> This article is a straw man.

This comment is a straw man. The author gave a link to what the "planning" entailed: https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-p...

"‘Even at a million, you’re really assuming an incredible amount of productivity per person, because you would need to recreate the entire industrial base on Mars,’ he [Musk] said."

>> That's a "motte & bailey" [0] type of argument.

>> This is a straw man.

>> This comment is a straw man.

There isn't, but there should be, an HN guideline against throwing formal fallacies at each other instead of just saying what one disagrees with.

Shh - don’t disturb the logical argument classifiers while they’re training.

Non-sequitur.

Beep boop.

academia doesn’t set cultural expectations. If the culturally influential people in the space sector are saying humanity is doomed on earth and our future is on Mars and other planets, that’s the message most people will take onboard.

The article is written for people, not academia. Ask laypeople about Mars and you’ll get a representative insight into the Mars fantasy.

It’s not. The world is run by people who seriously think that we’ll have the means soon to terraform Mars (we won’t) or at least put a million people there, or who at least believe that if they promise that, the pours will forgive them for what they are doing to this planet.

But why would a terraformed mars somehow be better than even a highly polluted earth? The only potentially legitimate reason for a move to Mars would be to get away from other people on earth.

We're well into the realm of arguing ridiculous scenarios, but in that vein: the Earth will 100% become thermally uninhabitable before Mars as the Sun turns towards being a red giant. There will be a period of time when a terraformed Mars would be more temperate than the Earth.

A desire to explore and settle a new frontier isn't legitime?

Not so much. Populations look for new better frontiers, not merely new frontiers...

Desire is reasonable. Yet permanently settling Mars or beyond is unreasonable based on some fundamental physics.

Which laws of physics prevent a permanent base on Mars?

Gravity primarily and the lack of carbon on the surface. Also the lack of a magnetic field to maintain atmosphere and shield from radiation.

Gravity can be solved the same way as on a space station (spinning), you just don't put the floors at the same angle because you're adding the constant vector from the mass to the frame of reference vector from being in a centrifuge.

Artificial magnetic fields are easy. Sometimes we do them when we don't want them.

Carbon is 1/3rd of the atmosphere (such as it is) by mass. Conveniently in solid form near the poles during Martian winter.

I'm not sure it has nitrogen in any significant quantities, though…

Spinning enough to produce usable gravity is non-trivial and building something like that in space requires overcoming Earth's own gravity well.

Non-trivial yes; although house-sized spinning fairground rides are a thing so it's clearly infinitely easier than the gravity of Mars being a law of physics.

And the only sane way to do this is ISRU, so we don't need to overcome Earth's gravity well for the structural mass.

Mars has carbon in its atmosphere. I don't think we have the necessary data to say that Mars' lower gravity prevents long-term settlement. Mars has enough mass to keep an atmosphere for millions of years, but you probably want to mostly live underground for the foreseeable future.

, which is a great reason.

> The world is run by people who seriously think that we’ll have the means soon to terraform Mars (we won’t)

This is the straw-man I was complaining about.

Here's a direct quote from Musk, saying the exact opposite ( https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1329205209915154433 )

"Terraforming will be too slow to be relevant in our lifetime. However, we can establish a human base there in our lifetime."

> or at least put a million people there

That's an incredibly different question (see the sibling comment about Motte and Bailey fallacies).

A million people on Mars seems plausible, if we take "soon" to mean a century or two (Musk seems to have an incredibly optimisitic goal of 2050, but that still seems the right order of magnitude)

I think autonomy will take longer. We have pretty incredible manufacturing technology but it all requires long supply chains. Think about how difficult it is to make for example a lubed ball bearing and how many different specialties are needed to make it and maintain the infrastructure needed to make it. Replicating that on a different planet will take time.

I don't disagree about it taking longer, but wrangling our supply chain complexity problem is something that many are motivated to do here on Earth, so it's convenient that much of the work will get done independently of the colonization effort.

I hope we'll converge on manufacturing infrastructure that depends on a somewhat constrained set of inputs. Not because we're designing for Mars, but because that's just good fault-tolerant design.

Like maybe the plans call for steel but al that we have on hand is brass, and it's ok if this one is weaker, so we'll print it in brass: improvising to avoid logistic complexity.

Turns out, that's what you'd need for mars too. You can't be ordering part numbers manufactured on earth all the time. Wherever possible you're probably better off just importing tungsten (or whatever) and machining it local.

I think this sort of periodic-table-of-manufacturing approach would also be necessary to make recycling work. Whatever we call recycling today, it's nothing compared to what we'll need on Mars.

The only reason - for now - for people to go to / from Mars and the Moon is for scientific reasons or for money.

