[dvh1990]

This sounds mind-blowing, except that current public sentiment seems strongly against space exploration and that may catch up with budgets.

Even though SpaceX does the launches, it is government agencies that deal with launching missions, and government budgets are influenced by public opinion.

[wonderwonder]

I would caution against giving to much credit to social media / leftist politicians railing against spending money on space when we can use the money on earth. These people have a loud platform but I don't think most people agree with them. Similar to how so many loud 'woke' people make you think democrats are all focused on forcing workspace equality no matter the cost or anti cop. Social media and indeed traditional media (both for and against) looking for clicks has spotlighted these people but their influence is limited amongst the majority. I think most people are excited about space and mars and all for it, understanding that creating a base on mars or the moon is a completely unrelated thing to fixing global warming here on earth. I say this as someone that votes democrat.

[mdorazio]

I’m not sure why you think current public opinion is opposed to space exploration? It’s definitely opposed to space tourism for the rich, but that’s a separate thing.

[dvh1990]

There's a strong anti Mars settlement sentiment going on, not just anti "space tourism". The idea, which I don't really subscribe to in this context, that we should utilize whatever resources we assign to space towards fighting climate change and fixing problems here on Earth.

[ruph123]

It is one thing to be against a Mars settlement and another to be against space exploration.

E.g. it would serve the latter better if we would explore Venus, Europa, Titan, etc. than trying to live underground on a dead poisonous planet.

[bdamm]

Trying to live underground on a dead planet might just prove that we need Earth. Lots of people say space tourism is silly and then go gas up their car while complaining that Teslas are how the coastal elites will take their retirement.

[kitsunesoba]

To add on, I think there’s a lot of value to be had in the various science that can only be done with boots on the ground on Mars. The rovers have been great don’t get me wrong, but a team of scientists with a Starship full of equipment can do volumes more research in a couple of weeks than a rover can during its entire mission, including things that weren’t originally planned.

What we learn there can be helpful for understanding the history of the solar system as well as planetary dynamics (remember that in terms of well-studied planets, we’re currently at sample size = 1).

[runarberg]

How fast do we actually need to learn about Mars? How far are we willing to go, how much are we willing to spend just to speed things up there?

We don’t live in the 1950s or the 1890s any more. We are not willing to sacrifice the lives of our explorers like we did when we went to the moon or Antarctica in the 1960s and 1900s respectively. We are not engaging in juvenile races to “get there first” which is both expensive and dangerous.

The space exploration of today is more collaborative and careful then the explorations of the past. So we don’t risk the lives of our explorers nor the unnecessary expenses of getting things done 20 years when we can do it in 50 for far less money and with infinity more safety.

[runarberg]

Just to put it out there: An individual car owner is insignificant when talking about climate change. This is regardless of how the car is powered. A Tesla owner that owns stock in Shell and votes conservative is much more problematic then a non-voting F-150 owner that works paycheck to paycheck. However both of them are insignificant next to the Shell board of directors or the US government who bear the real responsibility here in prolonging climate inaction.

This is all just to say. A non-voting F-150 owner who talks shit about rich people going to space is actually not doing any damage while filling up his truck, next to that rich conservative voter that emits more greenhouse gas than the F-150 ever can ever hope in a singe space visit for his own amusement.

[BuyMyBitcoins]

>”…that rich conservative voter that emits more greenhouse gas than the F-150 ever can ever hope in a singe space visit for his own amusement.”

None of the space tourists so far have been particularly known for their conservative politics. Nor do I find space tourism to be some lauded thing in conservative circles.

[maccolgan]

>Tesla owner that owns stock in Shell and votes conservative is much more problematic then a non-voting F-150 owner that works paycheck to paycheck.

>rich conservative voter that emits more greenhouse gas than the F-150 ever can ever hope

Wow

[smaddox]

There are a few more F-150 drivers than there are Shell board members or rich conservative space tourists.

[handrous]

I, for one, think permanent Mars settlement is a dumb idea, but I look forward to watching someone try it.

[twobitshifter]

I think mars settlement is an eventuality, someone will be there. I also think that settlement of mars has a huge first mover advantage, maybe unlike anything else in human history. It may even come before that with the first permanent lunar base and launch platform.

[Ekaros]

I actually doubt that. Unless they also ship massive number of very specialized and power weapon systems.

Planets are big, like absolutely massive. You can easily catch up, specially if you get intel on inevitable failures of first movers.

[systemvoltage]

There were always people that opposed space exploration. They’ve been wrong every time.

[ncmncm]

Having been wrong changes few people's minds. Even about whether they were wrong.

[JohnJamesRambo]

Anyone that has seen Blade Runner and the news should see that as a concern.

The rich would spoil Earth and defile it and then move off to the ultimate gated community of Mars, leaving us to deal with the consequences of their actions.

