Oh look, it's THIS thread again. But seriously now, what's

>>8199979
Because we need some fucking romance, something for daring adventurers to explore and inspire the rest of us back home.
>inb4 ocean
Ain't shit there and we all know it.

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>>8199979
>what's the point of Mars colonization

It is to show the horrific effects of macrogravity on humans over their lifetime. Can you imagine the Jello-kids that would be created if there was a legit colony on Mars? They'd never get enough gravity to form proper bones.

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>>8200002

Because it will change us for the better. Overcoming Mars, learning to cope with its gravity, its harshness, to mine and process its ores in factories and build cities and spaceships and learn about its ancient past, these things enrich us as a species, they present us with challenges to overcome, new technological developments to integrate into more general pursuits.

What point was there to going to the moon? The moon, we well knew, was empty and barren and scarred, even more a hell than mars, but going there meant a LOT to people. It meant PRIDE. It symbolized hard work, courage, and brilliance And it brought with it understanding and learning on how to travel long distances in space, and new technologies to overcome challenges.

If Elon Musk lands people on mars and forms a colony, it will get human beings to look up from their mundane concerns, their social media and their narcissism, and see the vista of unbridled freedom and opportunity that waits overhead, and start to dream of a way out of domestication and sloth and into a frontier.

>>8199979
>what's the point of Mars colonization?

There isn't one.

>>8200002
>>8200006
>implying a carefully designed weighted suit along with a rich diet can't mitigate this sort of issue
>implying we can't build special rotating wheels that create centripetal force and can be used by pregnant women a few hours a day to help mitigate weakness to the bones
>implying in the long run we won't genetically engineer this problem out of people

you people have absolutely no imagination if you think we can't solve these issues, we have split atoms and detected gravitational waves and unwoven and analyzed DNA, we can make any problem out bitch with enough time and sweat and the right incentives.

>>8200025
Why is it always these threads that fill up with the most Euphoric posts?

>>8200031
Not an argument.

Musk is an attention whore. Otherwise there is no rationality behind his plans.

At least electric cars and satellite delivery can return a profit.

>>8200014
That's a great salesman pitch, selling dreams, not products.

We need to go to venus instead
The upper atmosphere of venus is by far the closest to earth conditions that we will ever find

Mining the surface of venus would first be done by dredging, then capping any active volcano's/vents, then finally by machinery resistant to the high temperatures.

>>8200038
I wasn't trying to argue, no point arguing with retards that think you can just genetically engineer spaceflight osteopenia away. It's literally a function of bone to reabsorb in areas of low stress.

>>8200048
We're not even mining the bottom of earth's oceans properly, what use is it to us if we have stuff on Venus?

Just get the birthrates down to 2 children pre women in developing countries permanently and recycle the metals we already have, and you have abolished poverty without any additional mining.

>>8199979
>We all know that Mars colony won't be self-sufficient in over 100 years
No we don't. That's fucking stupid.

It would have to be close to self-sufficient from the beginning, due to the difficulty of shipping supplies from Earth.

>>8200055
People will die, the funding will run out, the taxpayers will have to pay more just to bring the survivors home, and no one will have had any real benefit.

Mark my words,that's what will happen.

>>8200053
>Just get the birthrates down to 2 children pre women in developing countries permanently
1) This is basically the worst possible solution. If we had wars to keep the population down, at least the fighting would be fun.
2) People won't cooperate with your eternal oppression plan.
3) If they did, the genome would deteriorate rapidly with accumulated mutations and no filter to remove them.

>>8200067
>the fighting would be fun.
Buy a gun, shoot yourself in the head. You can have fun that way and we'll be rid of you.

>2) People won't cooperate with your eternal oppression plan.
And how is sending shit to Venus going to help with that? All you're proving is that nothing will solve the resource hunger anyway because people will keep shitting out children until everybody lives in shit again.

>>8200071
>And how is sending shit to Venus going to help with that?
Oh, I don't know. How is not deciding that the entire human population should live only on Hawai'i (the largest island in Hawaii) going to help?

I mean, what's a nicer place to live than Hawai'i? Hawai'i's finite, but so is the Earth, so letting people live anywhere off the island is just putting off dealing with the problem, right?

Maybe we should send some people in a boat to Maui a couple of times, maybe once a century just to prove that we can, but there's no sense in having them live there, away from the rest of us and all of our established industry and houses and stuff on the big island. I mean, what? Are you sending them there to die? That's fucking cruel. Of course they have to come back.

No, we should keep everyone on Hawai'i with state control over breeding to control the population, and strict enforcement through mandatory sterilizations. That's good enough for humanity, forever.

>>8200086
Are you brain-damaged or something?

It was already pointed out that we're not even mining the bottom of Earth's oceans properly, mining shit on Venus provides no resources whatsover to the child-shitters on Earth.

>>8200067
You know the birth rate is already below replacement levels in developed countries, right? There doesn't need to be an "eternal oppression plan" - once people have enough money that they don't need babies to work in a farm, they stop having babies.

>>8200092
>>>>>>We need to go to venus instead
>>>>>>The upper atmosphere of venus is by far the closest to earth conditions that we will ever find
>>>>>Just get the birthrates down to 2 children pre women in developing countries permanently
>>>>2) People won't cooperate with your eternal oppression plan.
>>>And how is sending shit to Venus going to help with that?
>>Oh, I don't know. How is not deciding that the entire human population should live only on Hawai'i (the largest island in Hawaii) going to help?
>Are you brain-damaged or something?
Somebody in this conversation is.

>It was already pointed out that we're not even mining the bottom of Earth's oceans properly
Yes, this was pointed out, with spectacular irrelevancy. The point of mining on Venus is to provide for people living in the upper atmosphere of Venus.

>>8200100
Some people will always shit out children above replacement. They will outbreed the rest eventually.

>>8200101
>The point of mining on Venus is to provide for people living in the upper atmosphere of Venus.
You're a fucking imbecile if you actually believe this makes any economic sense, except for Musk's attention whoring.

Can't wait to burn more tax dollars on irrational bullshit projects advocated by retards like you.

>>8200109
Better than feeding and providing healthcare for people who refuse to work

>>8200116
Thanks for admitting that your opinions on science are driven by your weird political ideology rather than the facts.

>>8200116
We can always put a bullet in your face, if that's what you'd prefer.

>>8200118
It is objectively better than using pubic monies for those who can but won't provide for themselves.

Perfectly factual.
>>8200120
A welfare queen on sci? Strange.

>>8200123
>A welfare queen on sci?
Military service, actually. The only way you can get rid of the welfare state is by overthrowing democracy, and when you try that, we will shoot you.

>>8200100
>You know the birth rate is already below replacement levels in developed countries, right?
This is what's called a "selection event". Conditions have changed. Those who don't reproduce under those conditions are being selected against. Those who do reproduce under those conditions will pass on the traits which caused them to be reproductively successful.

The population will reproduce under replacement for a few generations at most, before the exponential growth in the sub-population of people who have ten kids each, that have ten kids each, etc. takes over.

>once people have enough money that they don't need babies to work in a farm, they stop having babies.
Yeah man, it has nothing to do with the invention of birth control, the legalizaton of abortion, outlawing child labor, equality of the sexes, telling women they need a college degree and a career to have status, telling men that it's creepy to marry anyone significantly younger, encroaching regulations and economic management making it harder for young people to earn incomes that allow them to raise children respectably, obesity and general unfitness, unprecedentedly sophisticated entertainment (including pornography) competing with socialization for people's limited leisure time, advertising and entertainment constantly displaying far more attractive people than the average person's prospective mates, and urbanization.

It's not "prosperity" that makes people stop having kids, prosperity enables access to some of these conditions, and is associated with connections to a global culture that promotes the other conditions.

The idea that prosperity will automagically end population growth and bring about an eternally sustainable utopia is one of the sillier bits of fantasy circulating as a serious notion about the future, when most of the serious lines of thought are forbidden in polite company.

>>8200127
That's what I said, welfare queen.

And fuck off snowball, you and your gold bricking bravo foxtrot sisters don't scare me.

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>>8200042
That's the only thing we can do if we want to realistically colonize Mars for the extremely long term benefits. Almost nothing could be for sale because of the insane shipping cost so there would be no products but luckily there's enough people on this planet that have both the money to go ( Assuming absolute best case scenario with full reusability ) and the drive to endure the shittyness of it all just so in the far future, a self sustaining colony might be possible which would then advance to be a decent home away from home that would keep us going when an eventual extinction event happens. I personally think a handful of astronauts in a rotating underground base controlling robots on the surface would be a much more economical approach to building the infrastructure for a self sustaining city though.

>>8200109
>>The point of planting crops on Maui is to feed people living on Maui.
>You're a fucking imbecile if you actually believe this makes any economic sense
Finding ways to live and provide for yourself on another planet, to gain a whole planet = makes no economic sense.

Exercising brutal state control to prevent humans from being born at anything more than replacement rates, so we can turn our back on the stars and stay on Earth forever = perfect economic logic.

Gotcha.

>>8200130
You can live in your ivory tower until the enemy comes knocking. And then what are you going to do, throw scientific papers at them until they go away?

You take your security for granted, which is surprisingly unscientific. It's almost as if you knew nothing about history and human nature.

>>8200135
>Finding ways to live and provide for yourself on another planet, to gain a whole planet = makes no economic sense.
Indeed it doesn't. We haven't mined all resources on Earth yet, and the transportation costs are abysmal, which means there won't be an evacuation. You can have a small number of people going, while the rest are left behind. Why should they pay for your bullshit?

Also the investment horizons are far too long and the probability of failure is extremely high.

Reducing birth rates would of course be much more elegant, if people actually complied. But okay, they won't and so their children will live in abject poverty forever. Let's at least close the borders then and not repeat the same mistake here.

>I want to waste my tax money on tinfoil projects because if i don't the other unique alternative will destroy the earth
Holy fuck my sides. Keep it up, muh clown.

>>8200146
I take nothing for granted. There's a Victor papa after my mos on my dd214.

>>8200025
>implying a carefully designed weighted suit along with a rich diet can't mitigate this sort of issue

It can't and I'm not even implying.

>implying we can't build special rotating wheels that create centripetal force and can be used by pregnant women a few hours a day to help mitigate weakness to the bones

That's retarded. Why not just make O'Neill Cylinders in space instead and live on those?

>implying in the long run we won't genetically engineer this problem out of people

Good luck with that, kid.

>the rest of your post

Those are nothing but logical fallacies.

>>8200100
That isn't the reason. The reason developed countries have less children is because of consumerist propaganda. It trains them to be extremely selfish and they end up babying themselves instead of having children. They end up staying mentally immature for decades longer than normal.

>>8200146
>We haven't mined all resources on Earth yet
...because it made no sense to the found the USA before all of Europe's resources were mined, right?

How could you ever have mistaken this for an intelligent argument?

The thing about land and resources on Earth is that people already own or otherwise control them. They can exploit them for additional profit, but if you just want to claim them, you've got a fight on your hands. There's a value in exploiting what you have, and a value in claiming something you can exploit.

>the transportation costs are abysmal
Jesus, this stupid meme.

Rockets are expensive because, for various reasons, very little honest effort has been put into lowering their costs, particularly their labor costs. They've been launched primarily by governments, which means that the people in charge of the programs measure their importance (and consequent current status and future career prospects) by the budget under their management, while the people doing the work need to be able to show that their prices are based on real expenses. The incentive of both of these groups of people is to keep the costs as high as they can get away with, and because it's "rocket science", they can get away with an awful lot of bullshit. You can see this especially clearly in the shuttle program, a supposed cost-saving project which was transformed into blatant pork.

Truly private competition has not been allowed, due to the military significance of rockets.

The actual, unavoidable physical cost of a person going to orbit in a chemical rocket is about half a ton of fuel (including what you have to burn to extract and liquefy oxygen). Once you're in orbit, everything else you need can be provided from space resources. To launch that person to rendezvous with a Venus cycler would take another couple hundred kilograms of material thrown from the moon by a simple solar thermal gas gun. The cycler can be made from the resources of an asteroid.

>>8200217
>...because it made no sense to the found the USA before all of Europe's resources were mined, right?
Not really, no. Which is why they did it after. And promptly lost the colonies.

>The thing about land and resources on Earth is that people already own or otherwise control them.
Ok, I trust you can build a self-sufficient Venus colony without initial investment of resources that are already owned by people. So you don't need tax funding.

Check back here when you have livable real-estate to offer at competitive prices.

>>8200205
Good. That is probably the one good thing that ever happened. If you don't like it, go to Africa and shit 10 children into the dirt.

>>8200326
>If you don't like it, go to Africa and shit 10 children into the dirt.

And give up a life of NEET bliss? Fuck that.

