Life On Mars

[kyle]

Mars' atmospheric composition is 95% CO2.

Supposing we could terraform Mars like Musk says we could go there and potentially accelerate human development.

If there is some way to stabilize the weather conditions there, earthen plant life like orange trees could be introduced and eventually grazing Mars cows.

The atmosphere is also thinner so even if it is far from the sun, the amount of sunlight might enable a tremendous explosion of life to exist such that a single sip of Mars juice could restore your glycogen level and reverse damage caused by PUFA.

If there is water trapped beneath the ice as some suspect, huge oceans could develop and a single Mars oyster would restore all of your mineral levels. Potentially there are some hidden elements and minerals which could potentially act on human based metabolisms such that it evolves a superior metabolism that is less wasteful and give us super strength to tolerate interstellar travel.

Thoughts?

 

[tara]

Thoughts?

Start writing a sci-fi novella.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

Never happen. It's a fantasy. It's too complicated. We're not even close to having the technology and knowledge of how to do it even it were possible. People would most likely commit suicide if they were born and raised there because it is nothing like what they were designed for. Space "travel" is a complete waste of time and money. There is nothing out there. Once you leave Earth, there is only our solar system and after that there is nothing for a long, long time. Spending some money on telescopes and looking at what we can see and looking for asteroids etc. is fine but the idea of Star Wars/Star Trek fantasy wormhole intergalactic travel is a joke. We are so far from it. We can't even travel fast at all and even if we do figure out how to travel at the SOL or faster, a humans delicate organism can not survive such energy. We don't know how to avoid collisions with other objects when traveling so fast. The only thing we would be able to do is send robots and even then it's probably not possible for them to survive the long trips. Also, whats the point of spreading humanity to other planets anyway? So we can do the same thing to those planets that we did here?

Space Exploration Is a Waste of Money - DebateWise

 

[Daft]

Never happen. It's a fantasy. It's too complicated. We're not even close to having the technology and knowledge of how to do it even it were possible. People would most likely commit suicide if they were born and raised there because it is nothing like what they were designed for. Space "travel" is a complete waste of time and money. There is nothing out there. Once you leave Earth, there is only our solar system and after that there is nothing for a long, long time. Spending some money on telescopes and looking at what we can see and looking for asteroids etc. is fine but the idea of Star Wars/Star Trek fantasy wormhole intergalactic travel is a joke. We are so far from it. We can't even travel fast at all and even if we do figure out how to travel at the SOL or faster, a humans delicate organism can not survive such energy. We don't know how to avoid collisions with other objects when traveling so fast. The only thing we would be able to do is send robots and even then it's probably not possible for them to survive the long trips. Also, whats the point of spreading humanity to other planets anyway? So we can do the same thing to those planets that we did here?

Space Exploration Is a Waste of Money - DebateWise

Well if human survival has any value isn't it our only option? It is life affirming to invest in this frontier despite the perceived impossibilities and likelihood of it failing and being wasted effort. How aimless - without ultimate end - is all human endeavor if there isn't an importance placed on long term survival? It pays more ways than simply the narrow intended successful outcome to value such things as a society, and to prove that value by investing effort and resources into it. Society and individuals function with an aim in mind. What good is that saved money if we fail to discover what could be critical to our survival as a species at some point in the future? If you say what good is long-term survival, you might as well be saying what good is life?

If you value life, you value its continuance. If you value its continuance, you value our only option for long term survival. Most people value life and its continuance, indeed put most of their effort into such, and as the future more likely than not brings more salience of threats to Earths existence or ability to support life, if there is no perceived way out or project working on a way out, people will give up trying in life, society will degenerate, investment and sacrifice and selflessness - heroism - falls away and people focus more on their maximizing their limited small life. That is probably already going on under our feet.

If tomorrow it was announced we had a way to reach other planets, terraform them and dramatically increase humanity's chance of survival, or perhaps simply extend healthy human lifespan, I'm sure a lot of people would be inspired to help further humanity's achievement in a way they never thought they would, and so pivot a bit or a lot towards selfless rather than selfish activity. Learned helplessness on a societal level: if the outcome is learned to be the same regardless of efforts, if the effort of all people has no effect on the fact that Earth's death = humanity's death, then the motivation of people will dwindle, in a way that is like under our feet, we are very unable to perceive the tides of history, we don't realize what's been lost, what is now missing, from our motivation, as compared to past times and ages under different conceptions of the world and human agency within such.

Also there is never, never such a thing as 100% certainty that discoveries can't be made, paradigms can't be broken through...

 

[x-ray peat]

Well if human survival has any value isn't it our only option? It is life affirming to invest in this frontier despite the perceived impossibilities and likelihood of it failing and being wasted effort. How aimless - without ultimate end - is all human endeavor if there isn't an importance placed on long term survival? It pays more ways than simply the narrow intended successful outcome to value such things as a society, and to prove that value by investing effort and resources into it. Society and individuals function with an aim in mind. What good is that saved money if we fail to discover what could be critical to our survival as a species at some point in the future? If you say what good is long-term survival, you might as well be saying what good is life?