[pixl97]

This has always been a bad idea based of unrealistic science fiction.

Mars is the spoiled planet, and will be until some point technology is a lot further along. The rich are not going to run away to some wonderland. Earth is the garden, and nothing else is like it in space.

[handrous]

Yep. The list of things that could make Earth a worse place to live than Mars is very short. A big enough asteroid to liquefy the entire crust would do it, for a while. A "mere" dinosaur-killer wouldn't be enough. Nor would nuclear war. Most of the rest of the options are still sci-fi, like Grey Goo events, or a very contagious very deadly infectious disease (and that would have to have some way of sticking around for a long time, for an orbital habitat or sealed earthbound habitat not to still be better than Mars, since you could get back more easily once it was gone or we had a way to fight it).

Otherwise you've gotta start stacking disasters to get close, and even then it's pretty difficult. Mars is really bad.

[Ekaros]

Just look at decadence in rather inhospitable environments on earth... Let's take Dupai or some deserts in USA with golf courses. No way whole Earth will get worse than that. And basically we already have luxury lifes in such places, air conditioned malls, apartments, cars. Over use of water to water lawns...

Also, it is not like you couldn't vastly more cheaply and easily build Mars bunker on Earth. As we are centuries away from planet scale geo-engineering.

[wonderwonder]

Agreed, I think another thing missed by so many is that if we can settle mars that same technology can be used here on earth to make inhospitable parts of the planet usable again should we mess it up badly enough.

[JohnJamesRambo]

Yes I know that. But do THEY know that? I’m not so sure. Elon/Bezos seem to think you can hand wave/buy the radiation away like they do their problems on earth. Maybe with absolutely massive amounts of money they could find a way. And we would be the ones footing the bill for that.

[maxerickson]

We don't have the technology to make Mars anything better than a miserable hell.

If we did, it would still work better to just use it here on some isolated land.

[whatshisface]

The technology to make mars psychologically livable may simply be having some people grow up there.

[maxerickson]

The comment I replied to was about people with wealth and power "escaping" there.

[tsimionescu]

No no, didn't you read the article? With Starship we could launch 12 * 100,000 30m wide light sails and heat up Mars!

Such a ridiculous idea puts the rest of the article in a very questionable light for me.

[ncmncm]

It is a fact that we could launch light sails, and even heat up Mars a bit. The idea might be silly, but at least it is thinking big. Some other big idea will be better, including several of those listed after the light-sails bit.

The earth-sized radio telescope made out of Starlink transceivers is an obvious winner. Total coverage ground radar using the transceiver antenna is another.

[Ekaros]

If such thing could be used to heat up Mars, could it be used to cool down Earth?

[adfgergaehg]

There's a strong "Mars settlement is impossible" sentiment going on, which is different.

I am all for exploring space. I just loathe the fact that we have billionaires with no technical training calling the shots.

(Well, maybe not "exploring". There isn't much to see! I'm very much for using space.)

[ArtWomb]

>>> public opinion is opposed to space exploration

It's always been true ;)

If you put it to a vote, majority of americans will allocate public funds towards terrestrial concerns over a new space lab. Even though provable, tech transfer in aerospace innovation proves most abundant. In today's dollars, what was nasa's highest yearly budget: maybe $30B? Let's see what 5% of US GDP devoted to Space R&D and Peaceful Expansion by mid century looks like!

[mdorazio]

I don’t really think that’s the case - it’s more nuanced. Most Americans are pro space exploration [1], but against manned missions and colonization efforts [2]. I have a strong feeling most people are probably also against boondoggle projects like SLS and seemingly-constant massive cost overruns on things like JWST.

This makes sense if you think about it - flying humans around the solar system just doesn’t make much sense until we have actual orbital industry at some point in the future to bring the costs down to a reasonable level. And I personally have to agree with the camp opposed to Mars colonization, but for different reasons than most. Mars is kind of a crappy place to try and live by most metrics. It seems like colonization efforts would be better allocated to large asteroids or water-rich moons.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2018/06/06/majority-of-a...

[2] https://morningconsult.com/2021/02/25/space-force-travel-exp...

[bnralt]

> Even though provable, tech transfer in aerospace innovation proves most abundant.

When someone (usually NASA or NASA fanboys) does a Gish gallop and drops of huge list of things supposedly created by NASA, it's worth picking a couple to take a deep dive into. When you look at the details, the amount of tech transfer is often not anywhere close to the amount claimed.

Still, there is good science and technology that comes out of NASA. But it's likely we'd have a lot better results if a large chunk of the NASA budget wasn't spent throwing people up into space for no reason.

[ArtWomb]

>>> huge list of things supposedly created by NASA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies

Bowflex ;)

[runarberg]

I honestly don’t understand why public opinion matters so much for space exploration while the military budget is not held to the same standard.