>>8200130
>welfare queen.
lol.

just popping in to tell you faggots how good this military shit is.

I spent 4 years drinking beer, traveling the world, and chasing pussy (i was a POG, you bullet sponges can masturbate about the desert all you want). now, with the post 9-11 GI bill and scholarships i pocket 50k$ a year just for getting good grades in college.

enjoy your crippling debt and/or shit tier work-a-matic job as i take 9 credits a semester and have a dope pad in the city. all courtesy of you, John Q Taxpayer. oh, and you can thank me for my service later :^)

>>8200326
>So you don't need tax funding.
Why do you think I support tax funding?

Look, most of SpaceX's plans aren't supported by tax money. They got tax money to build an expendable medium-lift rocket and a single-use, parachute-recovered LEO capsule. They're building a reusable superheavy-lift rocket and a propulsive-landing reusable capsule that can land on Mars.

How is this possible? Well, they're getting a lot of commercial launch contracts, but primarily, their sincere technical ambitions are also attracting the best people and motivating them to work very long hours for ordinary salaries. It's essentially a volunteer effort, by extremely talented people who want to see mankind step into space.

The main thing they're getting from the government is being permitted to operate.

NASA's talking about landing a man on Mars sometime around 2040 (after everybody there now is retired). SpaceX is talking about starting routine flights to Mars around 2025, funded by the money from the satellite business they've started (SpaceX Seattle).

>>8200366
>sustainable Mars colony as volunteer effort
Yeah, right.

>SpaceX is talking about starting routine flights to Mars around 2025, funded by the money from the satellite business they've started (SpaceX Seattle).
Talk is cheap. What we will see is lots and lots of backpaddling and calls for public funding.

>>8200359
But, I don't have any debt and I can shitpost on 4chan 24/7. I'm not seeing an upside to this "going out and doing shit" thing you speak of.

>>8200374
>But, I don't have any debt and I can shitpost on 4chan 24/7

but do you get paid to shitpost?

>>8200377
What for? Just apply for disability.

>>8200371
Personally, I see Mars colonization as more of a high-concept unifying vision for people who can't understand how much more there is to do in space, like showing children robots to get them to study programming. The important thing is that they're putting honest effort into lowering the cost of spaceflight.

When we get their fully-reusable rockets, I think we'll be pretty heavily focused on LEO and the moon for a while, and on throwing material from the moon to Earth orbit, which can be done, using catapults and aerobraking rather than rockets, on the scale of freight trains rather than airliners.

The big problem with space is that there's no material in LEO. Getting yourself to LEO is not that hard, but then there's nothing there except what you've brought.

If we had millions of tons of raw materials waiting in LEO, it would be interesting to do things there, to build stations and factories and laboratories and amusement parks, and produce propellant for departure to deeper space. That's the situation we can create from the moon, without waiting years for launch windows or coasting for months to attempt the journey and see results.

The initial steps toward this or Mars colonization are the same. Reaching for Mars will put first LEO, then the moon in reach, which will make LEO much more interesting and profitable.

>>8200116
>>8200123
>"The unemployed are so because they refuse to work!"
Are edgelords really this edgy?

>>8200217
>"The actual, unavoidable physical cost of a person going to orbit in a chemical rocket is about half a ton of fuel"
>maintenance and refurbishment costs completely ignored

>>8200359
Do you seriously consider your military brothers that actually put their life on the line ''bullet sponges''? Serious question, no dick measuring, no arguments about anything else, just curious.

>>8200450
Maintenance and refurbishment costs are arbitrarily reducible, and therefore not "unavoidable physical costs".

Anyway, for most chemical-fueled vehicles, the fuel and maintenance costs are comparable. The average car driver spends around half his auto budget on fuel and half on everything else: buying the car, changing the oil, tires, repairs, etc. The sum of the plane ticket prices on a typical airline flight is usually about triple the cost of the fuel, and that's with paying for their share of the airport operations, all the overhead of selling tickets, advertising, profit, the pilot's salary, etc.

You might say there's a "fuck it" line around the cost of the fuel. When the non-fuel mechanical costs of a long-lived fuel-consuming system get close to the cost of fuel, the people who might reduce the cost further start to say "fuck it". There's clearly money available in the region of the fuel cost. Why should all the non-fuel businesses settle for less? Fuck it. Better to try and gain a market advantage through things like superior fuel economy, better reliability, or a wider range of product, than to reduce their own footprint.

If there's an honest market, we can reasonably expect reusable rockets to come steadily down toward a small multiple of the cost of fuel, and then stick there.

What's the point in buying that candy bar you ate earlier, you fat fuck?

You had money and you wanted the candy bar.

We have money and we want to go to Mars. Fuck you.

>>8200444
Yes.

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>>8200510
>We have money
Hahaha.

>>8199979
>We all know that Mars colony won't be self-sufficient in over 100 years and terraforming Mars will take thousands of years. It's a gigantic, ultraexpensive project.

Sooner started, sooner finished.

Because Elon's whole shtick is using romance to get investments for projects in low-competition industries.

>>8200477
I generally believe in reuseable rockets, I think it's a great technology but the market is my main issue with it. No matter how wondrous a technology is if there's not much of a market it won't take off. Right now there's no reason for lots of people to be in space. I know /sci/ can't imagine not wanting to go to Mars but you must think about the wider population; most don't give a shit about space.

>>8200217
>cycler
lol
cycler shit is a meme
It makes far more sense to build shit on earth, using our cheap abundant resources, then spend the million dollars of fuel it'll cost to ship it to venus/mars/jupiter

Going to the moon is difficult because there is no air to aerobrake.

Sure, I think in the near term future we will see autonomous ion powered mining ships going to near earth asteroids.
But I don't think we'll be doing too much with the moon, takes too much delta V.

>>8201367
You're absolutely right about most people not wanting to go to Mars but man do i hope theres at least ~50,000 people out of 7 billion that could both afford it, and be capable, driven, and crazy enough to go. I think a lot more people would love to go to Mars long term if it was developed with luxury and culture.

>>8201367
Elon is an autist, who doesn't care about that. He wants to go to mars and everything he's done is about going to mars.

You are assuming that the space launch market is a fixed quantity. Which is nonsense.
As well Musk can own the entire US launch, EU launch, Russia launch, South America/Africa launch just with the existing reusable falcon 9/heavy.

That alone gives him billions of dollars to play with, which he is investing into his next gen launch vehicle, a super heavy, which will be fully reusable and capable of putting 200+ tons into LEO per launch.

The operations & construction costs of all space craft today are geared around the cost of the launch vehicle. As things go down, suddenly you can do stuff like actually testing your design before committing to the final vehicle, or launching 10 probes instead of 1 for essentially the same overall cost.

>>8200061
Which why you don't do something as flagrantly idiotic as sending people to Mars on the dollar of a people that is largely idiotic and highly prone to thoughtless emotion-driven kneejerk reactions.

The development of human spacefaring will be perpetually hamstrung if the government's the one responsible for it.

There's not going to be any human colonies in the solar system or anywhere else in the universe until we find a way to get around the whole conservation of momentum problem. I don't think people realize just how much energy is required to get a kilogram of mass from Earth to Mars.

>>8201431
>what is a mars cycler?

>>8201435
You'd still have to get huge amounts of mass into earth orbit.

nuclear thermal rockets when

>>8201431
To me, this is one of the reasons why a Mars colony makes sense. Yes, getting setting up there will take vast amounts of energy. Once it's done it's done, though, and we can spin up industry on a body with 1/3rd of Earth's gravity without having to deal with the issues faced by industrial machinery in space or on the surface of the moon. Building heavy equipment for the surface of Mars wouldn't be all that different from building equipment for Earth.

Colonizing other bodies and mining asteroids will be dramatically less resource intensive and cheaper once we have a Martian city running self-sufficiently. The costs for establishing it would pay themselves back quickly not only in the financial sense but in the scientific and technological sense, too. Launch costs are already in freefall here, and launching from Mars is so much easier that I wouldn't be surprised if a Martian rocket launch would cost tens of thousands or even thousands instead of the millions it costs here.

>>8201431
I don't think you have an concept of how much oil/natural gas is burnt annually, nor how cheap it is

Energy is not the issue. Having fully reusable rockets is.

We should be more focused on developing a robot that can hold tools and traverse on uneven terrain and send it to Mars instead of regular people.

>>8201514
>what is Boston Dynamics

>>8201521
All they've built is a headless, buzzing dog that can't do anything.

>>8201507
You greatly overestimate the benefits of the low gravity on mars
It still takes a rocket
But now you don't have a population base to build them, or to fuel them, or to provide power

Fuel costs are really not that big of a deal, and they will always be cheaper on earth than mars.

>>8201536
Were you hiding under a rock for a year or so?
>what is Atlas

>>8201540
They've got a long way to go.

>>8201539
And that's why Musk so often stresses that if we're going to colonize Mars, it needs to be an actual colony/city and not a rinkydink science outpost sort of thing. For it to work it's going to need all sorts of people doing all sorts of things.

And you're right that fuel costs aren't that big of a deal, but hardware costs are, and anything launched from the surface of Mars is going to experience far less stress than would've been experienced launching from Earth. This means that Martian rocket builders can afford to cut corners that can't be cut on Earth, making the manufacture and maintenance of reusable crafts cheaper.

>>8201661
>it needs to be an actual colony/city
He doesn't have the money for that, which immediately reveals the hypocracy of all those here who say he doesn't want tax funding.

>>8199979
You've gotta start somewhere, Anon.
What do you think will happen if we wait until we can technically send half our population there in one go?

>>8201673
What he's saying is true regardless of how funded he his or isn't. Mankind's future in space is going to be dismal until it stops being a collective limp dick and makes serious attempts at colonization of other bodies.

He'll take funding from wherever he can get it but you're deluded if you think he isn't setting his companies up for eventual self sufficiency. It's the sole reason Seattle's SpaceX offices are working on dramatically higher quality satellite internet service and the first ever mass-produced generic satellite platform. The first is a goldmine and the second has a huge market in parties interested in having satellites in orbit but can't afford the costs associated with developing one from scratch.

>>8201685
>Mankind's future in space is going to be dismal until it stops being a collective limp dick and makes serious attempts at colonization of other bodies.
Cry me a river.

>>8201691
Not an argument.

I could just say

>cry me a river wahhh wahhhh stop trying to advance into space its hard and doesnt add inches to my dick or make my rent get lower wahh

Cry me a river.

And then you could say

>crying about my crying about his crying

''Cry me a river.''

>>8201705
What "argument" do you want to hear?

I don't give a shit about humanity going into space, I was responding to the hypocracy that Musk can't afford a colony, demands a colony, and then his fanboys pretend he's not going to extract money from tax payers who simply want to fund their own fucking private lives.

You're lying through your teeth.

>>8201685
I'm actually convinced that the Madman, seeing how his shit actually fucking works out, will open-source hes design, for other companies/governments to take.
I think he's committed to the core.

>>8201716
And you can't seem to understand that separate from Musk and SpaceX and all that, the pace of progress will continue to be a near-standstill as long as we allow our obsession with overprice RC cars to continue. Great returns require great investment.

It's unfortunate that you deem human presence in space unnecessary, but there are plenty of people who disagree.

>>8201726
This is the impression I get too. He'll probably open up the patents for everything he can – the US government probably won't allow him to open up the rockets (ICBM concerns) but there should be no such issue with actual crafts themselves (Dragon, MCT, etc).

>>8201742
>It's unfortunate that you deem human presence in space unnecessary
It's just rational, given the reality of the situation and the values humanity incorporate, not in as an ideal, but in practical reality.

People want to hear songs of glory and meaning about their nature and their projects, positive to the core, progress! growth! flourishing!

But the practical truth is misery. All space colonization can do is burn a shitton of money and then increase the number of people (and animals) that will live in misery.

It doesn't solve the fundamental logic of malthusianism, because growth just multiplies need. It doesn't solve the problem of suffering. It won't even be voluntary because in reality nothing is ever truly voluntary.

Now you will reframe all these truths as whining on my part and use them as a status attack. But in reality, aside from framing and status wars, it remains a fact that your pet project has no value and it will cause more money to be stolen from people who just want to fund their own private lives.

If we had evil aliens who want to conquer the universe and erect torture chambers everywhere, we would have a reason to prevent that. But realistically speaking, that actually describes humanity pretty well, and there seems to be no competition.

>>8201742
Well to be technically exact, SpaceX hasn't patented any of its technology.
The Musk argued it was because they didn't want China to come up with the exact same rocket.
The man needs the money for proof of work. That's all.That's why it's gonna work.
In an alternate scenario, he could just sell it for the cheap, at other private foreign companies.