I think the only way that trips to the moon or mars that will earn money is space tourism. I don't believe Mars will have any valuable resources, for example. Or even discovering them will require an improbable amount of investments (trillions).

The last reason I can think of is political; the first major force to have a permanent presence on these bodies will have a big say in the future of said body.

There could be one more reason: living on the frontier.

It's not about discovering new materials, or technologies, or physical phenomena.

It's about exploring new social contracts. Here on Earth we are stuck with whatever social arrangements we've developed over the millennia, we can tweak here and there, but we can't start with a blank slate.

For me this would be the grand prize: figuring out better ways for people to live together.

Since the current iteration of the space race is run by billionaires, the chances are pretty good that some kind of turbo-capitalism will be the social arrangement on the colonies.

The nice thing about frontiers is that there's enough space (and lack of oversight) to try new systems of government without upsetting "the establishment", which hasn't yet had centuries to ossify into an out-of-touch bureaucracy.

> The nice thing about frontiers is that there's enough space (and lack of oversight) to try new systems of government

This is a nice idea if the frontier is accessible by foot, horse, or boat.

If the frontier is accessible only via corporate-owned spaceship, then the frontier will inevitably be a corporate-owned dictatorship.

Only until the colony can become self sufficient. The colonists will eventually develop more loyalty to each other rather than silly institutions on a planet 9-48 months away that know nothing of the harsh reality of martian life.

What does loyalty to each other mean exactly? Do Americans have loyalty to each other? Do North Koreans?

The (hypothetical) colonists would develop loyalty to their own silly, strictly hierarchical government that was imposed on them. (For some strange reason, many Americans still have loyalty to a 200 year old document. And others have loyalty to 2000 year old documents.) As usual, some people will benefit greatly from the hierarchy and fight to the death to preserve it. Some other people might fight to the death to overthrow it. Perhaps they'll have a civil war, which likely won't end well for anyone, given that survival on Mars would be tenuous in the very best of circumstances.

Note that "terrorism" on Mars could be an extinction-level event for colonists.

Not to mention, if the Mars colonists get uppity, then Earth can send a fleet of warships to put down the rebellion. Hell, Earth could just launch unmanned missile strikes at Mars. Wipe the slate clean and start over.

I'm skeptical of any such top-down hierarchy surviving for generations, especially if it isn't willing to be open to some form of self-governance necessary for political stability.

If things eventually do escalate to interplanetary warfare, Mars has the significant advantage of having a much shallower gravity well. It's much cheaper for them to send missiles to Earth than vice versa, so perhaps the MAD threat will be enough to keep them safe.

> I'm skeptical of any such top-down hierarchy surviving for generations

Have you seen [gestures broadly] the world? People are people regardless of where you put them. There's no reason to believe that Mars will magically become a political paradise, simply because it's a long distance away from here.

> Mars has the significant advantage of having a much shallower gravity well.

But vastly fewer people, vastly smaller manufacturing base, and vastly more difficult living conditions.

> There's no reason to believe that Mars will magically become a political paradise, simply because it's a long distance away from here.

Obviously it won't be a paradise. But the natural environment will select for hard-working individuals with grit, determination, and community spirit.

> the natural environment will select for

What do you mean by this?

Natural selection AKA "survival of the fittest" only works over the course of thousands or millions of years. Otherwise, Mars would be pretty much stuck with whatever people it (hypothetically) had. Especially if you're talking about a colony that decides to make itself independent of Earth.

On Earth, we can be selective of who we would (hypothetically) send to Mars. But wouldn't we select loyalists to ourselves? Unless... we make Mars a penal colony. ;-)

Also, "community spirit" can mean obedience to the strict existing hierarchy, for the preservation of the community.

> the natural environment will select...What do you mean by this?

The initial group of settlers will self-select themselves; not many of us are willing to live in such harsh conditions.

Kids that grow up in this environment are likely to develop grit and cooperative spirit, and they will see first-hand how it is necessary just to survive.

> Kids that grow up in this environment are likely to develop grit and cooperative spirit

Alternatively, they may grow up dispirited and disillusioned, because they had no choice in the matter. Maybe they'll want to leave Mars and go to Earth. Or maybe they'll just be pissed off and lazy, wanting to watch the world burn, so to speak.

If you want to keep the kids in line, you'd better have a totalitarian government that restricts their access to information, to prevent them from discovering that life on Earth is so much better than their own miserable lives.

"Mommy, I want to go outside and play!" "Sorry honey, but outside will kill you. Now eat your manufactured nutrient packs and drink your recycled urine."

Off-world colonies are extremely dependent on high technology. You can't just pack your things and start a homestead a few dozen miles away from your corporate overlords.

The significant fruits being ?