species.
I'm sure you would have said the same thing in 1490

>>7804834
That was never a problem

It would take millions of years for that to affect anything, and that's only assuming we give Mars a thicker atmosphere and then leave it be, which we wouldn't, we'd continuously keep that thing up.

>>7804950
Except back in 1490 we didn't have Einstein setting us a superior limit for speed.

I can imagine a lot of ways that we can get to another galaxy as species, but all of them are extremely convoluted and not what most people expect, which is pressing the "FTL travel" button and enjoying the ride.

>>7804760
>I mean, we never went back to the Moon since 1972.
Because NASA physically couldn't
I'm sure they would have LIKED to at some point, but they were committed to the useless shuttle and the useless ISS, so it couldn't happen.

>>7804841
5 star post

>>7805003
The ISS isn't useless. It's the greatest zero-gravity laboratory in history. Only thing useless about it are the Italian astronauts they keep putting up there.

A moon base would be much less useful for scientific investigation and more expensive. That shitty dust would make it more difficult than building something in space.

>>7805013
For the outrageous amount of money spent on the ISS, it's useless

>>7805018
>l-look at these water bubbles in space
>so kewl
>now give us another $10 million
lmao

>>7805021
Sadly that's how you actually have to do it. Can't talk about the reams of pretty important data they're putting out that'll keep analysts busy for centuries of manhours...that's not fun, interesting, or sexy to the general public.

Bubbles on the other hand...

The joys of public funding.

How about we take a crack at colonizing that shithole Venus?

>>7804886
>It's 2016 and we still depend on petroleum.
We've only run civilization on oil for around a century or so. That's a small chunk of human history.

>>7804934
Isn't low gravity easily combated through heavy clothes?

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>>7805052

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>>7805062

>>7805062
>>7805052
Yeah, I mean if you weighed 200lbs, put on a 300lb lead lined suit, walked around on Mars you'd feel like you were in earth gravity, but you'd weigh 500lbs and momentum would still cause you transfer that kinetic energy onto other things. So you could effortlessly crash through a wall, or something. Idk.

>>7805052
Heavy clothes won't stop bodily fluids from pooling, muscles developing atrophy and bones decalcifying

Also good luck bringing a fetus to term in low gravity

>>7805052
>>7805073
Only partially.
They don't do anything about the possibly lower atmospheric pressure (lungs need pressure to operate efficiently and this assumes that whatever hab isn't pressurized to 1 atm, or near enough to not matter)
And it also doesn't affect blood flow.

>>7805077
>Heavy clothes won't stop bodily fluids from pooling
This seems to perfectly nullify any effort NASA, so why are there still plans out there to do it?

>>7805096
Humans can survive for long periods in zero gravity but the work they have to put into keeping in shape is literally a round the clock effort.
Most of the astronauts day is spent trying to keep from not withering away.

>>7805052

I had the same idea. I always imagened a suit that colonists wear that had attachable and ergonomically shaped weights of the densest material we could safely wear. The weights would be attached at optimal body positions to keep bones and muscle tissue healthy. Children would have a mandatory program of increasing weights while growing up.

>>7805105
Bullshit.
What makes you think a woman can even have a healthy pregnancy in low/zero gravity.
Cells divide and differentiate very rapidly during gestation, and damage to a single cell destined to become the brain or another organ could easily be amplified.

>>7805100
So studying the body in low gravity will eventually give rise to some technology that will help us survive on mars.

>>7805116

I dont know. It was just a thought. Has there been research on fetal development in lower g?

> Why are STEM fags so obsessed with colonizing other planets, in particular Mars?

Those people are Cheetos-eating, basement-dwelling, virgin-nerds who don't understand economics at all. That's why they went into technical fields.

Anyone who advocates "colonizing other planets" is so far off base about the issue that they might as well believe that the moon is literally made from green cheese. There's no economic case to be made for colonizing *another* world. You must first conquer your own world, and then to expand your population into a teeming mass of quadrillions of prosperous people, you must leave your planet and then never go back down a significant gravity well. EVER. Gravity wells require too much energy to overcome, hence capital. Capital in space for massive economic expansion is best expressed by staying in space, building habitats (O'Neill, Bernal, etc.) out of asteroidal and cometary materials, and then working on the only physical model that works for a Solarian culture: A Dyson Structure, like a ring, cloud or swarm.

>>7805018
>For the outrageous amount of money spent on the ISS, it's useless

Absolutely correct. The lifetime cost of the ISS has been calculated to be $150 billion. That's an outrageous waste of public funds, particularly since after spending that much, the ISS will simply be de-orbited and destroyed like all other space stations (Skylab, Mir).

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>>7805126
>There are planets literally made of gold and diamond
>There's no economic case to be made for colonizing *another* world

>>7805122
Yes, the Russians experimented with rats and they turned out mostly 'okay'. The birth defects were attributed mostly to cosmic radiation.

Since the uterus places unilateral pressure on the fetus even without gravity, it works about the same as it does on earth.

>>7804841
>>can theoretically be rotated for artificial gravity, solving the problem of humans getting weaker over time in zero-g
This is not an advantage over mars, which also has gravity since it's pretty big.