>>8201716
I'm not >>8201685

I just wanted to hear specifically how ''Mankind's future in space is going to be dismal until it stops being a collective limp dick and makes serious attempts at colonization of other bodies.'' isn't true but instead of countering it you just tried to say that his post has no substance and is purely just whining, crying.

>I was responding to the hypocracy that Musk can't afford a colony, demands a colony, and then his fanboys pretend he's not going to extract money from tax payers who simply want to fund their own fucking private lives.

Having your tax dollars being used on something you don't want is pretty annoying but either it will somehow be funded by him and hundreds of others, 500,000 dollars per person, or will somehow take maybe a half a percent to a couple percent of the budget if everyone was on board, but I personally would be complaining about the F-35 program first because at least, at least doing shit on Mars would have some spin off technologies and maybe inspire kids to work hard and get into stem whereas the F-35 program just kinda gets scooted under the carpet of the entire military budget (16%) as a ''whoopsy, but what do you care we spend lots of money all the time and it keeps you safe! hurr''.

But I know, I know, you don't wan't any money being used for shit you don't care about at all and pointing to a bigger pile of garbage doesn't make a smaller pile disappear. We can at least agree that Musk fanbois can be really annoying.

>>8201768
What's incredible to think about, is that with Elon Musk metrics, The Military could have colonized Mars a few thousands times by now.
Wouldn't even surprised if they're already there.

>>8201788
Military conflict is a zero-sum game. Of course it consumes resources while seemingly not achieving anything.

But there is no alternative, without a global surveillance state and one world government, which would be even worse.

>>8201759
>Now you will reframe all these truths as whining on my part
No, this isn't whining. This is an idiot trying to pose as a well-informed, intelligent person by passing off cynical pessimism as sophistication, to impress people on an anonymous laotian fingerpuppet imageboard.

>>8201799
And here we go with the status attack.

You were the one who pretended human presence is space is some kind of world improvement.

Objectively it isn't and you can't even fund it without stealing and then lying about that fact.

But thanks for being so predictable, you truly are a despicable specimen and worthy of hostility.

>>8201759
>It doesn't solve the problem of suffering.

It's not meant to make everyone's lives down here instantly be perfect, it's to increase our chances of our species surviving in the incredibly long term.

>>8201810
And what do the individuals who pay gain from that?

>>8201805
It isn't a world improvement, It's a species improvement.

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>>8201817
You're a fucking retard.

What is a "species improvement" and why would anyone give a shit?

It sure as hell is not about preventing human misery because, if it achieves anything at all, it will cause more of it.

>>8201759
There's enough even in the solar system's asteroid belt alone (not even counting the planets or the more distant objects) to sustain a population growing 25x the current rate for hundreds of thousands of years. Our solar system as a whole could keep us going for much, much longer. There's so much out there that tapping it will put our economy in a state that it's never been in before even once in our entire history. It's unprecedented.

The jump in population growth required to push the limits of what our system can provide would have to be so unbelievably massive that it's not even possible in less than several hundred generations, each with maximum output (which is unlikely). Even then, with such an increased population progressively more monumental feats become possible and things like generation ships start looking feasible.

But none of this will ever happen if we don't stop navel gazing and obsessing over things that just don't fucking matter.

>>8201759
That's an entire problem entirely. Namely population control.
It's a fucking bad thing to say, but we have to do it somehow.
I don't fathom the means by which it will be accomplished, but we just have to.
If we don't we'll just die off. Whether if it's running out of Earth, or running out of Solar System.

>>8201716
>I was responding to the hypocracy that Musk can't afford a colony, demands a colony, and then his fanboys pretend he's not going to extract money from tax payers who simply want to fund their own fucking private lives.
Musk knows, like everybody knows, that the US government isn't going to spend tax money establishing a Mars colony. What it may pay for are some of the initial exploration missions. What it is definitely paying for is some of the initial R&D costs for foundational, multi-purpose technology.

The US government, and other governments, are spending large amounts of money on space exploration and promoting technological progress already. When you single out someone who's actually using some of that money effectively, rather than running men in circles to put a "reasonable profit margin" on their taxpayer-funded salaries in his pocket, it doesn't seem like you're honestly against the collection and use of taxes, but just casting about wildly for ammunition against the designated target of the moment.

In other words, you see people enthusiastic about what Musk's doing, and you don't really understand, but you're annoyed by it and want to spoil their enthusiasm, so you're making up anything that sounds remotely like a plausible argument against it, regardless of how ridiculous it sounds to actually informed people who can put it in context.

Typical 4chan shitposting: a worthless person trying to feel significant by having some, any effect on others.

>>8201832
>When you single out someone who's actually using some of that money effectively, rather than running men in circles to put a "reasonable profit margin" on their taxpayer-funded salaries in his pocket
False dichotomy, as has been pointed out dozens of times before.

>Typical 4chan shitposting: a worthless person trying to feel significant by having some, any effect on others.
Speak for yourself, asshole. I don't give a shit about your feelings.

>>8201805
>And here we go with the status attack.
>You activated my trap card!
Next will be, "I was only pretending to be retarded!"

>>to impress people on an anonymous laotian fingerpuppet imageboard.
>You were the one who pretended human presence is space is some kind of world improvement.
Do you really not get how an anonymous board works?

I just saw you being garbage, so I commented on what garbage you are.

Please go be garbage somewhere else.

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>>8201815
I won't bullshit you with the answer you don't want to hear. ( Don't be selfish bro it helps your fellow man, learn to give a little for the greater good. or something like that )

Spin off technologies, Mars entertainment, science, and maybe a microscopically tiny improvement in the economy because kids might work harder because they're inspired. It's not as good as investing in a farm or some shit but its a lot better than some of the fucking shit we spend on other stuff that has even less benefits.

>>8201831
>running out of Solar System
That's millions of years off in the worst possible case, and by then the sun will be on its way out and we'll have to figure out something else anyway (if we're still around at that point). By then we should've made efforts to move to another (or multiple other) star systems, given that there's not some thing that manages to magically strip the entire solar system's population of its technology and knowledge.

We'll be long gone before we even make a shadow of the dent in our own galaxy let alone the rest of the universe. Even if we do manage to somehow survive the whole way through to the heat death of the universe 99% of it will still be untouched.

It's not the problem it's made out to be UNLESS we're lazy assholes and stay glued to Earth.

>>8201826
A species that survives if an extinction event happens over an entire planet is stronger than a species that would be completely be wiped out in the same scenario.

>>8201838
Except it doesn't help anyone and it achieves no greater good.

Yes you can have a greater population which achieves nothing since it runs into the same malthusian problem. It doesn't matter how many resources you have, it is the exact same problem whether you have earth or 10^100 times earth. The only difference is, the misery in the second case is 10^100 times higher.

>>8201837
The only garbage person here is you, lying through your teeth and then pretending you're making the world a better place. You're not. You're a liar and a thief, your insults don't impress anybody.

>>8201841
Exponential growth is a bitch though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
You can run out of planet 2 as fast as your parents ran out of planet 1.
And you can run out of planet 3-4 just as fast.

>>8201835
>False dichotomy, as has been pointed out dozens of times before.
There's not even a dichotomy. I'm clearly referencing three categories: spending tax money effectively on a thing, spending tax money ineffectively on a thing, and not spending tax money on that thing.

Most money isn't being taxed to spend on this thing. Most money that is being taxed to spend on this thing is being spent ineffectively. You're singling out some of the most cost-effective and useful spending, to attack.

That's clearly not motivated by an honest concern with the poor taxpayer's money.

>>8201844
Doesn't explain why anyone should give a shit. It won't change a thing about the survival of the individual, the people they care about and even their nation.

They won't get a say in what values the future has, or even if the species stays the same (not realistic). You don't even know if it's going to get completely replaced by the artificial entities or genetically constructed beings they may create.

What possible reason could a rational person have to pay for any of this?

>>8201857
>You're singling out some of the most cost-effective and useful spending, to attack.
In this context, yes, because it is discussed here. If we had a discussion that billions should be wasted on giant artworks, I would object to that instead.

>>8201852
>>>And here we go with the status attack.
>You're a liar and a thief
>your insults don't impress anybody.
Do you work in a movie theater? You seem to be an expert at projecting.

>and a thief
Jesus. Where does this even come from?

I guess this kind of thing makes sense for the schizophrenics who are attracted to /sci/, and have nothing to do but post all day. I wish we had some way to keep the mentally ill out and otherwise have free discussion.

>>8201844
There is a single, well two scenarios I can think of that would wipe us out in any case.
1) a long period comet on a collision course with Earth
2) an interstellar body in the same configuration.

Both are gonna have ridiculous incoming speeds to Earth. Therefore, incredibly high kinetic energy release upon impact.
It's INCREDIBLY unlikely of a scenario.
Nonetheless, it's actually possible.

>>8201857
>useful
Btw, I objected to that as well and gave my reasons.

>>8201864
I'm not the one demanding other people's money for my hyperexpensive pet project. And I'm not the one lying about it repeatedly either.

Musk doesn't have the funding for his own stated goals, guess who will be asked to pick up the bill.

Stop lying.

>I guess this kind of thing makes sense for the schizophrenics who are attracted to /sci/
Are you talking about yourself? Because you contradict yourself at every turn.

And you have still not explained how space colonization even solves the malthusian problem, I guess you don't have an answer.

Not very good at thinking things through, are we?

>>8201863
You've got to be pretty stupid to think spending money developing space technology has no societal benefits.

Comsats and observation satellites are insanely cost-effective, even at high launch prices. As we get lhe costs down, whole new industries will grow.

I've already pointed out that nobody expects government money to pay for a Mars colony. What SpaceX is getting government money for is technology development and launch services for purposes including space exploration.

Mein God.
I'd gladly spend 10$ for every Falcon 9 landing I see.
Just because it's awesome.

>>8201875
>you contradict yourself at every turn.
It's called an "anonymous imageboard". I'm not someone named "Anonymous". You're talking to multiple people.

Take your fucking meds, and stop coming to /sci/.

>>8201866
3) Societal unrest reaches a peak from having nothing impactful to invest itself in and we're thrown back into the dark ages.

Individual happiness is largely based on impact, and that's getting very hard to do now. Back in the 1800s a guy could make a great positive impact on his community by farming, something anybody willing to exert physical effort was capable of. Today, the only way you're changing anything is if you have billions of dollars and friends in high places.

Opening up the frontier of space brings back the possibility of making an impact. Even the janitor in a colonial base can have a sense of purpose because his services are required to keep things running and there aren't 100,000 people who can immediately replace him. Regular people would be able to make a big difference again and it'd relieve the current pressure cooker like social climate we have now.

>>8201881
Nice rationalization. You almost sound like you believe your own pseudo-sociological bullshit.

>>8201881
What do you mean? I'm a delivery boy in my local community.
No way in hell someone could just replace me without spending countless hours (that I did spend) looking for people.
I do feel a sense of purpose, without even into Mars.

>>8201886
I don't find it so far-fetched. Humans are social creatures and quite consistently the unhappiest people have tended to be those who feel they have no place or purpose in society or can easily be replaced or are frivolous/unimportant.

>>8201892
That's great to hear but most people working lower-paid jobs aren't so lucky. I am not among those people (I'm paid well) but I know folks who work at restaurants and grocery stores and they're a pretty miserable bunch (for good reason).

>>8201892
What's more is that with employment time, my employer is obliged to pay me moar. ( In my country anyway).
I'm payed by the hour.
I'm pretty sure me knowing where I'm going is worth my boss countless Euros.
Fucking Amazon is making it impossible for him to replace me.

>>8201768
>muh f-35

The military serves a purpose
Welfare is just paying people to be unproductive, while creating systemic social issues along the way

>>8201832
>Musk knows, like everybody knows, that the US government isn't going to spend tax money establishing a Mars colony.
?
Bullshit
There is no "US government"
All it takes is a couple congressmen supporting him, and he'll get a few billion a year minimum.

Puerto rico gets 6.5 billion a year
Welfare is trillions upon endless trillions
Affirmative action, diversity employment, and all other socialist agendas have cost hundreds of trillions in the last several decades

You bet your ass the US would pay to be part of any mars colonization effort.

>>8201921
I completely agree with you about welfare and I completely agree the military serves a purpose. Don't get me wrong, I love our fucking huge military and I think we should keep spending a shit ton on money on it but you have to admit that F-35 program has been an insulting waste of money that has shown close to no fruits for a motherfucking 1.5 Trillion dollars.

>You bet your ass the US would pay to be part of any mars colonization effort.
And why shouldn't they? Better than China or Russia beating them to the punch and catching them with their pants down, unable to respond for 10+ years and potentially being permanently stuck behind

>>8201938
The F-35 is basically the military's shuttle program

>its another "colonize other planets" threads
>OP even metas up his post in that regard

I really never want to know what it would be like to develop gravitational hypophosphatasia or what is essentially hypophosphatasia/osteogenesis Imperfecta as an adult and I certainly would never want to be born on fucking Mars where I'd have gravitational hypophosphatasia my entire life...however long that would be. I'd not want to be put into what is essentially a paint can shaker or small on-planet centrifuge 6 hours a day just to live a "normal" life.