If you value life, you value its continuance. If you value its continuance, you value our only option for long term survival. Most people value life and its continuance, indeed put most of their effort into such, and as the future more likely than not brings more salience of threats to Earths existence or ability to support life, if there is no perceived way out or project working on a way out, people will give up trying in life, society will degenerate, investment and sacrifice and selflessness - heroism - falls away and people focus more on their maximizing their limited small life. That is probably already going on under our feet.

If tomorrow it was announced we had a way to reach other planets, terraform them and dramatically increase humanity's chance of survival, or perhaps simply extend healthy human lifespan, I'm sure a lot of people would be inspired to help further humanity's achievement in a way they never thought they would, and so pivot a bit or a lot towards selfless rather than selfish activity. Learned helplessness on a societal level: if the outcome is learned to be the same regardless of efforts, if the effort of all people has no effect on the fact that Earth's death = humanity's death, then the motivation of people will dwindle, in a way that is like under our feet, we are very unable to perceive the tides of history, we don't realize what's been lost, what is now missing, from our motivation, as compared to past times and ages under different conceptions of the world and human agency within such.

Also there is never, never such a thing as 100% certainty that discoveries can't be made, paradigms can't be broken through...

why do you feel so sure that human life is in any danger right here on Earth. Chicken Littles have been saying that for the last 200 years at least since Malthus and have always been wrong. We should spend our money improving life on Earth rather than wasting it on fanciful ideas of terraforming a dead planet.

Human population is expected to peak at around 9 billion and then decline. We have plenty of room and resources for everyone despite the propaganda that says otherwise.

 

[Such_Saturation]

Once you leave Earth, there is only our solar system and after that there is nothing for a long, long time

If you count the Oort Cloud, the solar systems basically touch one another like cells, filling all the space

 

[tara]

Well if human survival has any value isn't it our only option?

If we were already taking good care of our home planet, and had some resources we could spare, I think I might agree with you that such a long-sighted project could be worht investing in.
But I'm not so sure that the project should get much priority compared with ensuring Earth, which already has a beautifully functioning ecosystem in many respects, though also damaged, can be restored to good health and longevity.

why do you feel so sure that human life is in any danger right here on Earth. Chicken Littles have been saying that for the last 200 years at least since Malthus and have always been wrong. We should spend our money improving life on Earth rather than wasting it on fanciful ideas of terraforming a dead planet.

200 years is short compared with planet-death scale. Planets do die eventually. The projects to intercept stray asteroids etc are building capacity, but not 100% protection yet. Whether the anthropocene turns out to support human survival ultimately depends on what we do with it.

Human population is expected to peak at around 9 billion and then decline. We have plenty of room and resources for everyone despite the propaganda that says otherwise.

I think we probably have enough if we use it wisely, though not necessarily everybody's definition of plenty. Good growing land and water are scarcities driving conflict now, and this will likely exacerbate. Overhaul of current resource use patterns required.

 

[x-ray peat]

If we were already taking good care of our home planet, and had some resources we could spare, I think I might agree with you that such a long-sighted project could be worht investing in.
But I'm not so sure that the project should get much priority compared with ensuring Earth, which already has a beautifully functioning ecosystem in many respects, though also damaged, can be restored to good health and longevity.

+1

200 years is short compared with planet-death scale. Planets do die eventually. The projects to intercept stray asteroids etc are building capacity, but not 100% protection yet. Whether the anthropocene turns out to support human survival ultimately depends on what we do with it.

In terms of human civilization and the relatively recent phenomenom of geometric population growth, 200 years is a good amount of time to show that we have the ingenuity to continually care for and feed an ever growing population.
Yes planets die but on a time scale that we have no control over, in the billions of years. That is not to say that we cant make life here on Earth pretty scary with nuclear war etc if we really screwed the pooch but the Earth will do just fine without us.

I think we probably have enough if we use it wisely, though not necessarily everybody's definition of plenty. Good growing land and water are scarcities driving conflict now, and this will likely exacerbate. Overhaul of current resource use patterns required.

I agree though I think the fears of environmental catastrophe are proselyte overblown for political reasons.

 

[InChristAlone]

Never happen. It's a fantasy. It's too complicated. We're not even close to having the technology and knowledge of how to do it even it were possible. People would most likely commit suicide if they were born and raised there because it is nothing like what they were designed for. Space "travel" is a complete waste of time and money. There is nothing out there. Once you leave Earth, there is only our solar system and after that there is nothing for a long, long time. Spending some money on telescopes and looking at what we can see and looking for asteroids etc. is fine but the idea of Star Wars/Star Trek fantasy wormhole intergalactic travel is a joke. We are so far from it. We can't even travel fast at all and even if we do figure out how to travel at the SOL or faster, a humans delicate organism can not survive such energy. We don't know how to avoid collisions with other objects when traveling so fast. The only thing we would be able to do is send robots and even then it's probably not possible for them to survive the long trips. Also, whats the point of spreading humanity to other planets anyway? So we can do the same thing to those planets that we did here?

Space Exploration Is a Waste of Money - DebateWise

lets focus our efforts in restoration here.