Honestly though several really nice space exploration projects have been well founded by several governments (including India, China, Europe and North America). Some really silly projects have also been privately funded (e.g. space tourism for the rich). People are rightly questioning how people get so insanely rich that they can afford this. They ask if they are paying their fair share of taxes, if they pay their workers fairly, and which contracts the government have offered them.

If you separate those two classes of space projects I bet you would find way more support for the former (or at least some indifference) while you would find that people vehemently oppose the latter.

[virgilp]

If you put it to a vote, majority of Americans will allocate public funds towards stimulus cheques and not the military.... what majority of Americans would allocate funds towards is not necessarily the thing that gets done.

[criddell]

If you put it to a vote and said we can continue to fund NASA or your taxes can be lowered by $75 / year, NASA would be done.

[mrfusion]

You could probably say that about most government programs though.

[criddell]

Yep.

[wffurr]

But doesn't Starship dramatically reduce budget needs for exploration? The whole point of the essay series is to try to get institutions and researchers thinking about the economics of exploration with a steady cadence of reusable Starship launches.

[dvh1990]

Oh I get the purpose of the article and it got ME excited. However, I'm concerned about other voices which may speak out against it in the context of my original reply.

It'd be interesting to follow this thread and see if this sentiment can be heard here.

[Causality1]

It's hard to blame the public for feeling that way when space projects run two decades behind schedule and two thousand percent over budget.

[cblconfederate]

TBF most of the places where starship will go have already been explored. I think spaceX's plan is more about exploitation

[cnlevy]

A human in ONE day can explore more than a rover in a year. There's no comparing the amount of research which can be done by a teleoperated rover to what can be done by a real human on-site.

As a comparison, Opportunity rover covered 45.16 km in 15 years. The Apollo 17 crew covered 35.74 kilometers in 3 days.

[cryptonector]

A human can also mine and bring back valuable stuff. Initially rock samples for testing. Eventually minerals (asteroid mining comes to mind). Space exploration does not pay for itself commercially at this point. Maybe that's one more thing Musk can change.

[GuB-42]

A rover can do that too. In fact, Perseverance already has the ability to collect samples and prepare them for a future pick-up mission.

It is just that we are not found of sending people and letting them die there, so a human mission implies a return mission, and if there is a return mission, of course you want to bring back souvenirs.

In fact, a sample return mission can be seen as a step towards a manned mission. First you try to bring back a pile of rocks, then you consider bringing back humans.

And yes, humans are far more efficient than robots at space exploration today, but robots keep improving, and I think it will take many years before we put people on Mars, so by the time we are ready for a manned Mars mission, we will probably have much better robots. Not as good as humans, but digging lots of rocks and moving faster than a snail will probably be well within their abilities.

[ncmncm]

Will anybody really ever come by to pick up Perseverence's samples? That has struck me as really implausible. If it could carry the sample containers to wherever it fills them, it could carry them to wherever it ends up, too, and whatever is supposed to fetch them could make a single stop. Sending another lander just to sweep up after it seems massively wasteful.

Clue?

[GuB-42]

Sending a lander to pick up the samples is worth it just for the technical aspect.

Making a successful return trip would be an important milestone, we never did anything close to that before. Yes, moon landings, but the moon is 100-1000 times closer and 10 times less massive than mars, with half its surface gravity.

If it ever happens, the "get back samples" mission is likely to focus on that technical aspect more than anything else, it may not even have a way to explore and collect samples. So let Perseverance do the collection because it is what it is designed for and put them in a neat pile so that the other mission can focus on getting them back.

Further missions should be able to do both collection and return, maybe even take people, but starting small may be a good idea, especially if human lives are at stake.

[ff317]

I get what you're saying. It's ineffective to robotically collect them this way (ever), and if humans go collect them, they could just collect a lot more while they're there, making it all pointless.

Perhaps an answer is that one of the contingencies being covered by the Perseverance sample-collecting is against future contamination? Maybe the NASA missions have been extraordinarily careful about not contaminating Mars with earth microbes, but they're worried that future commercial crewed missions won't be able to be so careful. Then when the humans get there, they'll have some unspoiled sample containers to experiment on and compare to the post-human samples.

[p1mrx]

Perseverance will take samples from a variety of locations, and cache them in one location for pickup. The pickup mission won't need to drive around the surface for a year with drilling equipment.

[SyzygistSix]

Astronauts on a SpaceX misson very well might.

[cblconfederate]

that was 50 years ago, and it was largely a series of prestige missions. humans are the problem now, robots can do everything better

[rozab]

It seems to me that Bezos and Branson have done irreparable damage to public perceptions of space exploration. Flying up billionaires does not inspire people.

[SyzygistSix]

I think it depends on how it is done. The Inspiration 4 series was well-received on Netflix and they had a billionaire on board who paid for the mission. I think the dearMoon mission could also go very well and inspire people.