Why aren't we building small scale O'Neill Cylinders or related technology in space right now? We can use that anywhere.

>>8201938
people being more productive/ vs moar task accomplished by robots.
There's a point where you should logically reduce the man hours.
But then you're stuck with lower income, which translate in lower demand for goods, therefore lower robots input.
It's gonna keep on like this until robots can actually do everything, and we just order a service for no money.

>>8201943
No matter how inefficiently, at least the space shuttle got some shit done though haha.

>>8201943
>Better than China or Russia beating them to the punch
Just nuke them out of existence.

But seriously, there could be a global agreement that setting up a colony on any body outside earth is a declaration of war.

Or if not an agreement, just a simple unilateral announcement by a nuclear power. Stops the race if that nuclear power doesn't do it either. Then all the money can be saved and people can enjoy their lives instead.

>>8201981
t. killjoy

>>8201938
are you meming
why are you meming
this is a no-meme zone
F-35 is the finest plane in the world, best at everything, with the latest tech, and literally invincible/invisible to all current foes

>>8201973
Wasn't shutlle a Billion a launch or something?
You could launch 10 falcon heavies with that.
Without reuse being factored in.
Figure have it BFR will basically cost as much. And it' fucking reusable.
I know SpaceX still has to demonstrate reuse, but given how 'simple' the engines are relative to SSMEs, I give them a 100% chance of successs.

>>8201984
Well, it would allow weaponization of the gravity well, so you can use that as the official reason.

>>8201990
I think they will relaunch the first booster in september, they are bottlenecked on their ability to launch rockets right now, and possibly on production too.

>>8201949
>Why aren't we building small scale O'Neill Cylinders or related technology in space right now? We can use that anywhere.
Because we don't have the industrial capabilities in space necessary for such a thing and probably won't as long as Earth is where we get our resources from. It's just too expensive to get that material in orbit, at least if we're talking full-scale O'Neill cylinders.

A good path to gaining what's needed to build these might be:

Establish Mars base large enough to build and launch asteroid belt mining and manufacture facilities -> mine and manufacture large portions (or all) of these cylinders in the belt -> ship cylinders to various planetary orbits for habitaiton. We could do the same from Earth, but ridiculously large rockets would be needed for belt trajectories with non-tiny payloads.

The first cylinder few cylinders would likely remain in the Sun's orbit in various points through the belt to provide living quarters for mining+factory staff.

>>8202000
They need more people, more pads, and more factories. Not bad problems to have, really.

>>8201990
Dude, you have no idea how much I am on your side. I was just comparing what the F-35 does to what the space shuttle did.

>>8201989
I guess I've been living under a rock sorry. I didn't know it finally fucking came to fruition. I shouldn't have assumed but anyways hopefully it gets some shit done and does 1.5 trillion dollars worth of fighting.

>>8202014
Indeed. They could be sending stuff up several times a month, if they had the manpower and locations to do so. They certainly have the clients to do it for.

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>>8201989
>F-35 is the finest plane in the world, best at everything, with the latest tech, and literally invincible/invisible to all current foes

Guys, guys, i have the idea.
Can we build an underground spinning base on Mars so people can live in kinda normal gravity and only work in little gravity, when they have to go outside?
Or will it be too material/energy consuming to even think of?

>>8202122
It might not even be necessary. Mars gravity might be within the limits that humans can remain healthy in, but we don't know since nobody has ever lived on Mars before.

We know what microgravity does to people, but microgravity is very different from Martian gravity. A 140lb person feel about 50lbs heavy on Mars which is a lot lighter, but it's probably enough to keep the body functioning reasonably well with good exercise.

>>8201852
>the misery in the second case is 10^100 times higher.
You're assuming we will continue to all lead shitty, painful lives forever and also, with that statement, if you could wipe out the human race so there was no more ''suffering'', would you do it?

>Yes you can have a greater population which achieves nothing since it runs into the same malthusian problem.

It's not about population, it would be much more economical to colonize Antarctica if that was the only goal. It's to make sure humans continue to exist if one planet has an extinction event.

>>8202143
I wish we could send up a Mars direct style space station into LEO and have it spin just fast enough to simulate martian gravity so we could learn more.

>>8202060
1.5 trillion is projected operating costs over its lifetime
U look like a retard repeating some liberal media meme

>>8202014
Yea, but it is still a problem, and could provide an oppurtunity for rivals to catch up.
Apparently this boca chica launch pad is going to take several more years to be built

>>8202175
You're completely right, that's my bad. Fucking still though, 398.6 billion spent is an insane amount.

>>8202206
400 billion over how many years?
in reality its peanuts
And it totally secures US military dominance over the world

These stealth fighters like the F-35 or the F-22 can destroy hundreds of non-stealth fighters with zero losses

>>8202168
I agree, a centrifugal space station would be of great value. Might be interesting to put it at a Lagrange point instead of LEO, though. LEO is pretty well covered already, but I definitely understand choosing LEO for cost reasons.

>>8202212
since 2006 at like 50 billion a year.

Securing military dominance that way does actually seem really worth it so my opinion on it has been changed because its working now but If that's peanuts then the only real point I want to make is NASA is peanuts to peanuts in comparison.

>>8202226
You give this current NASA with this current congress, 50 billion a year
And you are just going to end up with a new single stage to orbit spaceplane
Using old shuttle/apollo technology
That costs more and carries less and launches less

>>8202240
I don't really want NASA to get 50 billion a year the way it works right now, I would rather just give space x more money but I was really just making a point for the people that think NASA's money is some huge waste when its actually not that much and there's other things to point fingers at when it comes to not being super fruitful.

>>8201815
Who gives a fuck about them? They'll get a golden plague saying "Saviors of the Human race" or some shit and be happy as a peach. They'll also get to feel good about themselves for it, more so than you ever will with your needlessly cynical outlook.

>>8199983
Pretty much this.

>>8200002
http://www.dpchallenge.com/image.php?IMAGE_ID=863607

>>8200031
And that they are always filled with ad-hominem and rhetoric from those opposed to humanities advancement.

>>8199979
probably a base for somehow helping with the mining of asteroids near that orbit path. it would have to be profitable somehow. it will eventually be profitable in some way

>>8199979
Yeah dude it's gonna take like a hundred years and that's a loong time, nevermind that if shit hits the fan 200 years from now, we're gonna be praising elon's name. And he would totally be a trillionare if he started mining asteroids, I mean it's not like the price of the only materials worth mining to begin with would inflate to hell and back.

>>8200006
>Brittle bone disease is a disorder that results in fragile bones that break easily. It’s typically present at birth, but it only develops in children who have a family history of the disease.

Also, I wonder what the >>8200000 and >>8199999 gets are.

>>8199979
>terraforming Mars will take thousands of years
I dont think it will ever be possible

>>8199983
well there aint any shit on mars either

its just a large rock

at best in the distant future we can mine ressources from it

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>>8205498
Asteroids are richer sources of minerals and fuel and easier to reach. One moderately sized rock has more platinum group metals and rare earths than the entire crust of Mars. The only drawbacks are the effects of microgravity and cosmic radiation on miners.

The big question still is; would it be a communist society?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/754277459009298432

How can one man be so based

>>8205693
It takes more delta V to reach these asteroids than mars
Can't aerobrake on an asteroid

Still it's a lot easier to bring material back from a near earth asteroid than from mars so I expect to see it happening within 15 years

>>8207525
Not the guy you're replying to, but this is why I advocate development of Mars before development of asteroid mining. Moving between the asteroid belt and Mars would be easier both directions.

Mars could then be used for ore refinement and shipment to Earth. Convoys would leave Earth and go to Mars carrying people and come back carrying refined, ready to use metals.

>>8199979
Elon Musk is just an investor and businessman like Warren Buffet, not some amazingly intelligent triple Ph.D. despite how much he may think he is.

Going to Mars is fucking retarded and honestly shortsighted. The level of technological progress it would take to terraform Mars would mean that people would no longer be biological--brains on machines that can exist in a satellite for all eternity without even needing a planet.

>>8207525
Hmmm. I don't know much about orbital mechanics but what I read in discover magazine (inb4 read a real science mag) suggested it took less energy to reach Ceres and Dawn was at low a V relative to Ceres. Of course this journey probably involved slingshots around both Venus and Mars and took 5 years but if we can study Mars with a robot we can certainly mine asteroids with robots.

I never fully understood why people are so obsessed with mars. It would be much more feasible in my opinion to colonize/terraform venus. To me it looks like mars is simply not heavy enough to hold a proper atmosphere and we can't really make it heavier (even if we, say, bombard mars with the whole asteroid belt and its moons it would only get heavier by a few percent).

Venus on the other hand is close to fucking perfect. Of course you need to get rid of most of the atmosphere somehow, but that seems like a luxury problem compared to getting an entire atmosphere someplace. Plus, the atmosphere is so dense, that you can basically live in the clouds for the time being, all in pretty comfy .9g

>>8207537
Why bother with unresourceful gravity wells? Refine and refuel on Ceres. Bore 5m down under the ice and you're protected from even the strongest solar and cosmic radiation.

>>8207547
Why would I want to live in almost Brazil but worse?

>>8207543
>Elon Musk is just an investor and businessman like Warren Buffet, not some amazingly intelligent triple Ph.D. despite how much he may think he is.
But he's also not just a stereotypical dumb billionaire who throws money at things without understanding them. He invests a great deal of time in effort in knowing where to steer his companies, which is a lot more than most people of his class do. I doubt you could have a meaningful conversation with Jeff Bezos about rocket science, for instance even though he owns Blue Origin.

>>8207548
Because Ceres is shit for long term habitation, and people are going to be needed to run and work in refineries. Eventually they'd be mostly automated, but there are tons of systems on Earth that still can't be automated even with gravity and atmospheric cooling for machinery working in our favor.

With a Mars base you could easily cycle workers to mitigate negative effects.

>>8207560
>He invests a great deal of time in effort in knowing where to steer his companies, which is a lot more than most people of his class do.
And yet, when you discount subsidies of all kind, neither Tesla or SpaceX is profitable.

gg

>>8207547
Mass is not an issue for Mars' atmosphere; it's many times past adequacy for that. The problem is that the sun blows it away.

The good news is that the blowoff process is so ridiculously slow that even with the limited pace of thickening humans are capable of, we'd be able to replenish it to Earthlike levels and keep it topped off without too much issue. In fact, the emissions we have so much trouble culling here on Earth would be more than sufficient to maintain the atmosphere.

Getting rid of the atmosphere on Venus is a much bigger problem than thickening that of Mars. Even if we did manage to strip its atmosphere down to something reasonable, its rotation is extremely slow (one Venus day == one Earth year) making life on the surface difficult.

>>8207564
And neither is Amazon. Profit isn't a very good measure of success unless profit is your goal, and given the nature of businesses Musk is attracted to it should be pretty obvious that profit isn't a priority. Everything he does is risky and expensive, which is not how you make money.

>>8207544
It takes like 4.5 km/s delta v from low earth orbit to reach mars in a reasonable 100 days
Then another maybe .5-1 km/s to land on the surface after aerobraking.

It takes 6.3 km/s to reach lunar surface from LEO
So easier to go to mars than the moon, easier to go to venus than mars.

Looks like ceres takes about 10 km/s delta-v for a 3 year journey
Eh, looks like a direct window with a 1 year journey happens in 2022, they should send a rover there t b h

It's way harder to send stuff to an object lacking in atmosphere
though asteroids would allow you to brake with ion drives, thats why I think near earth asteroid mining will happen.

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>>8207554
lol

Seriously, unless they have revolutionary technology to build gorgeous and safe habitats for cheap, I'd rather live in a favela.

At least they have underage prostitutes.

http://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-shares-his-miracle-strategy-for-getting-so-mu-1783789524

The same level of technology needed to live on Mars is sufficient to always live on the earth no matter what happens barring a major collision with a rock, which is a fate Mars has as well.

It is part of the human narrative to leave those who are too stupid or selfish behind, and form your own society. Probably better to work on the stupid and make a smarter society than to travel across the solar system. Probably better to work on a sustainable society here, that to move somewhere else and bring the same problem with you....

>>8209593
The problem is that humans are lazy assholes and often won't do things until they're absolutely required to in order to exist, or even AFTER that threshold has been reached. In other words, living on Earth is so comfy that the level of technology you describe may never be achieved (especially once you count the effects of groups like big oil).

