I see that Sabina Hossenfelder has a video up about her scepticism of Musk's Mars colonisation plans.
If anything, I reckon it was way, way too gentle on Musk, even though she doesn't think his plans will happen any time soon.
She spends too much time on the long term difficulties of permanently colonising Mars (the issue of it not being to retain an atmosphere due to solar wind is covered, for example) without talking enough about the short term wild implausibility of Musk's fantasy - the huge number of rocket builds and launches needed, the totally tricky orbital re-fueling that has not been tried and is (I reckon) always going to be a high risk manoeuvre - probably with the potential to create a huge mess of orbital debris - and the routinely overlooked matter of how difficult it will be to build a biologically self supporting colony on Mars.
I think this latter issue is just common sense - look at the problems the Biosphere experiment went through, and that was on a planet where all the organic material needed could just be driven in on the back of a truck.*
At least I saw some support in the video comments for my view that if you want a "lifeboat" for planet Earth, why not build it on the Moon? (The only plausible reason against it that I can think of is that no one knows what effect low gravity pregnancy will have on the babies - but then, the same might turn out to be an issue in Mars gravity too. Wouldn't it be ironic if it turns out it's really, really difficult to carry a baby to term in low gravity, for some reason we have no idea about at the moment. That would ruin Musk's "longtermism" pretty rapidly.)
I remain very confident that Musk will face a downfall sooner or later, and people will wonder why more experts didn't speak out about his wild overconfidence earlier...
* Have a look at the website for a long on-going research project of the European Space Agency to develop a closed system for life support, including food, called Melissa. As far as I tell, they might be up to trying it out on a small rat colony. And I liked this part from their FAQ page:
Why after 30 years the project is not finish yet ?
The proper answer to this one is probably:
Why man has no try to duplicate the Earth functions earlier ? In other words, although humans are fully depending of the Earth ecosystem functions (e.g. oxygen, water, food, ...), we have today no back-up. Anyone who looks a bit more carefully to the challenges of artificial ecology will rapidly perceive the enormous difficulties. We have seen over the years many similar projects : CELSS, CEEF, CERES, BIOSPHERE 2… almost all of them had to stop due to incorrect evaluation of the challenges, and necessary amplitude and duration of the efforts.
4 comments:
It can’t be too hard. Since our ancestors already set up on Mars.
I don’t know how many disaster cycles ago it was that our ancestors colonised Mars. But it looks like we may be going backwards each cycle. This time we are hampered by ruthless control and degradation of science. If I had to guess I would put Giza at 30 000 years and our Mars colony a full disaster cycle older than that.
Musk is serious about it and you see him attempting to run profit making businesses in every area that pertains to colonisation. For example he tried to pilot a train line that used a vacuum to resist air drag. It was wildly impractical. So much so it has to be seen within his wider goals. Naturally his Boring company is related to space travel …… tunneling being more important to space travel than rocketry.
If he puts the whole portfolio together then the missing piece, which is gravity and inertia dusruption, may emerge to make the whole thing plausible.
There is plentiful electricity to tap in the inner solar system, and this is probably accessible from Mars. In fact it almost has to be that way or our ancestors would have not been able to turn Nars into a cost effective mining town.
Mars was a mining town that produced its own food locally. All this is very clear from the orbiter photos. Forget any rover mission information, which is all fake. The first industry you have to set up on Mars is glassmaking. Not for export to earth. But to create farms in pressurised glass tunnels.
The D&M pyramid looked like a pyramid from directly above but was too big to be one. Turned out to be a modified mountain. People say it started out as a shield volcano. I don’t know why they say this but since I have no reason to disbelieve them that’s okay with me.
But it’s been modified and it looks like it would make a good acceleration platform. It is surrounded by ground that looks like it would be good for deceleration. A curved and banked track. So what we are looking at is an ancient Mars airport.
All this being the case our critics are surely correct. We are 1000 years from an economy that should make a new Mars colony a natural outgrowth of what we do here on earth. We haven’t gotten a grip on fraudulent science and bad economics. Australia failed to create an inland sea. Egypt may do so, this remains to be seen.
It’s not the lack of new technology that is the problem, it’s the failure to apply old technology. 5 story stone and wood houses, rail, canals, swales, wharves, terraced hills and so forth. We are not maxed out on terraforming earth yet.
To have the economy that can make Mars investment plausible with a positive return we need to terraform earth first. The rich man can live where he wants. But we really need less favoured people living in medium density, yet very spacious housing, close to factories, canal wharves or train rail. We don’t even have a mass hydrogen dirigibles industry and we haven’t fully reinstated and expanded the street car/tram networks.
We haven’t gotten rid of the suburbs yet. We have huge tasks ahead of us. I think the double wave is coming soon and we have failed this disaster cycle. So maybe better luck next cycle.
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