[Synthetase]

It's odd that any mention of Elon Musk colonizing Mars results in rapturous worship.

Other efforts, China in particular, seem to attract scorn. Especially in light of the fact that Elon Musk's original plan was to send a greenhouse with plants to Mars.

Perhaps I over-estimate the HN crowd.

[blhack]

>Perhaps I over-estimate the HN crowd.

Perhaps this has something to do with China's absolutely atrocious record regarding:

1) The environment

2) The rest of the world

3) Human rights

--

Is it really that difficult to understand that some of us have the foresight to realize that China's method of interfacing with its environment is not something that we want to see tarnishing a yet-untarnished planet?

[ww520]

1) The environmental burden is simply offshored from the West to China along with offshore manufacturing. The environmental impacts are also offshored since they suffer the majority of them. It's ludicrous for someone enjoying the fruit of globalization along with clean air and clean water to blame China for destroying the environment. No, you are the one destroying it since you are part of the globalization. You are the one allowing the multinationals to skew local environment laws by offshoring, in the guise of capitalism. You are the enabler of the environment problems.

2) What is China's absolutely atrocious record against the rest of the world?

3) This one is on the spot.

[anigbrowl]

Get over yourself. The US had a terrible environmental record until recently, and most conservatives want to see the EPA abolished; the US has been at least as expansionist as China internationally, if not more so; our human rights record is also atrocious. I don't mean just in historical terms, but in the ongoing travesty that is our prison-industrial complex.

This is not to excuse China's poor record by any means, but your sanctimony is unwarranted.

[tptacek]

The human rights record of the USA is not reasonably comparable to that of China.

I basically agree that the USA shouldn't be on a high horse with China regarding environmentalism, since China is doing precisely what the USA did when it originally industrialized. That doesn't make China's environmental travesties OK, but it does rob them of some moral impact, at least from Americans.

[anigbrowl]

China doesn't have political freedoms, but our incarceration rate is about 7 times higher than theirs; indeed, the USA has the highest incarceration rate in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...

I don't want to go way off-topic with this, but it's a pet issue of mine because I think it's a human-rights disaster.

[tptacek]

I probably agree with the principle behind your comment, but:

* Those incarceration numbers come from the Chinese government and haven't been audited by any third party (a perennial complaint about Chinese prison statistics)

* They don't necessarily capture every form of detention present in China, including forced labor camps, administrative detention, house arrest, and pre-trial holding.

* Speaking of which, Chinese police can (according to HRW) send people to "Reeducation Through Labor" camps for up to three years without trial.

* Something like 650MM Chinese live in rural poverty in the countryside; China also has a concomitantly low crime rate for its population. Another way to say this is that there are effectively two Chinas in a way there aren't two Americas.

* Not all incarceration is intrinsically bad. For instance, a recent survey of Cook County found violent domestic assaults made up a huge component of all offenders. China has rampant, endemic violent domestic abuse issues. If China is incarcerating fewer people in part because it's doing a worse job of protecting helpless people, that's not a great thing either.

* And of course, China imprisons people for political speech; it imprisons defense attorneys (for "obstructing justice") even in nonpolitical cases; it executes more of its citizens and for a much larger diversity of crimes; its citizens have far fewer due process protections (they can be held effectively indefinitely prior to trial even after recent reforms, they have no right to refuse interrogation, etc); it forcibly sterilizes women in prison; it harvests the organs of prisoners.

We should indeed imprison fewer people and of course end the war on drugs (already, we're seeing sharp drops in the number of people incarcerated for simple possession of cannabis) and our for-profit prison administration is fraught.

But let's keep perspective. It is ultimately pointless to compare criminal justice between a country that has the rule of law (even when that law is unjust) and one that simply doesn't have that. A comparison between the US and China is, unfortunately for both countries, unhelpful.

[anigbrowl]

We won't settle this here, although I'd like to offer lots of coutnerexamples. As I said earlier, it's not that I think China is so great as that I'm deeply disturbed by the flaws in the US criminal justice system. Maybe we should pick this up via email?

[angersock]

Think of the verdant fields that could be reduced to red dust!

Truly, an environmental catastrophe. They could render the planet uninhabitable. :(

[jlgreco]

Funny, but I think the actual concerns are more along the lines of "What happens if it works?"

If they accidentally unleash an Earth origin extremophile, it would have the potential to taint any any life that may already exist on Mars. This hypothetical life on Mars probably isn't of any real use to us, obviously it isn't megafauna or something, but it would be of unspeakable scientific importance. The chance to study live from an independent instance of abiogenesis.. I just can't find the words to describe how important that would be.

[anigbrowl]

We know all that. That's why we're being cautious about exploring it now; but we should be able to get a definitive answer on the presence or absence of Martian life within a decade or two. If there is life there, we'd be better off studying it iin situ than trying to transport it back and forth.

Present or not, we need to have some kind of strategy for how to survive there on a long term basic, either for a small-scale scientific mission or on a larger scale to terraform.

Besides, there are several other places in the solar system that have the potential to host life, such as Europa. I don't want we should spend so long sitting on our hands that another generation or more has to die without seeing the human race explore further. It irritates me that it's already 40 years since the last moon landing: http://xkcd.com/893/

[jlgreco]

Oh certainly, I feel the same way. We are definetly going to put humans on Mars eventually, and better sooner rather than later, but I think that it is something that needs to be done with an incredible amount of caution. There are definitely concerns about contamination that need to be considered carefully when planning such missions.

[leot]

If we find life on Mars, I'd wager it will end up being evidence for panspermia.

[jlgreco]

That is certainly a possibility. However contamination of Mars will make coming to that conclusion, if the evidence points to it, a great deal harder.

(Well, obviously contaminating Mars is itself panspermia, but not really of the interesting sort. A confirmed instance of "natural" panspermia would tell us a lot about what we can expect about the distribution of life throughout the universe.)

[saraid216]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection

http://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/

[nitrogen]

Is it really that difficult to understand that some of us have the foresight to realize that China's method of interfacing with its environment is not something that we want to see tarnishing a yet-untarnished planet?

What does it mean to "tarnish" a lifeless planet? Or even Earth for that matter? Every single kilogram of hazardous material on Earth was here long before humans evolved; all we're doing is moving around what occurs naturally. In the worst case, the same would be true of Mars.

[soperj]

That's not actually true. Case in point, cfcs.

[danielweber]

I think the thing most likely to give America a swift kick in the back of their pants about their space program is hearing that China is going to do it first.

There's a whole lot to be skeptical about here, but even rumors can kick off a space race.

[patrickk]

Competition is good.

Perhaps NASA will get more funding for Mars missions as a result of this. Everybody wins long-term.

It's a shame that it takes a threat of one-upmanship to get people off their asses rather than doing it for the sake of scientific endeavour, but that's human nature.

[Jach]

I see mixed opinions whenever Elon Musk comes up. Perhaps your sample size of comments for both Elon Musk and China is insufficient. Indeed, when you posted your comment in this thread, there were less than 10 other comments.