By putting people on Mars and having them live there for long periods, we'd be *forcing* that level of tech to develop because there's no other way it'd be possible. All of us back on Earth will be reaping the benefits from of technology developed en route to Mars for many generations. I guarantee it.

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>>8209593
I hear this all the fucking time.

Why
not
do
both

It doesn't take much of the Earths resources to colonize Mars efficiently.

About the surviving an asteroid thing, it may be possible but a self sustaining city on Mars would greatly increase our chances for survival as a species so we don't have to risk it all on one single planet forever until the sun gets us.

If people are gonna pay Elon to do it, then why wouldn't he do it.
It's one of the few available markets with zero competitors.

>>8209625
It's not a market though. The satellite and e-car business may pay for itself, but a Mars colony will not. Not in the foreseeable future anyway.

>>8209603
>The problem is that humans are lazy assholes and often won't do things until they're absolutely required to in order to exist, or even AFTER that threshold has been reached.
Quite rational from an individual perspective, since we'll all be dead in a couple of decades no matter what we do. I'd sacrifice the future of humanity in a heartbeat if it made my computer games 5% more pretty.

>All of us back on Earth will be reaping the benefits from of technology developed en route to Mars for many generations. I guarantee it.
Sure, if you refuse to consider the opportunity costs of the same spending.

>>8209623
>It doesn't take much of the Earths resources to colonize Mars efficiently.
It really doesn't, we spend 100x more on the most painfully frivolous and utterly useless shit imaginable every day without so much as thinking twice

>>8209647
>Quite rational from an individual perspective, since we'll all be dead in a couple of decades no matter what we do. I'd sacrifice the future of humanity in a heartbeat if it made my computer games 5% more pretty.
Speak for yourself, I plan on living in a genetically engineered and/or cybernetic fashion 200 years from now. Personally, even the most hedonistic of lifestyles provides zero appeal over planning for something longer term, even said plans never come to pass.

>>8209650
Perhaps people spend money on things they value, instead of things you value.

Perhaps public spending is inefficient because it's a public choice problem and no one has an incentive to make it efficient.

>>8207564
>when you discount subsidies of all kind, neither Tesla or SpaceX is profitable.
What if you also subtract the costs of satisfying regulations, of having to compete with other subsidized businesses, dealing with bad laws and unreasonable courts, etc.?

You're not going to run a successful car company or a rocket company today without intimate cooperation with government, anywhere in the world. You can't escape the bad things they impose on you, and you can't survive turning your back on the help they offer you.

People talk about the free market and capitalism, but government has its fingers in every pie now. Being allowed to run a business of significant size and complexity is a tremendous struggle, and you're not going to make it as the only one turning your nose up at subsidies.

Like it or not, the idea of starting a major business independent of government now belongs in the category of fantasy.

>>8209663
>Speak for yourself
Obviously.

>I plan on living in a genetically engineered and/or cybernetic fashion 200 years from now.
Not a likely story. But even then, you'd be better of spending all your money and effort on that project instead of sending stuff to Mars. (This would be true even if Mars colonization were actually necessary for species survival. The broader point is that no individual has a rational reason to spend their own resources on species survival.)

>>8209666
Which is why commercial endeavors are the only way our presence in space will extend beyond skin-deep science missions.

>>8209671
Depends on how selfish the individual in question is. I'm hardly a paragon of selflessness but I would find pouring mass resources into myself at the point to be gross and unconscionable. I've done little but consume since I came into existence and would like to change that before I go and add mountains to my already egregious consumption.

>>8209678
>Depends on how selfish the individual in question is.
True. But on the other hand, there's also this thing called misguided altruism, where self-sacrifice makes the world worse rather than better. I'm not convinced human extinction is worse than human survival from a broader moral perspective. You have to make tons of assumptions about the long-term future and all kinds of philosophical value judgments I'm not willing to make (e.g. trading off torture and injustice for the sake of pleasure, art or mere existence).

I find most self-prescribed altruists to be both hypocritical and incompetent, and I realized this was true for me too, so I switched to rational egoism instead and I've never regretted it. Your mileage may vary, of course.

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It's not.
If it was we would be doing it on the moon.
Why aren't we doing it on the moon?
Simple earth is not the owner of the moon, and thoses who do own the moon dont want us there because of Armstrong.

>>8199983
>Hey Jim, I've noticed plans on spending trillions of dollars on a project that won't show significant returns within the century, am I reading this wrong?
>Oh, Tom, don't you know? We need some fuckin romance brah. We're getting bored and bluballed here and the absolute mystery of unfathomably vast oceans is so yesterday.

>>8200014
I can see how it's a bit tricky explaining basic economics to someone who's head is shoved so far up his ass. But fuck it let's try anyway.

Let's say little Timmy is starving. But worse yet LT is in some serious debt. It would be, what we call in the biz, pants on head retarded to suggest little Timmy to spend millions of dollars to climb the Himalayan mountains (just go with it) as a symbol of pride and accomplishment and hope. Get some food in you first, figure out a way to pay some of that backbreaking debt, and then go climb whatever the fuck you want.

Just because you need some hope doesn't mean I should get billions of dollars further in debt. Go fuck yourself with your trillion dollar hopes and dreams and get a fucking hobby like the rest of us.

>>8199979
>yfw you realize 2/3rds of the posts on 4chan are KJB propaganda designed to promote an overly negative and viscous attitude towards progress.

>>8209713
The problem with that is if we require all of our problems here on earth to be solved before doing anything else, we'll be stuck here solving our problems for perpetuity. Unlike Timmy's hunger, most problems are not simple and fixing them opens up truckloads of other problems.

We're never not going to have serious issues, so using them as a reason to not develop space makes zero sense.

>>8209721
>We're never not going to have serious issues, so using them as a reason to not develop space makes zero sense.
I agree. And yet opportunity cost is a real thing and space development still has to justify its cost by providing sufficient realistic benefit. Otherwise it's still irrational.

>>8209700
>spending trillions of dollars on a project that won't show significant returns within the century
If you try to measure everything in terms of dollars, you end up thinking in very confused terms.

Who will spend trillions of dollars, and who won't show significant returns?

Over the next decade, people are going to spend trillions of dollars on excess food that harms their health, and unhealthy entertainment that only distracts their attention from spending time on things that would actually make their lives better, leaving them isolated, ignorant, and unfit. This means other people will make trillions of dollars selling these things.

Money isn't something that is destroyed when it's spent. It's something that circulates. Society as a whole doesn't "spend money". It spends labor, natural resources, and the attention of its best men. Society as a whole doesn't "earn money". It gains able workers, natural resources, sounder organization, and the enlightenment and inspiration of its best men.

It's absurd to claim that spending resources on gaining another planet full of resources, while exercising a significantly unemployed labor force, and challenging and exciting its best men is wasteful on a societal level.

As for "won't show significant returns within the century", even if I agreed with that assessment (and I think it's idiotically pessimistic) have you never heard the saying, "civilization grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never sit in"?

>>8209772
>Over the next decade, people are going to spend trillions of dollars on excess food that harms their health, and unhealthy entertainment that only distracts their attention from spending time on things that would actually make their lives better, leaving them isolated, ignorant, and unfit.
Some of this spending is irrational, but most of it is just a personal preference exhibited by hundreds of millions of people. You may look down on it, but perhaps it satisfies their true values more than what you have in mind.

>while exercising a significantly unemployed labor force
The most competent and motivated people are not unemployed, and no amount of public spending will employ the unmotivated and incompetent to useful effect. In fact, if you have to tax the economy to send stuff to Mars, you create additional deadweight loss because the incentive for other investment and employment is reduced.

>gaining another planet full of resources
If we had a realistic way to utilize them for the marketplace on earth, many nation states and private corporations would be racing for those resources. If you have to spend more to get them than they are worth, it's not really a resource.

>"civilization grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never sit in"
Nice motto, but I'd rather have a positive bottom line within my lifetime if you don't mind. In my personal account if that's okay with you.

>>8209759
>I agree. And yet opportunity cost is a real thing and space development still has to justify its cost by providing sufficient realistic benefit. Otherwise it's still irrational.
Well it certainly can't prove itself if nobody gives it a healthy chance to do so, now can it?

And I'd argue that we've already seen massive payouts from investing in space. Being able to put satellites in orbit alone has been radically beneficial, and information gathered from probes orbiting other bodies is giving us a better idea of how planetary mechanics work, giving us insight as to what's going on with our own systems.

>>8209784
>If we had a realistic way to utilize them for the marketplace on earth, many nation states and private corporations would be racing for those resources.
The issue is not with not having uses, it's about not having the infrastructure in place to do even the most basic initial surveys. Make the infrastructure available and things will start happening.

>If you have to spend more to get them than they are worth, it's not really a resource.
Getting pipelines in place is a fixed cost. It pays for itself over time, though, and said infrastructure quickly becomes invaluable. Seeing the ocean trade routes, railways, and roads for great examples; they were all exorbitantly expensive to build but have since facilitated the trade of quantities of resources worth many hundreds or thousands of times the initial setup costs.

>>8209784
>just a personal preference exhibited by hundreds of millions of people. You may look down on it, but perhaps it satisfies their true values more than what you have in mind.
Yeah, man. It's not just money-grubbers manipulating people to pay them for stupid shit. People actually want to be obese, and that's 100% rational, whereas expanding to another planet will be a waste.

You have stupid opinions because you base your opinions on stupid oversimplified principles that would embarass the average 12-year-old to believe so completely. "Let's define 'value' as 'money'." "Let's define 'rational choice' as whatever consumers decide for themselves (but not investors, their choices are only rational when they bring a monetary profit in their own lifetimes, regardless of their motives)."

We can't have a meaningful discussion as long as your head is full of pseudorational garbage that you refuse to question.

>The most competent and motivated people are not unemployed
A whole lot of them are underemployed and demoralized.

>no amount of public spending
Who the fuck is talking about public spending?

>If we had a realistic way to utilize them for the marketplace on earth
What the fuck has the marketplace on Earth got to do with anything?

>>8209784
>>people are going to spend trillions of dollars on excess food that harms their health
>just a personal preference exhibited by hundreds of millions of people. You may look down on it, but perhaps it satisfies their true values more than what you have in mind.
>>"civilization grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never sit in"
>Nice motto, but I'd rather have a positive bottom line within my lifetime if you don't mind. In my personal account if that's okay with you.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you terminal consumerism: the belief that it's irrational to do anything other than indulge your personal preferences with no regard for future generations.

>>8209834
>What the fuck has the marketplace on Earth got to do with anything?
Indeed, I imagine a large chunk of space mined resources will go right back into space industry, especially early on. It'd be partially self-fueling.

>>8199979
LOL no.

ultra low gravity will fuck up the human body. there will be no next generation of humans born on another planet.

>>8209852
>the belief that it's irrational to do anything other than indulge your personal preferences with no regard for future generations.
It is by definition irrational to do anything other than the things that best fulfill your personal preferences.

If you value future generations, you can include that in your preferences. The behavior of billions of consumers that you decry perhaps shows that they don't care very much about future generations. I agree with them, I won't do things that don't benefit me.

You can solve this through collectivist tyranny with all its unintended consequences, or by being really angry on the internet, which does nothing.

You can also spend your own money on space missions, but since you clearly prefer being argumentative on 4chan, I assume you have the same self-indulgence in mind as I do, except you're being hypocritical about it.

>>8209853
That makes it a pyramid scheme, unappealing to any sane investor on Earth.

If it doesn't connect with the marketplace on Earth at some point in some way, it can't return a profit for investors on Earth.

Contrast this with satellites that have a clear use.

>>8209890
>I won't do things that won't benefit me
I get it, you're a rational but incredibly shitty person.

>>8209918
I disagree, I already pointed out in
>>8209686
that most self-proclaimed altruists are hypocritical and incompetent and there's a good chance they will make the world worse rather than better.

But be that as it may, it's human nature to seek one's own self-interest one way or another, and insulting people will never change that.

You could have spent your time working hard on a Mars mission, or to earn money to donate to a Mars mission, instead of insulting me here. After all, you allegedly don't want public funding, so you don't have to convince random people.

Isn't it curious that you choose to indulge in 4chan arguments instead? I suspect the reason is that it reveals your true preference: It is simply more entertaining.

>>8209908
There are insanely huge quantities of everything in the asteroid belt. To single out an example, there's so much platinum there that we could stop using any other metal and make everything out of platinum instead. To say that's worthless and has no connection to Earth's market is insane.

>>8209953
No one said it's worthless, full stop. It's worthless if you don't find a cost-effective way to bring it to market on Earth - or, perhaps very futuristically, have a space industry that uses it to ultimately bring *something* to market on Earth.

How else would investors on Earth benefit?

>>8209908
>unappealing to any sane investor on Earth.
I notice you've got to throw that "sane" in there, so you can apply your own definition of, "agrees with me".

