[mechanical_fish]

Mars is key to humanity’s future in space. It is the closest planet that has the resources needed to support life and technological civilization.

... well, except for air, and food. But there's water! Which we can detect with sensitive instruments!

This whole article has no point. As everyone in the military knows full well, if the benefit is great enough humans will happily risk other human lives, even expend lives, by the thousands and even millions.

The "problem" is that there's nothing for humans to do in space that is worth so much as a single human life. This isn't 1937 anymore; the transistor and the IC have been invented and we know how to build robots. These days even the military pilots on Earth spend more and more time in chairs on the ground, steering robots, often from halfway around the world.

[javajosh]

"...there's nothing for humans to do in space that is worth so much as a single human life"

Wrong. In the long run, even if we achieve some sort of utopia, all life will be destroyed by natural catastrophe. The only way to avoid this fate is to find other places to live. Mars is one of those places; so are the various exoplanets we are finding.

Indeed, this is humanities greatest challenge. Can we harness the incredible energy density of oil to get off planet and learn to live sustainably before the oil runs out?

There is no doubt that it will be difficult. Humans are so fragile, and the universe is extraordinarily harsh. It's a problem that will demand careful study, creativity, and great personal risk.

And I think we can do it.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Why? I have never understood this argument. What's so special about "humanity" that it needs to be preserved?

You're born, you live, you die. A species arises, it has its time on Earth, then it's extinct. Why are humans so special that we should bother about eventually going extinct in hundreds of thousands of years?

[javajosh]

The only counter-argument is this: I want humanity to survive long enough to ponder those questions.

[stinkytaco]

Biology? Because billions of years of evolution have made us all think: "We should have kids and hang around long enough to make sure they have kids too. That way we can keep this caravan rolling."

That's a pretty big motivator.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Sure, I get that. That's my I included the "hundreds of thousands of years" modifier. I want my kids to grow up, be happy and have their own kids if they want to, but I really don't care about what happens 100 generations down the road.

That's the perplexing part.

[CamperBob]

I want my kids to grow up, be happy and have their own kids if they want to, but I really don't care about what happens 100 generations down the road.

Stop trying to think 100 generations ahead -- that's pointless, no one can do that. Instead, think 100 generations back. What if the people alive at the time had been happy with their lots in life, content where they were living, and/or too afraid to try anything new? Where would you be now? Do you really feel good about being part of the generation that finally dropped the ball?

[HeyLaughingBoy]

As I said in my response to your other post, you're still not answering the question I posed. Sure, you're answering other (unasked) questions, but those answers I already understand.

So long ago that it seems almost like someone else's life, my constant lonely trips to the beach just to stare at the sea and wonder what lay over the horizon made me realize that I had to cross oceans. So I went to school to become a Merchant ships officer. In an earlier century I would have been one of those idiots hanging around the docks trying to get on a ship sailing into the regions "where there be dragons." In future centuries that version of me would be hanging around spaceports dreaming of venturing into the unknown regions where riches would be found.

I said the above to illustrate that I understand wanderlust and the joy of exploration for its own sake perfectly well. What I don't get is this need to "preserve the species."

[CamperBob]

What's so special about "humanity" that it needs to be preserved?

The frustrating thing about your nihilistic argument is that there's no practical way we can divide humanity into the grasshoppers who live only for today and the ants who live for the future. A consequence of the advance of democracy -- itself arguably a prerequisite for survival -- is that the grasshoppers will always be with us, and will always have a voice.

If there were a way we could magically reserve the benefits and spinoffs of human space exploration, up to and including the potential preservation of the species, to those who agreed to pay for them, I'd be much more accepting of this kind of question.

But colonization of other celestial bodies is too big a job for only part of humanity to tackle. We all need to pull in that direction, or we'll fail. So the fundamental problem becomes one of how to convince people of all walks of life that this is a worthwhile goal that can, and should, be achieved. It's a tough sell -- like the great European cathedrals, it will take longer than any one lifetime, and cost more than any one king can afford. But it seems possible to make sound, rational arguments in favor of such a mission. There are times when I almost believe that the necessary case can be made, and that the necessary work will be done...

... at least until some overly-clever bozo asks an unanswerable question like, "What's so special about humanity that it needs to be preserved?"

Then, I sink back into my usual unproductive attitude: "Fine. Screw you. Stay behind, see if we care." And sure enough, as usual, nothing changes.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Four paragraphs of annoyed text and yet you didn't answer the question!

[CamperBob]

I answered it by pointing out that it's objectively unanswerable.

[rhino42]

This.

IMHO, humanity's goal for the next hundred years is to enhance our energy and medical technologies as quickly as possible. (space takes a distant third).

