Do people understand just how monumentous that task is?
Think about it, if capitalism can't even fix the environmental problems (that it caused) on Earth, a biome we evolved to survive on, then can you imagine the resources we would need to fix a planet like Mars that is currently incapable of sustaining life?
We are talking more hostile than the most hostile places on Earth. We are talking more difficult than building a functioning society at the bottom of the ocean's Mariana trench.
There's no way some dumbass with a profit motive will ever colonize Mars, what are you going to do when you get there, Elon? There are no trees to cut down, no oceans to fish, no natives for you to exploit. The amount of time and money it would cost to mine anything would far exceed any profit made.
This is even before we take into account Earth's finite supply of rocket fuel, so good luck getting replacement parts from Earth for your mining equipment or sending any ore back to be sold.
This whole thing is so obviously a grift. How could any grown adult believe we will ever 'colonize' Mars in the way the ruling class imagines.
Maybe under communism, we will have scientific research bases there. But there is no way in hell the ruling class is ever going there to expand their empire. Either they're morons who believe their own hype or they're mocking the rest of us with the grift. Probably both.
Do people understand just how monumentous that task is?
no, not at all. that's all there has to be to it.
Most people don't understand the level of work required for large-scale projects in general I've found
That's probably fine tbh, it's really only an issue with hyper individualization that lies to people and tell them anything is possible by yourself.
Politicians and philosophers are supposedly the ones who are supposed to handle society-scale logistics anyways, but it just happens most of ours have :brainworms:
It's fine until people start having an influence on large-scale projects
The engineering is way harder than some internet experts think.
I'd be in favour of a permanent base. Zubrin's Mars Direct plan looks pretty solid and has decades of scrutiny. I've yet to be persuaded of the usefulness of a colony, if by that we mean thousands of civilians. Gravity and cosmic radiation are issues we have no solutions to.
For colonies, I think Gerard O'Neill had the right idea: huge artificial habitats with abundant solar power, centrifugal gravity, engineered atmosphere. It was feasible in his day, and it'll get easier as we get things like advanced carbon materials.
Transport through space itself is way easier than going up and down gravity wells. More than likely all the space habs will be in orbit around other bodies, positioned in such a way that they can support asteroid mining infrastructure. Surface habitats would come later (except on the moon, which is going to be targeted for helium 3 production). IMO, China will have an edge, but the west will attempt to remain competitive with them for as long as possible to prevent the bourgeoisie from collapsing.
To be fair colonizing places is really the only thing our capitalist society has ever been capable of.
Sometimes people claim that E-L-O-N surely knows that the Mars hype talk is just hype and that he has no actual intention of trying to colonize Mars or trying to move there himself.
I disagreed in the past, and I especially disagree now. E-L-O-N is a deluded manchild with science fantasy aspirations. I believe he truly believes he's the very smartest boy with a great and epic destiny and that he can do anything as long as "wokeness" or his own subordinates don't get in the way. He believes he can't fail; he can only be failed. :billionaire-tears:
I think the real intention is that they want to mine the moon for rare earths and they want the public to pay for the R&D and maybe even the transport costs of their private mining venture and so they’re using the promise of a mars colony as a shiny toy to distract you from the scale of investment being directed to that purpose.
Like, the USA didn’t really need to go to the moon. The scientific benefit of that visit didn’t really justify the cost. What the USA needed was intercontinental ballistic missiles that could strike Moscow from Idaho but the cost of developing those missiles was really high. So the moon mission was how they manufactured consent for massive investment in the Saturn rocket.
No I think they’ll go for the moon but they’ll sell it as a practice run.
I agree mars is much less feasible but the moon would be possible.
I think their main idea is to mine the moon.
At this point all the fluff about colonizing mars and saving humanity is a useful hype tool for SpaceX to thoroughly exploit the workers that believe that's what they're doing.
Imo the cutting edge space stuff which could actually save human live is asteroid detection/redirection, space based solar (maybe).
i believe our fascist society could do it until the dictator for life who is really into it dies and the next guy doesn't give af and they all starve to death over there.
It's about the feelings of deluded people that believe they're beyond normie/feeemale emotions and therefore believe they can't possibly be suckers and can't be taken for a ride when a grifter tells them what they want to believe.
"We'll figure it out when we get there!" and other such deluded statements are common among the true believers, as if it was the premise of a movie where sufficient I N N O V A T I O N will make up for an extraordinarily remote environment hostile to life as we know it. There's also "MANKIND MUST LEAVE THE CRADLE" and other empty pathos-driven marketing slogans that stir feelings in the sort of people that think emotions are for feeemales and normies, not themselves.
I know hopium's a common meme, but it certainly applies to the :my-hero: cult and related ideology. They don't want capitalism to end, but they're fine with an end-times lifeboat fantasy where they can start over with just the best and brightest :us-foreign-policy: who will surely not do whatever ruined the planet they left behind. In E-L-O-N's own recent words, after all, he seriously believes that Mars is an escape plan for the problems threatening Earth. And as a fascist, he always thinks it's the dirty poors and other undesirables that wrecked the planet that he fantasizes about abandoning so he can start over with more capitalism some place else.
:melon-musk: doesn't even believe that solar radiation is a thing lmao
How much does a martian janitor cost when he also has to be an astronaut that's mentally stable enough to survive the 3 year journey + confined life where he'll never see like forests and anyone he didn't bring with him again without another 3 year journey
It may not matter.
See that most recent "send a bunch of not-trained people to swing around the moon" publicity stunt going around? The idea seems to be to have faith in :my-hero: and go by his grace.
By the time we have the ability to "colonize Mars" all sorts of nifty structures that are capable of being custom made for people to live on will exist and be widespread. Living on another planet will be more of a vanity thing then anything important to "humanity's survival." Trying to go to Mars of all planets first is just :jesse-wtf:
Mars would at most be some sort of mining planet
People use to just assume if it’s happening it must be properly researched and achievable.
Now adays people have had the truth of how flimsy everything is best into them by reality.
But yeah capitalism can’t even create high speed rails making a colony on mars is lol
if a monopoly gets big enough they could give it a shot. im talking like megacorp inc. owning an entire continent. and it'd be after some mineral on earth but common on mars becomes scarce
I don't even know if theres a mineral that exists that wouldn't be much much easier to find in space then on a planet.
think of mars as an extremely large asteroid. ofc 'colonizing' in this scenario is like, an executive office at most and like, orbital tenements for the slave/indentured workforce
Kurzgesagt, as lib as they are, have a couple good YT videos on terraforming Venus and Mars. There's just no way any of that happens under a capitalist society.