Some investors are going to be people who want to live in space, or who want to pass down assets to their descendants who will ilve in space. Some people invest money in things and don't care about a monetary return at all.

You're just being a shit, insisting that space spending has to give monetary returns on Earth to be rational, but spending on Earth is an "expression of personal preferences" and therefore inherently rational and above judgement.

It's garbage. Your reasoning is garbage.

>>8209984
Well, for one the first companies to get out there and establish infrastructure are going to become ludicrously rich because they're opening the door to totally uncontested, virtually limitless resources and anyone else wanting to get into the business is going to have to piggyback off of them.

It's risky because nobody knows which nascent company will be "the one" to do it first, but eventually one of them will succeed and it's very likely they'll become the wealthiest corporation mankind has ever seen. Who wouldn't want a part in that?

>>8209985
If they're going to live in space or bequeath space habitats to their descendants, then that *is* a connection to the market on Earth.

>You're just being a shit,
>It's garbage. Your reasoning is garbage.
I love how you can't come up with counter-arguments to very basic aspects of cost-benefit analysis, and then you resort to insults.

Newsflash: I don't care about your opinion. Unless you offer insights or amusement of some sort, you are useless to everybody here.

>>8209995
I don't see much evidence that this is a viable business model at this time, and I don't see how a manned Mars mission is going to provide access to platinum in the asteroid belt.

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Reminder that there is a SPESSEX launch tonight:

http://www.spacex.com/webcast

>T-minus 5:00 hours

>>8199979
we aren't going interplanetary until we get the energy problem sussed out. we are struggling a lot harder in that area than people think. something nuclear is probably the answer, but not any time soon.

>>8210001
>I love how you can't come up with counter-arguments to very basic aspects of cost-benefit analysis, and then you resort to insults.
I love how you won't acknowledge my counter-arguments to your idiotic nonsense, and pretend that my conclusion is my argument.

Your argument is not "very basic aspects of cost-benefit analysis", it's repeatedly asserting that the only rational reason to ever make a monetary investment from Earth is for a prompt monetary gain on Earth, and supporting that with nothing but more and more shrill assertions that this is what rationality is.

As far as I can tell, you've been repeating this assertion, and talking to people as if they don't understand the consequences of your premise rather than objecting to the premise itself, for the better part of a week, as an unemployed mentally ill person with nothing better to do.

>>8210009
Space mining isn't terribly practical right now because everything has to start by getting out of Earth's gravity well. In order for space mining to work, we need a stepping stone.

The moon could serve as this, but it's incredibly hostile and lacking in resources. Its gravity is also so low that anybody trying to manufacture anything there is going to face serious challenges.

Mars on the other hand is nowhere near as hostile, has plenty of local resources, and has gravity high enough for reasonable manufacturing but low enough to make getting off the planet much more reasonable than doing the same on Earth. Furthermore, it's a lot closer to the asteroid belt.

In other words, Mars is the perfect stepping stone. It's the perfect staging grounds for constructing large amounts of mining, refinery, and transport equipment and getting it out into the asteroid belt, and getting there involves solving most of the same problems that space mining faces.

>>8210017
Still not caring about your opinion or your insults.

Since you clearly prefer to spend time on 4chan instead of investing in your grand space mission, you can't be particularly convinced of your own arguments.

Feel free to leave us and work overhours so that you can donate your money to space exploration. No? Yeah, didn't think so.

>>8209713
Lets say little timmy is starving and in debt. It would be what I call, pants on head retarded to suggest little Timmy to spend thousands of dollars on having a stick that is bigger than all of his neighbors sticks combined, spend thousands of dollars on future vacations where he won't work, but not spend 20 dollars right now, on buying a shitty box in an ally way so he can have a home in case his current house burns down to the ground.

>>8210029
you're acting like a five year old with his fingers in his ear going NEEER NEER

your argument is literally the same as "if you can't take over the chef's position don't ever criticize food"

an excuse for babbies to shield their egos from harm

>>8210029
It's insane that you can't have the simple realization that there are different levels of caring. Someone can donate every cent they have or donate a few dollars, either way, they care about a cause. Obviously, this man and others, care enough to promote it ( And would probably care enough to actually donate some money if there was an official go fund me page by elon himself ) but don't care enough to sacrifice everything they have.

>>8210114
>but don't care enough to sacrifice everything they have.
Or they just realize that sacrificing everything probably isn't the most productive thing that they're capable of.

Either way you're right, treating the issue as binary makes no sense.

>>8210114
>Obviously, this man and others, care enough to promote it
He's not promoting it, he's insulting and attacking everybody who disagrees with him on really basic points that shouldn't be controversial, like that you need a business model that provides actual returns or strategic benefits to investors if you want to spend trillions of dollars on a project.

And I'm the one being called childish. If I had had any inclination to support you at this point, it would be gone after that.

>>8199979
No.

Macro-gravity will fuck up human's bodies. You'd need to be floating around on Venus to attain close-to proper gravity for humans, but then the winds would totally wreck your shit up there.

>>8199979
>Oh look, it's THIS thread again
Exactly, so don't make it.
>But seriously now
No.

That should have been everyone's reaction to this thread. The fact it got as many posts as it did is pathetic and shows how idiotic /sci/ is.

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>>8210142
He is defending the colonization of Mars which shows he cares about it.

>like that you need a business model that provides actual returns or strategic benefits to investors if you want to spend trillions of dollars on a project.

One, it's not trillions if you do it the space x way, more like billions, and two, the benefit is knowing your species has a better chance at surviving and exploring the stars. It can be literally just the feeling you get is your return investment for the investors. Yeah, there will be piece of shit selfish people that try to defend being ''rationally'' selfish. (hurr its human nature to be selfish that means its perfectly ok just like killing someone when youre angry) but there will always be the people that see the bigger picture ( while also understanding that there is a better chance than not that the future will generally be better based on current evidence that now is better than before based on technology, thus is worth preserving your fellow man as a species. ) and have compassion for your future generations and these will be the people that help us advance as a species.

Real ( but kinda sloppy, I'm getting tired) arguments aside, you are a selfish motherfucker, and that doesn't make you the devil but I wish you would just say I don't personally care about future generations or my species so we could have ended this way back. This was fun arguing something I'm passionate about with someone that has a very different opinion than me. I'm glad I had my beliefs challenged but I'm exhausted and don't give a shit anymore, you wont ever help anyone else out in your life because it doesn't benefit you and I really think Mars colonization is an important, worthy step in the survival of our species so we can advance with a better chance of not becoming extinct, we're never going to get along or change each others opinions, go ahead and send some more shit but others will have to keep arguing.

>>8210212
OH SHIT ok, before I go, maybe we can finally agree on something.

DROP EVERYTHING that has been argued in this entire thread so we can get on the same page again for 5 seconds.

We can at least agree that its completely fine that the colonization of Mars becomes a thing even if it doesn't benefit anyone on Earth, IF the people that don't want to help fund it, don't have to fund it?

>>8210223
lol you're retarded

>>8210212
> I wish you would just say I don't personally care about future generations or my species so we could have ended this way back.
I did so many hours ago, almost verbatim. Apparently you can't read.

I am an unapologetic rational egoist (the rational doesn't mean you have to be an egoist if you want to be rational, it means I try to be rational while I am an egoist) and have pointed that out several times now. I will not compromise my own wellbeing because of other people's ideology. Your insults will not change that.

>more like billions
Fair enough, but I doubt it's in the ballpark of charity. And charity already includes the benefit of feeling warm and fuzzy and avoiding being insulted by obnoxious pseudomoral hypocrites like you.

>>8210223
>We can at least agree that its completely fine that the colonization of Mars becomes a thing even if it doesn't benefit anyone on Earth, IF the people that don't want to help fund it, don't have to fund it?
Obviously yes. (Unless they start flinging shit down to Earth)

>>8209786
>Well it certainly can't prove itself if nobody gives it a healthy chance to do so, now can it?

So let's dump billions of dollars that were trillions away from having on a project that maybe hopefully will have some turnout potentially since similar past projects turned out a few new technologies?

>>8210241
no u
>>8210268

>I did so many hours ago, almost verbatim. Apparently you can't read.
Yeah, that's my bad, I was more caught up on defending colonizing rather than discussing the morals of taking someone's money for something he doesn't want to pay for.

>I will not compromise my own wellbeing because of other people's ideology. Your insults will not change that.

hahaha, I know it won't change anything, I just wanted to let you know that you're a piece of shit even if you try to rationalize it.

>being insulted by obnoxious pseudomoral hypocrites like you.

Nice edit to increase the impact of your insult. I am being obnoxious but I'm not a pseudomoral hypocrite. It's an objectively, fundamentally excellent way to help greatly increase the chances of our species surviving long term and I believe in that future because it can absolutely be done and takes peanuts to do compared to some of the shit that gets wasted down here now. If I was calling you a piece of shit of a human being for not helping anyone but yourself all the time but then I went and never helped anyone else out ever, then I would be a hypocrite. If I knew that the universe would end 50 years from now, I would be a pseudo moralist because obviously Mars would cost money that could be spent on crack babies and there would be no benefit to anyone while I'm insulting people that think there's no benefit.

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>>8210212
What about a moon base?

>>8210401
>I am being obnoxious but I'm not a pseudomoral hypocrite.
Yeah you really are. Like most self-proclaimed altruists, you have not thought through the consequences of your actions, for example all the suffering this will cause. You have no consistent morality to offer.

You pretend to care about the species, but you insult your fellow man and poison the communication space, damaging your own claimed goals.

You also lack both the competence and the personal commitment you would need to claim real world improvement, you still have provided no plan how you are going to finance your space fantasies, nor any inclination that you personally will do anything about it other than insult people who disagree with you on the internet.

>Nice edit to increase the impact of your insult.
Yes, that was necessary. I usually don't start with insults, but you deserve pointing out what a miserable hypocrite and parasitic moralite you are. People like you are the reason why the world is such a shithole to begin with.

In any case, we have nothing further to "discuss", I'm obviously not going to stop you if you actually colonize Mars. Who knows, maybe you compete with the Chinese or the Russians who would make it even shittier than you. Just know that there are people like me who will cut parasites like you out of society if you cross our lines of tolerance, and none of your pretentious self-serving sermons will matter.

>>8210444
Quicker to get to but much less resources to use to your advantage when you get there to my knowledge. If you could mine enough resources of enough kinds to create instead of sucking in even more money from Earth forever, and you could basically make it sustainable, I would absolutely love for a moon base to exist. The Moon is easier to get to but Mars is much easier to live on and has so much more fruitful potential.

>>8210020
>In order for space mining to work, we need a stepping stone.

?
Why do you say this?
If the cost of shipping mining equipment was measured totally in the price of the methane/natural gas to send it there, then it would be VERY practical
Fully reusable rockets is the first step, not any sort of off world base(which also won't exist without reusable rockets)

>>8210508
Oh thank you for shitting out that post, for a second I thought we we're about to go our separate ways.

>Like most self-proclaimed altruists, you have not thought through the consequences of your actions, for example all the suffering this will cause. You have no consistent morality to offer.

I already discussed this a few posts back. You are assuming all humans constantly experience the majority of their life as pain. (did you have a shitty life or something?) Look at it objectively without instantly imagining everyone suffering and then imagining everyone suffering plus a million people suffering on Mars. Technology has consistently and generally improved the average humans life. Life used to be painful survival and now its still shitty for a lot of people but the majority of humans in advanced countries live much better lives because of all the pain that doesn't exist due to technology like medicine or the increased sense of happiness in everyday activities due to there being more possible things to enjoy because of technology. The future, in general, is more likely than not, to improve, making everyone, in general, happier which we can both agree is a good thing, for humans to be happy rather than experience pain. Imagine no Mars hype, we are where we are, there is plenty of pain and enjoyment in the world and it's steadily increasing, in general, the enjoyment side while decreasing the painful side. We don't spend any money on colonizing any other solar bodies. Earth continues to improve, ( a good thing ) and we continue to enjoy our beautiful planet. Life is genuinely great for however long until an asteroid ( assuming nothing else makes us go extinct ) hits us and ends our happiness. This is a pretty good life for most humans that have ever existed and is worthy of being assumed as a likely outcome based on current evidence of progression. Now imagine this but -- continued

>>8210508
Now imagine this, but instead of not spending resources on colonizing other bodies, we spent a tiny fraction of what we produce, to create a self sustaining city on Mars that would, at first, be a fulfilling, challenging game of hard work and survival for the volunteers that wanted to go in the first place, and then would advance using their technology and resources, as we do right now on Earth, into a happier, unique colony that provides decent lives for those who inhabit it due to incredible automation, new culture, virtual reality, and the exciting knowledge that you're on the forefront of humanity. This colony would continue to advance very quickly, into being much more comfier and enjoyable than the first colonists, ultimately leading to another example A with Earth. With this more likely than not outcome based on evidence down here of advancement, you would have 2 planets, one with much much much more people on it, and one with a handful, but enough, people living good lives that only continues to improve. In general, everyone is happy, living good lives, better than the past's lives, and they continue to live and advance up until an eventual extinction event happens on either planet A or planet B. All the life on the planet is dead which is bad but the other planet can go back and colonize it again which would be less enjoyable at first, but would ultimately lead to a more happiness than pain put in ratio if you take into account the long term. After that hiccup, life continues to generally, and consistently experience happiness until the next extinction event. Situation 2 experiences more happiness. That's my fucking logic. You can argue whether tinfoil hat mcgee says that the Earth is going to end in 20 years because of some paranoid prediction based on narrow, deluded evidence, or argue that colonizing Mars should happen later when it would be easier but you can't say I haven't thought through the consequences when I have and realized that

>>8210508
in this situation, that's more likely than not, to happen, the benefits for the species far, far out weighs the small amount of money, effort, and pain it would take to make this a reality.

