[larkeith]

In the long term, they're pretty much the most important missions possible - even absent disasters, Earth only has so many resources, so designing and testing the technology for extraterrestrial habitation is rather essential.

Admittedly, there are alternatives to manned colonialization (e.g. seeding), but it seems rather worth exploring multiple options, considering the stakes.

[pfdietz]

Just because something is valuable in the long term doesn't mean it's justifiable in the short term. Perhaps the route to colonizing Mars is to develop technologies that have nothing to do with going into space right now.

[blackrock]

Perhaps we can focus on quantum teleportation instead?

Solve that first, and then we can easily quantum teleport ourselves to anywhere in the solar system. Then reconstitute ourselves at the destination point. And hopefully your device didn’t make a quantum error during the rematerialization process.

You’d have to send the complement quantum teleportation receiver device to Mars, and set it up there first.

Then the device would have to rematerialize you back into fleshy form from pure quantum information residing in your quantum storage buffer.

Oh and make sure that a fly doesn’t enter the quantum teleportation device with you, as you initially get quantum scanned and dematerialized from Earth.

And you must enter the quantum teleportation device without any extra external clothing on. Since version 1 of the device has difficulty differentiating between organic and inorganic materials.

[pfdietz]

I was thinking more of advances in manufacturing that would make living on Mars more self-sustaining. Labor will be extremely expensive in space, so extreme levels of automation would be very useful.

I doubt the sort of teleportation you are talking about there could be made to work, but if we assume that it could, it would make Mars more like Antarctica than colonial North America. It would be a place to visit, but would just be a research appendage without its own self-sustaining population or manufacturing infrastructure.

[Seb-C]

I think the other way around: we don't have the knowledge or technology to even make a reasonably feasible teleportation theory.

Once we colonize the solar system, the next frontier to explore will be interstellar travel. I think research on faster than light travel will be what brings teleportation to us rather than the other way around.

[pfdietz]

I see no reason to think FTL will ever be possible. That FTL is a trope in SF stories doesn't meant it's an aspect of the reality, it just means that it enables one to write more interesting stories.

[Seb-C]

With our current knowledge and technology, you are right, but nobody knows what we might discover in the future.

Even if FTL were indeed impossible, I think pursuing it would bring interesting discoveries and technologies.

[pfdietz]

Replace FTL with witchcraft and the argument would be identical.

[blackrock]

So.. invent faster than light travel, go to a distant planet rotating around a distant star, to find a bunch of friendly advanced aliens, that will bequeath us some advanced teleportation technology?

[manderley]

Long-term, there's no solution at all. In the short-term, it's a waste of resources that could be put to better use.

[gpanders]

From Wikipedia:

> NASA's budget for fiscal year (FY) 2020 is $22.6 billion. It represents 0.48% of the $4.7 trillion the United States plans to spend in the fiscal year.

NASA uses less than half of 1 percent of the federal budget. If you care so much about budget waste, there are a myriad of other places you could complain about (how about defense or healthcare spending?)

The practical benefits of NASA's science and engineering efforts have been laid out many times in many different places. There are also less practical benefits; for example, how can you quantify the impact that the Blue Marble photo had on the environmental movement? That was only possible because we put someone on the Moon.

Curmudgeons like you will always be around, and those of us who enjoy seeing humanity push itself and accomplish incredible things are happy to ignore you :)

[manderley]

Long-term, humanity will die. That's the reality of the situation, we'll never travel beyond our small solar system, even. We can't technology our way out of fundamental physics problems.

[sleepy_keita]

It is technically possible to travel beyond our solar system with current technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...

[Teever]

Well with that mentality why don't we just give up all human endeavours and let entropy wash over us?

[s1artibartfast]

Yes, the universe will ultimately end, but there is no reason to believe that travel beyond our solar system is impossible.

We have the technology to do it now, but it would be a suicide mission.