>>7805136
>There are planets literally made of gold and diamond

Nope. Prove your claim.

At any rate, even if a planet "made of gold" existed around Alpha or Beta or Proxima Centauri (at most 4.3 LY from Earth), the cost of obtaining gold that way is extremely prohibitive. Processing cubic kilometers of asteroids for gold fractions makes more sense. For that matter, processing cubic km of Earthian seawater for its gold fraction, makes even more sense.

>>7805150
Doing anything to obtain gold makes very little sense, actually.

>>7805146
Those rats were born on earth after returning from space flight still in their pregnant mothers womb, and their growth progress was tracked while in Earth gravity.

>>7805077
>blood from pooling
Aviation has had this problem solved for decades.
Skin-tight suits squeeze at your lower extremities to keep blood in your upper body.

>>7805173
That is a solution to short periods of extreme G forces.

>>7805147

Mars has less gravity than Earth, although admittedly we don't yet know if that's an issue for humans or not.

Even a relatively small O'Neil cylinder would be large enough to produce 1g through rotation, and unlike the 0.38g gravity on Mars, we know for sure that 1g has no adverse effects on humans.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't also go to Mars and see how well humans can tolerate 0.38g, though.

>>7805221
why do they have to go? Can they not simulate bones and capillaries and shit?

>>7805221
You could easily build a rotating construct on mars to let people sleep/live at 1g.

>>7805221
O'Neil cylinders are not true 1G. It might be 1G at your feet and 0.86G at your head, if it's a small cylinder. That'd have adverse effects.

Also, an O'Neil cylinder would basically be an island or space station or biodome. It would not be sustainable over a long period of time. If the goal is the continuity of the species, we can't just rely on digging rooms in asteroids to house people.

>>7805233
>You could easily build on mars

Nothing about transporting thousands and thousands of pounds of material to mars and landing it safely on the surface and then assembling it is easy. And the "rotating construct" would have to be enormous to produce the desired effect.

>>7805250
>implying nano-robots won't be a thing by then that build these rotating construct out of the environment on mars.

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>>7804760
With the power of friendship anything is possible.

>>7805273
If such devices exists there is no need for humans anyway. We'll just send nano robots to other planets for us.
Extra terrestrial visitors will most likely be synthetic lifeforms.

>>7805221

This here >>7805246

If the cylinder/ring is small enough, then the Coriolis effect will become significant, which will make movement difficult and cause motion sickness because of the differential movement of fluids in your ears if you so much as turn your head.

A space station with artificial gravity from rotation would need to be a few hundred metres in diameter - not impossible, but probably not a hollowed out asteroid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHKQIC5p8MU

>>7804760
Most STEMfags are white, and we know that only whites will be colonizing new planets. On Mars we will finally be free of nigs and muds.

>>7804760
>Why are STEM fags so obsessed with colonizing other planets, in particular Mars?

Because fuck aliens

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>>7805331
>a few hundred metres in diameter, probably not a hollowed out asteroid.
See pic

>>7805126
>Gravity wells require too much energy to overcome, hence capital
Once you get a significant amount of resources and tools into space, you really dont need to transport anything from planets to space other than people and unique items. Everything else can be manufactured at an easier location. There are going to be a lot of people who are not going to care if it costs them 10x more to live on a planet than some station, they will do it anyways just like today with suburbs and very cheap apartments close to where they work.

The risk is just way too high to keep a ton of people all bottled up on a station, one small act of terrorism can bring the whole station crashing down and kill off all those people who cant just go outside like on a planet. They are stuck there. In order to get out they need to run to a transport bay or emergency station. It would be a mess.

And maintaining a super structure in space is extremely costly. Simple security alone would cost a fortune. Think of something like an aircraft carrier or the cost of a single airbus flight. And thats with all the people sitting down doing nothing with a reusable aircraft.

In fact, I would argue it would cost more to create structures in space than simple colonization of habitable planets.

>>7804760
The more humans we can get off-world the better, it increases the likelihood of our species survival.

>>7804760
>My opinion is that there are so many things we need to fix in our home planet before we are finally "done" with Earth and ready to expand our territory to outer space. What are your thoughts on this, /sci/?
Your opinion is shitty and wrong and no one cares.

>>7804834
Initial terraforming would give us at the very least tens of thousands of years to create a magnetosphere, either directly with a generator or through spinning up the core with moons

>>7804795
Why is there less focus on colonizing the moon? It's closer so it's far easier to experiment there although the environment might be worse.

>>7804999
Nice trips
There are already concepts for sub light craft using near future tech that could make an interstellar journey, it's not a within lifetime thing but to say that humans will never do it is beyond ridiculous

>>7807296
>In fact, I would argue it would cost more to create structures in space than simple colonization of habitable planets.

Of course you would, since you're economically illiterate. You don't even understand why we haven't colonized anything outside of Earth at all, and why every space station ever built was either destroyed, or is slated to be destroyed.

There's no acceptable economic model that Humans use, that permits space colonization, which includes colonizing other worlds. So you failed completely when you stated that "once you get" while not realizing that the "once" will never happen.

