Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-thermal propulsion

Re:Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-the... by 0_____0 on Thursday February 17, 2022 @01:09PM (#30376488)

The core nuking thing I pulled out of my ass but I guess it sounds serious given a sufficiently fantastical context.

Doing a little more reading I came across the superconducting latitudinal "wrap the planet in a solenoid" thing, as well as magnets at L1 etc. I guess that's possible, but that's more of a 2000-years-out sort of set of ideas.

There's a philosophical debate to be had about how far out humans should be thinking when expending resources. If you build for tomorrow, you solve yesterday's problems. If you build for the next millenium, you solve nobody's problems.

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Re:Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-the... by ben_w on Thursday February 17, 2022 @02:09PM (#30377230)

> 2000-years-out sort of set of ideas.

Nah, if we really cared we could do either in like a decade or two depending on the Starship timeline.

> If you build for tomorrow, you solve yesterday's problems. If you build for the next millenium, you solve nobody's problems.

Essentially agree; this is why I don’t buy into longtermism: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2020/01/08/morality-th...

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Re:Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-the... by 0_____0 on Thursday February 17, 2022 @02:23PM (#30377408)

If our species declared Total War Against The Lack of a Martian Magnetosphere, I could see that happening. However, that implies that our species are in a state of development and coordination that would largely obviate the existential need to create a "Planet B" as people imagine it.

Thanks for the link to the blog post, I enjoyed it.

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