Arguments against human colonization of the solar system (moon/Mars/etc) sound just like trying ot argue against the westward expansion from the 13 colonies.
We will have a Donner Party-like memorial on Mars. And there will be a McDonald’s next to it.
You’re not going to win this argument because it is an argument against the basic nature of humanity, the basic urge of a species to expand over all available domain.
The article does not argue against human colonization of the solar system.
The article argues that with current technology and capabilities, a manned mission to Mars would actually do more harm than good to space exploration itself.
Also, this is reasoning by analogy. Mars is not West America.
If you want to argue for a manned mission to Mars, the article makes some excellent points that, by refuting them directly, would strengthen your argument.
> Arguments against human colonization of the solar system (moon/Mars/etc) sound just like trying ot argue against the westward expansion from the 13 colonies.
Did they claim that the American west had no atmosphere, water, food, topsoil, or life of any kind, and only 38% normal gravity?
And could only be reached after a months long journey with 0 ability to resupply of ANY kind. No trees and fruit, no fish and desalination, no colonies along the way. Just months of nothing (and yes i'm aware that because of this the plan is to try and orbit resupply "drops" and I personally think that's insane).
If you want to see extra planetary colonization, the moon is the most obvious first step by a HUGE margin, and even if it was made of gold or some other precious material, it wouldn't be financially sane, but the advantages mars offers pale in comparison to the EXTREME disadvantages its immense distance offers.
IF we can get something going on the moon, it makes literally everything else magnitudes easier. Doing anything else is, at best, a pointless exploration mission, and at worst, suicide by government spending. None of the mars plans are remotely realistic or grounded in reality, and all have so many points of failure it's going to be more worrying if we actually think we can get someone there.
Why drop into the Lunar gravity well at all then? LEO <-> Demos is less delta-V than LEO <-> Luna, and doesn't require low-ISP chemical rockets except for the initial boost.
It does not have to be an either/or mutually exclusive thing.
Do not ignore the importance of psychology and symbolism in long-term, cooperative human effort. A moon base that people can visit and inhabit will make concrete what would otherwise be an abstract concept. It will be much easier to get funding, buy-in and cooperation from an Earthling who has been to the Moon than from someone who at best sees anything happening in space through screens.
Right. There isn't a stream of Donner parties headed into the middle of the Sahara, or north into Greenland, or for that matter onto the seafloor. Many of the heroes of the Age of Exploration were economically motivated, and certainly almost all historical colonists have been. If there's a Gold Rush waiting for us on Mars we haven't seen any indication of it yet.
Unfortunately, "the basic urge of a species to expand over all available domain" does not lift a thousand ton of people and equipment to an interplanetary orbit. Money does. Well... money might do, we don't know for sure, because it's not tried before at the required scale.
Few will have an issue with a modern "Donner Party," who would buy interplanetary rockets out of their money, hop on them, never to be heard again. (Well, to be fair, if the party contains kids, people would object - consider that a sign of the society's progress since Donner's days.)
What people argue against is those quasi-Donners who demand that Washington DC fund their rockets.
the basic urge of a species to expand over all available domain
Is that a basic urge? The actual glory of exploration? Or is it the need for resources? You reference the Donner Party, which was on its way to California, which had actual useable and useful resources. So of course people wanted to go there—there’s an ocean and sunshine. Mars has…uh…corrosive dust?
To carry a single raisin to the top, then he climbed it a million more times to bring more raisins, then he made a jet engine from the raisins. Then he started bringing more raisins so that he could make a raisin plane for the amazing raisin engine.
In the intervening thousand years, other climbers learned to cybernetically modify their bodies to be able to climb every rock face on the planet. The resulting boom in cybernetic technology granted immortality and immunity to all diseases to humanity. Humans never did master the raisin jet though (because they learned to transfer their conciseness over the internet so honestly jet engines seem kinda silly).
>Arguments against human colonization of the solar system (moon/Mars/etc) sound just like trying ot argue against the westward expansion from the 13 colonies
if you're going from an moral perspective, European colonists had no right to colonize any part of the Americas. established civilizations already existed that were only driven out by mass death from foreign plagues and a desire for "we can so we will" mentality
We will have a Donner Party-like memorial on Mars. And there will be a McDonald’s next to it.
You’re not going to win this argument because it is an argument against the basic nature of humanity, the basic urge of a species to expand over all available domain.