>
You pretend to care about the species, but you insult your fellow man and poison the communication space, damaging your own claimed goals.

Hahahaha what? Going with this binary shit again I see. I don't fucking pretend to care about the species, I actually do care, not as much as others, but obviously enough to help out people when I can so I can improve their lives a little ( someone needing a jump on their car, someone needing a little help moving something, donating money here and there to places you think would put it to good use [have to be careful with this one because some companies won't help anyone out at all] , being a pleasant person in general so maybe people I interact with can have a slightly brighter day, promote an idea that would fundamentally increase our chances of survival [as I discussed, this is a good thing long term] , etc )
I care about the species in general, that doesn't mean I don't dislike certain people for unlikable, shitty traits they may have. I insult you and ''poison'' the communication space because you deserve to be insulted. It won't change anything, I just wanted to let you know that you're a shitty person if you truly follow your guidelines of never giving or helping someone else at all if you have to put in even the tiniest amount of effort in. This does not, in any way, damage my claimed goal of wanting human beings to survive and experience happiness longer than if we didn't do this relatively cheap thing.

>>8210508
>You also lack both the competence and the personal commitment you would need to claim real world improvement

I have enough personal commitment to do plenty of research while also having the competence to be able to actually make logical conclusions like that humans are advancing and not staying in once place or back peddling while increasing, in general, the amount of pain they experience. We are moving forward and humans lives are constantly, in general without taking in small time hiccups like ''oh well look at isis there's pain, see the world is getting shittier'', getting better and happier and it's worth while to make a relatively,incredibly tiny investment in order to fundamentally, greatly increase the chances of that happier future being greatly extended.

>you still have provided no plan how you are going to finance your space fantasies

Elon Musk's internet satellite company along side just regular SpaceX, with them absolutely dominating the entire launch market in the years to come with increased reusability along with increased amounts of launches, literally an online donation box like go fund me or some shit which, if it was official, would probably get upwards of a billion dollars or more, and the few thousand people, on Earth that have both 500,000 dollars, and the drive to be the first colonists to take the first 100 person trips on the Mars colonial transporter.

> nor any inclination that you personally will do anything about it

I'm half way done becoming an aerospace technician that wants to obviously work for spacex, so I can keep gaining skills, maybe get my engineering degree later on, and be able to volunteer to be some of the first people that have it the worst ( which is still nothing compared to what some humans have experienced down here if you look at artic explorers or anyone in a shitty war. ) on Mars so we can create the infrastructure for future generations to advance so they can have happier lives.

>>8210508
>other than insult people who disagree with you on the internet.

I have done slightly more than JUST insult you. ( btw, you don't just disagree with me, I've had plenty of calm discussions with people that disagree with me and we both learn to look past that and focus on other agreements that bring us together. It's not because you don't think Mars colonization isn't important, its because you have the firm and unapologetic value that it's ok to not ever help anyone else out ever unless you get a physical return back for personal gain. If you we're just selfish, then be selfish, I'm selfish too a lot of the time, but don't try to justify it with your arms crossed on a slightly higher pedestal than people who are apologetic, for the reason that its just human nature, its also human nature to kill someone else if they piss you off enough [I know being selfish is nowhere near as bad as being a murderer] but that doesn't mean you can perfectly argue ''He made me mad and I wanted to kill him, I'm a rational, unapologetic murderer, I will not sacrifice my own urges to save someone else's life, your insults will not change that.'' It's called being a garbage human being, and an genuinely apologetic murderer, is slightly better than an unapologetic murderer because at least the family of the murdered might feel slightly, slightly better rather than if he didn't give a shit about what he is. [again, you're much more mild of a garbage human being than a murderer so don't think I think murder and being selfish are equal when they're obviously not.] ) I have also tried to promote it for anyone reading, I could donate all my money right now but one, I'm not that selfless, and 2, like >>8210122 said, It's not the most productive thing I could do. It's not binary, obviously I genuinely care about the goal enough to promote it and work towards being able to do my part to make it a reality by actually going there as soon as I can, but not enough to work 100% of my life.

>>8210508
>Yes, that was necessary. I usually don't start with insults, but you deserve pointing out what a miserable hypocrite and parasitic moralite you are.

Hmm I'm definitely not miserable and I already stated why I'm not a hypocrite. I don't see how I'm parasitic if I don't leech off of anyone while also helping the people around me a little bit here and there and I wouldn't say being a ''moralite'' is a bad thing if you mean someone that has certain morals and believes in them consistently for reasons that have survived as many debates, pieces of evidence, and thought experiments as he can possibly have, and he genuinely believes is good.

>People like you are the reason why the world is such a shithole to begin with.

WHAT HAHAHAHAHA, has the world not been advanced by both greed and selflessness??? Every single goddamn father and mother on the planet that has ever taken care of their child so they could stand on the shoulders of giants has not made us, as a species, progress??? Every person that has ever invented or discovered something but was selfless enough to make it cheaply accessible instead of raking in the money has made the world shittier?? Welfare has definitely been a bad example of giving stuff away jus cuz, and I'm sure you could come up with some examples of how blindly being selfless has actually worsened specific situations but I'm not for the short term happiness, but long term pain solution, to make me feel good, I'm for the maximum happiness outcome, there IS A DIFFERENCE between giving a boy a fish which might make him dependent and then starve which you could argue is a bad thing maybe, and putting in your own effort to teach a boy to fish so he can teach others and then you can feed the whole town instead of keeping the fish to yourself because fuck putting in work to help others in anyway.

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>>8210508
>In any case, we have nothing further to "discuss", I'm obviously not going to stop you if you actually colonize Mars.

You're right, there's nothing to discuss because you can't provide and evidence that less pain and more happiness in general isn't a rule rather than an exception to advancement of technology and that we will continue to experience the same amount of ''I'm not convinced human extinction is worse than human survival from a broader moral perspective'' level of unhappiness when in reality, you can observe the objectively lessening of pain benefits that progression of technology has brought to humans in general without cherry picking. And with this logical conclusion that the future is more so bright than dim, in general, you can make the conclusion that it is more likely than not, that spending the small amount of effort in creating the self sustaining infrastructure on Mars would be worth while because the relatively low amount of pain they would experience would be greatly outweighed by the future generations lack of pain and increased level of happiness due to advancement of technology, automation, medicine helping mental health, etc, and it would also allow us to continue to exist and feel a more so than pain, happiness, experience if one planet had an extinction event.

>Who knows, maybe you compete with the Chinese or the Russians who would make it even shittier than you

I doubt they would even go for it without reusability, too expensive and slow.

>Just know that there are people like me who will cut parasites like you out of society if you cross our lines of tolerance, and none of your pretentious self-serving sermons will matter.

hahaha, ok gotcha, you and your minority of rational egoists will cut the default, majority of people who either don't care either way, or have a basic, at least mild, drive to generally help out your fellow man. If that ever happens, good riddance.

Are you still bumping your shitty thread, you pathetic retard?

You are an obnoxious whiny cunt and you deserve to die in a fire. What part of that did you not understand? Fuck off.

>>8211859
It's not my thread but haha got me there dude

>>8210148
>>8200002
>>8209869
This.

/thread

>>8199979
People asked the same question about Australia. Can you really imagine the modern world without Australia?

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>>8211916
Yes.

>>8199979
>It's for a human civilization back-up

He only says that to get neckbeards online to parrot his religion and make even more money from potential ticket sales. He knows full well that if Earth is destroyed, Mars is going to die out within a few years because we're nowhere near the technology it would take to preserve human life long enough to wait out the terraforming process.

He just grew up wanting to go to Mars and now he has a company that can get him there and he needs your money to keep it alive. It would be like if you made a sexbot company and tried to come up with some bullshit about it being a better contraceptive because no one wants to hear "Well I love getting my dick wet and I wanted to fuck my favorite animus and celebrities"

>>8200116
>>>/pol/

>>8212031
Tyrone ? Is that you ?

>>8199979
> But seriously now, what's the point of Mars colonization?

To show that we can go to other worlds, obviously mars isn't going to be terraformed and a colony overnight. However, the ability to learn methods of colonization is crucial to any further space travel in the solar system.

>B-but muh venus
If we can't run a simple research colony on mars there is 0 chance of venus

>>8212489
>If we can't run a simple research colony on mars there is 0 chance of venus
Pretty much. Mars is the training level of long term colonies beyond Earth. If we can't make it work there, we're not going to make it work anywhere else. No, not even the moon. Yes, colonizing the moon is significantly harder despite it being much closer to us.

>>8212575
>Yes, colonizing the moon is significantly harder
Not really, a moon colony is essentially just an ISS thats more difficult to resupply

>>8199979
>Forming a self-sufficient colony
>Hurrrr, terraforming
You're an idiot. You don't need to transform the entire planet just to create one livable, sustainable colony.

>>8212589
Exactly, a moon base will never be self sustaining, and thus "harder", and the extremely low gravity means people will need to cycle out often. It'll only ever compare to an antarctic science expedition at best.

Mars on the other hand has a fighting chance at eventually becoming self sustaining, and due to distance will have to be have to be partially self sustainable to start with. It has no safety tether to fall back on and surface conditions are within workability for many things.

Except mars has objectively better
>gravity
>atmospheric conditions for cooling
>additional radiation shielding
>atmospheric conditions for areobreaking
>shielding from micro meteors


The moon being "closer" doesn't mean jack shit in space since if something goes wrong on the moon or mars we currently have 0 way to fix it in any short amount of time. However in terms of resources and which would have a hope to recover/sustain your resources on mars is 10x better.

>>8200048
>We need to go to venus instead
No we don't, at least not at first
>The upper atmosphere of venus is by far the closest to earth conditions that we will ever find
Great, and we still have no effective way to live in the upper atmosphere, much less resupply it
>Mining the surface of venus would first be done by dredging
Mining shouldn't even be in any equation until we ever can understand how to effectively run a colony on another planet. We have enough hardships with basic deep sea mining how the shit are we going to making mining on Venus a reality

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>>8199979
>Elon says: "It's for a human civilization back-up". We all know that Mars colony won't be self-sufficient in over 100 years and terraforming Mars will take thousands of years.
...and?

Gotta start somewhere... Given the number of things that can wipe out the biosphere, and the fact that we discover two or three more every decade, and every once in awhile, INVENT a new one, it seems rather prudent to get on that shit as fast as you can.

You know, unless you're like most folks who don't give a shit about anything that's going to happen after they're long dead, despite they themselves only exist because previous generations were more forward thinking, and doing crazy ass multi-generational shit like building cathedrals and funding the exploration the new world... Or you're one of those anti-natalists who think we're better off dead.

But yeah, if you give even the slightest flying fuck about humanity or the story of life on earth in general, then inter-planetary colonization is going to be a priority, regardless of how long it's actually going to take. It's a long term plan, but like all long term plans, it doesn't happen by itself. It takes many generations of forward thinking people determined enough to quell the naysayers and make it happen.

>>8199979
While I personally hate Musk for the fame-seeking gloryhound he is (NASA should be the one to do a colony if anything; since when did the government care about profit?), I hate black science man even more.

Historically inefficient drivers my ass.

>>8212769
>NASA should be the one to do a colony if anything; since when did the government care about profit?

NASA is partially to blame for why Musk is acting so cocky. NASA has been dragging their feet since the moon missions to get more people on planned missions to mars or other places because there isn't any reason for them not to. Don't get me wrong NASA is doing some cool things in their other departments but manned space travel is not one of them

>>8212778
I know, and it absolutely infuriates me.
Can congress really not take 1% of their collective pork and throw it at NASA to get us back up there?
Again, this is the government we're talking about; ROI and profit is not something they're very concerned about.
There's also the emotional argument that it should be a public and national endeavor to colonize other worlds (if not a global one), but that's besides the point.