We are essentially in a race against time: if we are too slow, we will deplete our resources and wipe ourselves out.

There are lots and lots of things that are worth a single human's life (or tens, hundreds of lives). Research is one of them. For instance, if we could magically trade a random 100 lives for knowing if there is extraterrestrial life, I believe that it's a worthy trade. That's just one example.

[JumpCrisscross]

You know where there are lots of resources? Space. Recently ran an economic projection for a venture that was being proposed out of Russia - tugging an asteroid of copper into orbit around Earth and mining it would alleviate the environmental impact of surface mining while cutting the price of these materials to a fraction of what they are today.

Speaking about energy, check out space-based solar power. I will be the first to admit that present conceptions are as pre-mature as the solar industry in general, but, it is theoretically a vastly more efficient way to generate power than other options, barring nuclear.

[salemh]

To make an endeavor feasible, it would really have to be a GX large-scale multi-nation effort, and, the agreed (tacit or otherwise) collapse of certain industries (like, collapsing copper pricing, etc.)

I don't believe the current socio-political-industrial-financial mechanisms in place have any desire (though don't actively "conspire" against this sort of thing), as its too "long term" thinking, and, is really more a "species survival" deal vs short-term profit gaining.

/This is rambling, apologies.

thoughts?

[JumpCrisscross]

Wouldn't be more expensive than anything the oil or heavy infrastructure majors undertake on their own today. Yes, a multi-billion dollar project all in, but that occurs in stages.

The time horizon is a problem. But everything I said fits the 4-10 year infrastructure ROI test. Not that I don't expect the first projects to have anything short of heavy government involvement.

[scott_s]

Your sentiment comes up a lot, and I tend to point to this essay when it does: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2639456

[koningrobot]

There's nothing for humans to do in "other places to live" either. We accomplish nothing by being here. In fact it would be better if we gave up already.

A human is born in need of air, water, food, and pastime, and the best we can do is satisfy these needs only partially. There is no reason to create these needs (other than to partially satisfy existing needs that didn't need to be created), but there are many reasons not to create these needs.

You correctly note that the universe is extraordinarily harsh. I see no rational reason to continue fighting it. There are only superstitious reasons, like pride, sunk costs, think of the children, equivocating humanity the race with human the individual, identifying with your genetic material, assigning intrinsic value to life, etc.

[estevez]

> all life will be destroyed by natural catastrophe.

I'm going to disagree with you there.[1]

A bit tongue in cheek, but regarding your larger point, I think that thinking about preserving life in our corner of the universe solely in terms of keeping meat puppets alive in interstellar space is a rather parochial way to think. We already know of two forms of life that are far better suited to the void, autonomous robots and bacterial spores, why not get them out first?

[1]: http://worldcat.org/title/impossible-extinction-natural-cata...

[javajosh]

In the interest of brevity I left out the post-humanist angle. You're right: we can work on the problem from the other angle of making our form more survivable. Various post-humanist ideas, from genetic engineering to uploading mind state into a (presumably more survivable) computational substrate are options. There is a reasonable argument to be made that our time would be better spent achieving these forms before attempting serious colonization. However, I suspect that "meat puppet" colonization is easier than we think, especially if we accept the OP's argument that we need to stop shooting ourselves in the foot with unreasonable safety requirements.

[rflrob]

The problem is, humans are so much more effective than robots at planning and independent decision making, which is critical when there's a 8-40 minute communications round trip time. The two wildly successful MER probes Spirit and Opportunity traveled a combined ~40km in around 4,000 sols. A human areologist could cover that much in a week.

[mechanical_fish]

And just how many Spirit probes could one send to Mars for the cost of sending a single human?

Based on a bit of Googling, the answer seems to be on the order of "ten", as a minimum. Numbers of $20 billion or so were being thrown around for a manned mission, and the currently-in-transit Mars Science Lab is up past $1.5 billion after a 30% cost overrun:

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story.jsp?id=news/Bal...

Given that the $20 billion is a pie-in-the-sky planning number and has yet to experience overruns of its own...

Meanwhile, what's the rush? Mars is not going anywhere.

And meanwhile too, is your human really going to cover 40km in a week after a ten month trip in free fall? Not at the present state of the art:

http://www.space.com/8978-trip-mars-turn-astronauts-weakling...

Or are we shipping an SUV to Mars along with the human and all of her groceries? The Spirit-probe-to-human ratio continues to grow.

[ericd]

It's not something that can just be parallelized away with identical probes. It's the difference between a multifunction calculator and a PC. The PC may weigh 100x as much, but it has an infinitely greater breadth of capability. That's why human spaceflight is going to be important for the foreseeable future. Unless you want to design a separate probe for every conceivable task (some of which we undoubtedly don't know yet).