I said this elsewhere in this thread, but I study surface processes on Mars, so to me the planet is still alive and active. Things change, mysteries unfold, new environmental conditions come and go.

I'm sure you wouldn't object to national parks or wilderness areas, it's just that in the case of Mars there is no (known) life. How much each of us values the presence of life will differ, but in my view it's worth preserving Mars.

I'm a lot less educated on the subject and my views are diametrically opposed to yours. Commentary like yours is mostly what has kept me hanging around HN all these years.

I'm surprised that a researcher wouldn't be enthusiastic about being able to do science directly on the planet's surface. Sure, an extended human presence there will require a lot of supporting infrastructure, and sure, that will all have a direct effect on whatever might already be there -- or might not be, and in either case, changing that environment might not be desirable.

But even at the current faster speed of remote exploration of the planet, you can expect, what, like 3 more robotic missions to Mars before you retire? And each one will be an iterative improvement over the last.

There must be so many questions you have about the planet that just won't be answered in your lifetime unless we go there and have a look around. What's your position on that?

Hey! Sorry I took so long to reply. The commenter below you is somewhat correct that I would identify as a 'Red' in Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy.

I am not opposed to scientific exploration at all, (I work with several people who run Ops on MSL and Percy), but putting people on the surface requires much more infrastructure and expense. A sample return mission is already extremely complex and costly, and would be orders of magnitude more so if the mission also had to support human life.

Further, terraforming Mars so that people could go explore it seems completely backwards, since you would be altering the conditions you would be studying.

To your question:

>There must be so many questions you have about the planet that just won't be answered in your lifetime unless we go there and have a look around.

I'm not even sure what those would be. Almost any question we could want answered could be solved with a probe or a rover. Obviously there are questions we can't answer right now, but those are largely because we send rovers that are specialized in some areas, and totally ignorant of others. To answer those questions, it would be simpler, cheaper, and better for Mars to send more robots than to send people in my view.

He is a Mars researcher, as in he finds it very appreciable it’s current state. Basically a Martian, you are suggesting we develop and add malls to his beloved nature homeland.

Please stop contributing to the recent HN trend of putting words in other people's mouths just so you can ridicule them. I'm not "suggesting" any such thing, and if you aren't professionally in ~OmicronCeti's field of study, then I'm not interested in your opinion anyway.

I think national parks have value, but not infinite value. We should weigh up using somewhere as a preserve against other potential uses.

There are millions of Mars-like planets out there in the galaxy. I'd be more than happy to preserve, say, 10% of them. But there's only one that's in the right place to be the next step for humanity.

As I said elsewhere, I do not believe we will ever travel beyond our own solar system so we should preserve what we already have close by, instead of counting on pristine worlds elsewhere.

Pick a different planet to preserve.

Thoughtful response, thanks for your participation.

Venus is very easy to preserve.

Then he would have to do another PhD!

To me, if mars had life in its past and no longer does then we could consider it one huge grave. Lost in the terraforming debate I read is that any atmosphere we managed to kick up would be temporary. It might take a long time to leak off, but they’re not discussing any means to reverse the trend. As I understand, Mars doesn’t have an active core and thus magnetic field holding its atmosphere in place. There’s no way we’re going to fire up a core…

Turning choice, large asteroids into liveable habitats seems an infinitely more productive task.

Firing up a core is hard, but laying superconducting cables around the equator is not particularly hard (probably easier than terraforming). It could replicate a magnetosphere just fine, while also functioning as a planet wide electricity grid and a decade-long battery.

“Temporary” == millions of years.

Also honestly I think it's extremely fortunate that we have Proxima Centauri only 4 light years away as our nearest star. It's a red dwarf, and will continue to shine for at least another 4 trillion years, a thousand times longer than the sun will shine. Of course, granted it's habitability zone and other things are different, but that does not preclude us redefining habitability by inventing another life form to be our successor.

Proxima Centauri will outlive the vast majority of stars in the galaxy.

It’s worth pointing out that an a long time scale of tens to hundreds of thousands (not to mention millions) of years, the stars move around quite a bit.

The Alpha Centauri system will be just 3 light years away in 30,000 years. In 1.4 million years, Gliese 710 will pass within 0.2 light years of Earth. That’s close enough to be reached in a human healthspan with some beefed up (but still fairly sane) nuclear-electric propulsion that we could probably start building today if we had a reason to go out to 0.2 light years.