>>8212636
>Mining shouldn't even be in any equation until we ever can understand how to effectively run a colony on another planet.
Mining is a mandatory part of the colony
Nothing is happening if every ton has to be shipped from earth

>>8199979
>Colonization is the act of setting up a colony away from one's place of origin.

>Colony
>1, a country or area under the full or partial political control of another country, typically a distant one, and occupied by settlers from that country.
>a group of people living in colony, consisting of the original settlers and their descendants and successors.
>2, is a group of people of one nationality or ethnic group living in a foreign city or country.
>a place where a group of people with similar interests live together.

Isn't having children in a colony generally how these things work? How the hell is that supposed to happen on Mars and the child not be horrifically deformed and diseased?

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>>8213290
There's enough gravity to stop your capillaries from bursting, which is one of the things that makes it a better bet than the moon - but I don't think we have much of a clue what it'll do to fetal development.

It maybe that children born on Mars may need a heep genetic engineering and physical therapy, and/or wont ever be able to live on Earth.

I would suppose, by the time people are fucking on Mars, we'll probably have a better idea, as well as more ways to deal with it.

>>8213367
Mars is something like 38% the gravity of Earth. An infant literally can not develop proper bone density in 38% gravity. Even an adult human will lose a significant amount of bone density living out their life with that little gravity.

Just make some O'Neill Cylinders in orbit around the sun or whatever.

>>8213367
>I don't think we have much of a clue what it'll do to fetal development.
I'll bet we'll find out by accident. The first martian pregnancy won't be planned.

>>8199979
>But seriously now, what's the point of Mars colonization?

It's the logical next step. We conquered land, and then the seas, we conquered the skies, and then space.

Next step is to go where no one has gone before.

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>>8213490
>to go where no one has gone before.

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>>8200444
Look! A tripfag that's not shitposting!

>>8213510
I did that on purpose though.

But seriously, technology doesn't suddenly stop developing, and the more it develops the easier it's going to do stuff like going to Mars.

>>8199979
The point is so that people live there, make communities there, work economies there.

>>8213520
>But seriously, technology doesn't suddenly stop developing, and the more it develops the easier it's going to do stuff like going to Mars.
I feel like people forget this way too frequently. We won't be colonizing with today's level of technology in perpetuity; it'll improve along the way, and the harder we push on the colonization front the faster it'll advance (borne of necessity). It's all downhill after someone actually does something,

>>8213538
The only thing that can stop technology at this point is some global political catastrophe, and that's very unlikely.

>colonize mars

Can't happen.

>colonize venus

Can't happen.

I wish you brainlets would get that through your heads. You can visit those shitholes, but they are never going to be viable for humans living generation to generation on.

I welcome the technological advancements we will get from trying, but this is a total pipedream.

>>8213646
>Can't happen.
Not with that attitude.

>>8213471
I suspect that'll turn out to be the least of the worries... Though, if not, it's not that bad, it just means they can't live on Earth. Meanwhile, all those calories they save on muscle mass might get re-directed to the brain, making all the Mars babies super geniuses or some such. ...But I suspect, much more likely, they'd just die prenatal, without some external aid. Either way, it's one of many issues someone's going to have to work out eventually.

>>8213480
Have some faith in the professionality of our young astronauts, FFS! I mean, sure, if we send George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, but man...

>>8213667
>>8213695
Do you even know how bone develop and stay strong? I'll give you a hint, it isn't all about diet.

People living on Mars would be completely fucked over time. Children on Mars would be like Jello blobs or rubber chickens.

>>8213705
You don't seem to understand that when we have developed the technology to live on Mars, this is not something they would even think about, similar to how you don't even think about living inside a modern 21st century house, with heating technology, or wearing clothes.

Believe it or not, scientists working on the ISS don't have to think about keeping the vacuum out, because that knowledge has already been found.

And the same will happen to the first Martians. They will not need to think about how to keep the vacuum out, or how to keep their bone structure developed, because by the time humans are able to live there, those questions will have been answered already.

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>>8213705
You are ignoring the fact that you can get away with that when you're living at less than half gravity. But again, I suspect that's the least of the issues, more than likely there's some other fatal issues with natal development, but I'm no obstetrician. (Still, less of a problem than no gravity - which is eventually fatal for even grown humans.)

You're looking so far into the future though, we'll likely be able to predictably gene-taylor babies to compensate by then, cybernetic electro-muscle stimulants, and have reliable artificial wombs - and who know what all else. (Well, barring early visits by very unprofessional astronauts.)

>>8213571
More like inevitable... Nevermind all the global natural disasters, weaponized viruses, and cosmological disasters that can send us back to the dark ages or exterminate us all.

The sooner you hop on it, the more likely you'll be ready when the inevitable happens. You know, if you're not a dick, and thus give a fuck about things that happen after you're dead.

>>8213717
>>8213724
Lack of gravity is something that won't be "fixed" on Mars.

Go back to >>>/x/ kids.

>>8213899
No one said anything about fixing it, Mr. Strawman.

>>8213910
All the tech listed is how they are trying to fix the problem which won't work. I mean look at this post >>8213724 it is filled to the brim with utter >>>/x/ tripe to argue away the gravity problem.

>>8201324
>low-competition industries
>automotive sector
>aerospace sector

wew lad, where do we begin with you

>>8213951
There's a huge waiting list for rocket launches regardless of who is putting stuff up in space.

Hybrid and all electric vehicles are completely gobbled up by the public. Tesla delivered its 100k car last year sometime and sale are going up and up.

>>8201981
>But seriously, there could be a global agreement that setting up a colony on any body outside earth is a declaration of war.

You should write a book on how to regulate your species into boredom and stagnation. As for me, if the chinese establish a colony on Mars I will fucking cheer for them. If Nigeria does so, not so much, but somehow that seems less likely.

>>8213182
>Mining is a mandatory part of the colony
Yes for a sustained colony yes, until then we need to figure out how to get there and back effectively and what the environment is like

>>8214019
>china colonizes mars
>earth people get wiped out by something
>chinese martians recolonize earth
>all human beings are chinese

Wonderful.

>all this talk about how babies can't develop on mars

Well no shit sherlocks, that's why Musk isn't sending a rocket filled with babies to Mars.

We need a "colony" on mars and EVENTUALLY figure out a long term solution for mars where humans can reproduce or have some method in place to solve for pregnancy. Right now what is most important is getting a Mars base up and running while having people conduct field studies and observations about mars for future generations.

>>8213926
Wouldn't a space station on mars with artificial gravity done via centrifugal force work? That's quite a long term design and implementation plan but completely doable near mars.

>>8207547

Bottle up Venus' atmosphere and dump it on Mars.

>>8214512
You could have a spinning space station in orbit around Mars use it to go to Mars for extended missions. You just wouldn't be spending your life on Mars and you wouldn't be able to have healthy children on Mars. The space station would be pretty much a maternity ward, child rearing center, and main living quarters.

Technically, you could make a massive spinning base on the Mars surface. Powering it maybe a bit of a problem.

>>8214524
Make a Space Hose and siphon Venus' atmosphere to Mars.

>>8209834
>Who the fuck is talking about public spending?

Have we not been? Why the fuck would anyone give a shit what someone pays outta their own pocket. Waste all the money you'd like, especially if it's a cool way to waste it.

>>8209890
I love you. Like, a lot.

>>8209936
Fuck I'm in love

>>8214606
External space station would probably be the best.
>can have docking station for new arrivals
>1/3 gravity a smaller craft could dock and refuel in space and make trips back and forth from surface possibly to larger ship
>possibly easier to send supplies without having to counter in shielding for delivery/reentry making overall loads somewhat lighter payloads


I imagine it would be also easier to keep spinning, the problem would be constructing it.

>>8214639
We have all the science and tech to make it, we just need to actually engineer it. That isn't much of a problem really.

The biggest question is, "Why do it in the first place?"

>>8214486
Well no, that part is relatively simple, it's just a matter of having a profit oriented man like Musk to select the sane way of doing it
Not some insanity like the space shuttle, or the defense contractors that just keep producing the same rocket for 50 years

>>8214606
>You could have a spinning space station in orbit around Mars
You could have a fucking spinning station ON MARS.
If you absolutely needed to spend time at 1 g for whatever purpose.

>>8214646
>The biggest question is, "Why do it in the first place?"
The same reason we do anything in space: because we can, because there's a great deal to learn by doing it, and because you get advanced technology trickle down as a side effect. Simple as that.

>>8214646
>The biggest question is, "Why do it in the first place?"

Because we can and because taking risks almost always comes out with huge rewards in terms of traversing the unknown.

>>8214646
>Why do it in the first place?"

Because by doing things like space travel we rapidly come up with new and effecting technology to solve multitudes of problems still plaguing us as a race

>>8213926
Except it's not a problem. At best, it's a temporary problem for developing children, who aren't going to suffer from a lack of muscle mass on a planet where they don't need that muscle. ~40% gravity is a hell of a lot better than the 0% astronauts are already dealing with for months at a go. Earth gravity varies across the surface by a few percentage points, and doesn't cause warped babies in Sri Lanka or what not.

...and none of the technologies described in >>8213724 are beyond the realm of reason a thousand years hence - hell, some of them are available today. He's not talking about physics defying stuff like FTL. If you can build a colony there, one way or the other, you can compensate for that shit. Worst case scenario, you need to have your children in an orbital station with artificial G's.

>>8209890
You only need a small percentage of the population to be forward thinking enough to save the species, coupled with a mechanism through which they can be funded (either through an excess of resources provided by private industry and collected by visionary enthusiasts, or through the typical mechanism we already have and use for such things, ie. taxes.)

The fact that the majority of the population is terminally hedonistic and selfish isn't fatal to the species as a whole, and in some ways helps, as their excess greed and narrow vision provides some of those excess resources. That's how we've always made progress, how we built civilization, and how we colonized the last new world. No need for collectivism any more "tyrannical" than the one that already exists. ....And while a slight cultural shift towards the bigger picture wouldn't hurt, both for this and a lot of other things, we can save mankind from itself without said. It'll just take slightly longer, putting the species at slightly greater risk of receiving a crippling blow before it can make the journey.

>>8214947
>Worst case scenario, you need to have your children in an orbital station with artificial G's.

Even without talking about this the fact we have reusable rocket methods as a proven tech having a bus shuttle to lift astronauts up to spend a few weeks/months in some 1-1.2G's space station in order to build back up muscle. Not to mention the fuel needed would be fairly nominal given mars's atmosphere; you could probably dock and refuel for a landing and launch while docked in the station.

Not sure why everyone thinks every problem should have a solution to before we even get to our first planet landing. There are a plethora of things we don't know yet about mars and it's affects on humans, hence why we need to send small teams first. The rovers on mars are very useful but humans can work much quicker than the rovers we have

>>8199979
>what's the point
Lrn2point fgt pls

>>8213951
The automotive sector is indeed competetitive. There Tesla has a market share of 0.056% (50k sales in 2015 in a world market of 88.7m sales).
The space launch service sector is more than 50% government funded. SpaceX is more than 80% government funded.

>>8199979
I didn't think there was a point to life. It's just a giant sandbox game like the Sims and if you wanna go to Mars, then go to Mars. If you don't, then don't. Who cares.

>>8215115
Well said. If all humans had been as risk-averse and squeamish as many of us are today we'd all be in the back of a cave somewhere right now. Hell, we might not even exist. Our ancestors faced near-extinction events multiple times and if we weren't the risk takers we were we would've stayed at our point of origination, never spreading out, which could've made the difference between "extinction" and "near extinction".

Beyond that, everything we have today can be attributed to brash risk takers in one way or another. We stop taking big risks and we stop growing. Simple as that.

Actually, there are a lot of parallels here. Permanently inhabiting other bodies is a sort of "coming out of the cave" sort of event in terms of significance. We may be witnessing the next turning point in the history of our species.

>>8214959
>You only need a small percentage of the population to be forward thinking enough to save the species
not in a democracy

>>8215820
>>You only need a small percentage of the population to be forward thinking enough to save the species
>not in a democracy
More specifically, not in a democracy where the electorate fails to make genuine liberty one of its core values, instead giving lip service to liberty while only protecting the options that the majority is interested in, and letting creeping authoritarianism slowly strangle the options that the majority doesn't really care about doing itself.

Like all future Mars colonies, this thread is slipping off into extinction.

>>8215937
>>8215820
Well, if we had a direct democracy, here in the states, and funded things based on their popularity, I suspect NASA would have a significantly larger portion of the budget, as while it isn't the most popular program, it has a much greater approval rating than its current portion of funding would indicate.

Democracy isn't necessarily extinction bound.