[7thaccount]

We've already sent probes to Mars. There's no reason to send people other than to show we can. It's extremely uninhabitable...like Antarctica is a paradise in comparison with water, air, and a lack of radiation. We have nowhere near the technology to terraform Mars either. I guess you could dig someone a cave and send them some nuclear batteries and a bunch of prepackaged food, but what's the point?

Elon is an oligarch plain and simple. SpaceX is impressive, and I'm a big fan of NASA's research, but let's look past the marketing of him trying to save the human species or whatever.

I do think humanity may have to settle another world (or move to a post-biological existence where we can just park our satellite brains around a star for energy), but this is going to take a lot of scientific advancement over many centuries. Elon's plan would make a lot more sense if Mars was an Earth 2.0 and we just needed to move a bunch of people there, but it's not and even if we do find something really close to Earth with JWST, it would take centuries to get there. In short, our best approach is to save the planet we already have and continue funding scientific research.

[someuser2345]

> There's no reason to send people other than to show we can.

That is true for lots of other things. What's the point of building the Taj Mahal? What's the point of running a marathon? What's the point of getting the world record for the longest time spent underwater? Just to show that we can.

> Elon's plan would make a lot more sense if Mars was an Earth 2.0 and we just needed to move a bunch of people there, but it's not and even if we do find something really close to Earth with JWST, it would take centuries to get there.

I agree that we probably won't be able to have a viable Mars colony in our lifetime. However, I do think that the pursuit of that goal will result in lots of useful inventions; just look at what SpaceX has accomplished already.

[7thaccount]

Making a reusable rocket is not the same thing as a sustainable settlement in a hostile environment. I mean sure ...why not other than it's a huge waste of resources.

[jay_kyburz]

Musk aside, I think there is huge value in knowing how to sustain human life indefinitely without the earth. In fact, I think its inevitable that humans will need to leave earth at some point in our future.

It may simply be as a result of population and overcrowding, it may be to flee war and persecution. I think there is a small chance we have already made changes to our atmosphere that make life here incompatible with humans.

Its possible that within just a few hundred years, humans need to live entirely within climate controlled environments. If I had Musk level money I would be working on this now.

[johnnyanmac]

> That is true for lots of other things.

it may be a hot take, but yes. A lot of humanity has indeed been ways to show off how big someone's dick is, or as a dick measuring contest.

The moonlanding was an amazing but ultimately useless landmark in the grand scheme of things. Very little of the tech used back then is useful for a practical space supply line. The ability to launch out of our atmosphere and later put sattelites into orbit was 90% of the worth of such resarch 60 years later.

[kiba]

We've already sent probes to Mars. There's no reason to send people other than to show we can. It's extremely uninhabitable...like Antarctica is a paradise in comparison with water, air, and a lack of radiation. We have nowhere near the technology to terraform Mars either. I guess you could dig someone a cave and send them some nuclear batteries and a bunch of prepackaged food, but what's the point?

People always look at this with hard nosed pragmatism. That's the wrong lens to view Space colonization. It's a vision and a dream.