this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Because it's better to have a backup than to put all your eggs in one basket.
Leave Mars alone. It is deeply immoral to send people there now. People have no business going there until we have thoroughly explored it and ruled out the possibility of indigenous microbial life. By studying such life, we may prove a second Genesis or prove the theory of panspermia. Either would have profound implications for our knowledge of the abundance of life in the universe. If we contaminate Mars, which sending humans would inevitably do, we may have to go all the way to another star system before we get another chance at answering these questions.
Let the billionaire space cadets stick to the asteroids and the Moon. Leave Mars the Hell alone. If after a few centuries of exploration we've thoroughly ruled out the presence of indigenous life, only then can we consider putting actual human beings on the surface.
It's much easier and more effective to do science with people and labs in-situ than with slow, complex robots. The first people to land on mars will be scientists. We won't be in a position to mess up the martian environment for generations. Stop spreading fear and propaganda. If finding life is what you're after, Europa, Enceladus, Titan and Ganymede are much safer bets than Mars. Those worlds are completely inhospitable to humans, so there's little to no chance that we mess them up. I'd much rather we start colonizing the moon, due to the relative ease of access, but due to its low gravity (and razor-sharp regolth particles) it isn't a great place for humans.
I'd argue it's actually immoral not to colonize mars. There will be no future humanity if we blow ourselves up here without a sustainable city elsewhere in the solar system.
Damn people have no room for nuance here. The Elon hate is eclipsing rational discussion here and your getting mad down votes. Sucks.
Mostly, I agree with you.
But, I do have a really really big fear that once Elon gets space x in a position to be NASAs only outsourced transportation contractor, they will have a monopoly on hardware and NASA will have a budget that got reduced to pennies of what it is now.....
He's gonna extort them to let him do whatever he wants or he'll take his toys and go home. The first people on Mars will be scientists, but musks bullshit will be right behind them and he won't have to listen to a fucking thing they tell him.
I hope that doesn't happen but realistically there's nothing we will be able to do to stop it if he wants to.
IMHO it's his end goal. His reason for being trumps piggy bank right now. He's positioning himself to be untouchable as a space transportation company in 15 to 25 years. Spacex will be the most valuable company ever if it happens. Asteroid mining is going to be a multi trillion dollar industry and he wants to be the company that develops the infrastructure and can get out there and actually become capable of actually doing it. But this last bit is just a hunch
I think you're right. Bit if we want a spacefaring civilization, this is the path to get there. I really wish someone else was leading the charge, but this is the world we live in.
Sometimes it feels really lonely here on Lemmy, when it comes to space exploration. People are really negative about it, as if doing that takes away resources from making the world a better place. But it doesn't! It's a technological innovation program; the insights gained here can help improve life on Earth. And if we can move industry to space, Earth will be thankful.
Musk is not the path to space. I can't believe anyone would have such a limited imagination. I would hope we could do better than some childish capitalist.
Musk may not be. But SpaceX is closest to quick, cheap and reusable access to space.