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:
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.
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.