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>there are faggots on this board that think it is a good idea to colonized Mars

Are you guys pop-sci consuming faggots? Mars have:
>acid rain
>plasma discharges that probably created its craters alternatively
>large hurricanes and tornados
>rust rust everywhere

Why would anyone competent would want to colonize it beyond it being a prison planet? If anything worthwhile we should make an artificial environment based on the water canopy theory and see how living things react to it and if we'll then we can use it for space colonies

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>>7805126
>look at me! I'm so smart that I can make blanket statements about something that I don't understand!
>uhhh you're a loser for going into a technical field! real men like me study political science

>>7807799
What does that have to do with what I said? Why do you assume I am economically illiterate? I was simply saying that leaving the gravity well of a planet is only difficult in the beginning. After the initial runs, its a breeze because less and less needs to leave in the first place. And the methods of doing so keep getting better and better.

Human behavior and areas of influence will change in the future. As will economics.

>>7805281
This accomplishes nothing for any humans and doesn't make sense from a utilitarian standpoint.

>>7807977

Reminder that despite his carefully-cultivated persona of unflinching pragmatism and rationality, Violent Simians Guy is essentially a religious zealot whose faith is the allegedly inevitable destruction of industrial civilization.

>>7808363
Heh, he does kinda come across like fucking Ted Kaczynski sometimes.

.
Maybe he's correct, but he sure does seem opposed to 'progress' as me and you see it.

>>7804760

Personally, I think it's an evolutionary urge. It's disappointing to me how many people are so shortsighted and just don't care about learning and discovery, and run to the nearest possible stimulus to make them feel good, and that's what is at the forefront of their mind. Instant gratification and satisfaction like instagram, facebook, etc, but they never think more than maybe a few minutes into something. Most people care about 'something shiny', money, the approval and attention of others, and sex, and I feel despair when I look around and see this; billions of years on Earth, and this is the product so far. Its hard to word this without sounding like an edgelord, but none of those people would even try to be part of an interstellar program at any level. Its just too much work, without any real payoff besides personal satisfaction; and that is entirely subjective. Societies on Earth are going to go through the motions like they always do, essentially acting the way animals do but with fancy tools (I know, *tip*) but those who were driven to discover will be the ones to go, the pioneers to the crushingly lonely frontier of space, into the infinite.

Its a bit poetic, and so daunting it borders on the impossible, but if you told someone 100 years ago what the average first world human's life would be like today, they wouldn't believe it. So to have an idea today, have some faggot on a Finnish masturbation forum tell you its impossible; well its just a bitch attitude to feel like quitting after that, no baby decides "I'm not going to walk because I can't run", and while interstellar humanity is still a wad of sperm, one day it can be rad AF thanks to some people who didn't quit. I don't care about smartphones, worshipping sports, DUDE WEED, or DUDE DON'T STAY IN SCHOOL. Fuck that, space is the place.

>>7808006
Don't ever fucking reply to my posts again unless you have something to contribute for this thread.

>>7804760
We STEM fags see all the possibilities and things to be discovered on Mars and it gets us excited. It's why we picked STEM. Read the Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson if you want to know why Mars is important to our future.

>>7808600
It's always been like that. While Newton and Galileo were doing their thing, what do you think the average citizen was up to?

>>7808605
Your posts accomplish nothing for any humans and don't make sense from a utilitarian standpoint.

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>>7804760
We're curious creatures, we want to know. At the same time, we're driven by the brilliant science fiction we make up, and desperately want to one day be like that. We want to know as much as we can, and at the same time emulate what we want to see in our own fantasies. Wouldn't you like to live out yours?

>>7804999
Well what do you guys think about the alcubierre drive?

>>7808600
>evolutionary urge
>to go to Mars

This is the problem with "macro" evolution in that it hypothesize that for some odd reason a species will leave its habitable environment and go for an environment that is mainly unknown and more likely hostile to its biological makeup without any survival or hedonistic incentive to do so. As you can observe with any human or creature if their survival is not threatened and their pleasures are met they will only do the minimal to maintain their personal status quo of those two things.

Our fascination with colonizing other planets is more of a cultural thing with the occasional neck beard fedora thinking he is too enlightened to live on the same planet with other people he deemed to not be on the same level of intelligence as he is.

If space travel becomes economically viable for regular people then space colonies in orbit and on other worlds would be inevitable. Earth can support a huge population but people will definitely migrate for any number of reasons and spread anywhere they feel like. Some will live in habitats, some will conquer Mars in a hundred years of building, and others will vanish into Europa's depths. Plenty will stay on Earth.

It's silly to even argue, as long as the idea is there and so is the means, it'll happen.

Colonizing planets is pure baka.
Space colonies are the shit.

>>7804860
This is a small-minded view. I don't care what school you went to or the the degree you have or what level of scientific and mathematical understanding you have. I guarantee by the time I'm ancient, there will have been leaps beyond where we are right now that make us look really stupid for imagining we've hit some sort of progress barrier.

>>7804760
>so obsessed with
Public perceptions manipulations.

>>7810024
Want to bet on it?

>>7804760
So your question is why do scientists dream and try to obtain those dreams?


The need for exploration both physical and mental?