But other interstellar propulsion systems with higher performance are feasible, such as pellet stream beamed propulsion combined with a magsail. Really good fusion might work, too. Laser propulsion is feasible especially for probes but isn’t terribly efficient (pellet stream uses like a hundredth the energy for the same payload). Antimatter would be nice, but I’m not convinced feasible storage could be developed to beat the usable energy storage density of fission or fusion... or rather we’re probably much more than 100 years away from sufficiently efficient antimatter storage.

One reason not is: we're directly responsible for any suffering that then happens on that rock. A biosphere full of life means horror and suffering every day for so many living things it potentially eclipses all humanity's past crimes combined.

By that logic we should take responsibility for the suffering on earth.

Seems like the winning move is to go double or nothing and try and make life more sufferable (containing less suffering) on both planets.

Mars is a single easily avertable project, still actually free for discussion unlike profit-motivated matters like the ongoing deforestation here. Until there's a clear profit to be made from Mars, it's politically possible to make a "ok, let's not" pact.

Why not make it more sufferable here on Earth first, build all sorts of guardrails on existence, e.g. modify biology such that we all have a certain maximum to which the pain knob can be turned. And only then terraform other planets? Why be premature?

This question (your last sentence) has been asked and answered. Basically because the window of opportunity is open now and may only be open for a short time. If we wait, we may lose the chance.

You should read medical studies about people born with or who acquired a lessened sense of pain. It’s quite horrific. I’m not saying all pain is necessary but any pain that indicates damage is. It would be wiser to engineer biology to be more robust and to recover from damage more completely so that chronic pain is not a thing.

Give me some credit, I just said put some maximum on pain, not remove it. Yes it'd be nice to recover from damage better but that doesn't help when you are being predated on, like when there is a torturer to make sure you don't recover or when a parasite like the Ichneumon wasp has its whole lifecycle dependent on eating a paralyzed creature alive from the inside out. If you want a discussion please be charitable, it's no fun if you seem to assume I didn't think at all.

That’s the most suicidal perspective I’ve ever heard.

If we sit on our hands and do nothing then life on earth is doomed to extinction and we will be directly responsible. Our duty as rational beings is to preserve and spread life. If you really want to be anti suffering then figure out a way to improve things so nothing needs to suffer. We’re already on a trajectory for doing that for humans so there’s no reason to think we couldn’t do it for all life.

Even if the odds are slim it’s cowardly to not even try.

You know, I agree fully on trying and not being a coward. I wonder why it sounds otherwise to you. I just think there's no need to spread life beyond those of us who are here right now. It's worth keeping currently living individuals alive and happy as long as they want to live, because it's a great ill when something with a desire to keep living has their life forcibly taken away, but I don't see the intrinsic good in breeding.

> “A biosphere full of life means horror and suffering every day for so many living things it potentially eclipses all humanity's past crimes combined.”

This is the most astounding perspective on the value of life that I can imagine. Like the argument of a genocidal supervillain.

"I have the moral obligation to kill all the living humans today so I spare the suffering of until generations hereafter"?

That's only if you equate the value of life-that-lives-now and life-that-hasn't-been-born-yet. The majority of us value them differently: it's a lot worse to murder than to decline to give birth. Consequently, you can hold the opinion "Don't turn Mars into another biosphere" and nevertheless be against omnicide on Earth.

That’s only if you neglect the fact that reproduction is a continuance of life. Literally a part of each living being renews itself to continue living by reproducing either asexually or sexually. Not reproducing is equivalent to murdering your germ line and extinguishing all of the potential invested in you by your ancestors reaching back millions of years or further if you look beyond your own species.

Death is death whether caused by direct action or neglect.

This isn't meant as a rejoinder, but I think you should ask random people what they feel about the difference between murder and declining to be a parent. I think you've been sitting thinking this to yourself without really debating anyone.

As for me, I'm bowing out, thanks for the perspectives so far. Downvotes drain my energy.

The more appropriate analogy would be murder vs forcible sterilization or otherwise preventing/outlawing someone else from having children. No one is asking Omicron to move to Mars. Just asking him (and others) not to prevent others from doing so using threat of law.