Going to Mars: Same as a Personal Flying Car?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I know this subject has probably been brought up in one form or another here, but, in light of the recent tragedy of Richard Branson’s fantasy rocket program, how many of you here – and I know that there are lots of very, very bright minds in this room – seriously actually think that a human being will “step off the lander” and utter the words “That’s one step for British Petroleum and a giant leap for James Cameron” or something similar as they set foot on Mars within the next five decades?

I lived through the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs and I think I was somewhat aware of Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard’s descent to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, but somehow, somewhere, I just do not believe with any fiber of my being that not only this delirious hallucination that ANYONE will be going to Mars is going to happen – at least while anyone now reading this is going to be alive.

I put it in the same category as Ray Kurzweil’s loopy “Singularity” theory (and while we’re on the subject of loops, also the “Hyper Loop” that is also never going to happen, or the carbon nanotube elevator to space).

I mean, it’s great to dream, and yes, humanity HAS achieved the seemingly impossible: creating atomic weapons and landing men on the moon – but these were ultra-super-mega projects on the same scale as, say, assembling an army for the invasion of Normandy, not isolated little projects by vainglorious billionaires such as Elon Musk or Richard Branson.

I really, really wonder how much Leonardo diCaprio is reconsidering that ticket on Branson’s Galactic Virginmobile now . . .

I personally am of the opinion that all of these projects or events mentioned above will either not take place in any of our lifetimes, nor probably, will ever take place at all.

I remember reading in the early 70s some scientific magazine along the lines of Popular Science where they mentioned “biochips” – somehow that particular word has remained in my memory – and how they would be taking the place of transistors (I don’t think the CPU was a well-known technology in 1971) to create computers that would be a million times more powerful than the-then supercomputer of its day, the Kray XVI, or whatever it was back then.

So, to distill my question into just one sentence, just how overly optimistic ARE we about things like men on Mars in our lifetimes? I have already stated my opinion: I think it’s about as likely as Jesus coming down to earth to pass His Final Judgments upon us poor apostates.

2

I’d be very surprised if someone doesn’t walk on Mars in the next 20-30 years. I would be surprised if it were the USA, as opposed to, say, China, that does it. Our space glory days are behind us, but there are nations that are currently doing the “mega” projects, and have a lot of national pride behind succeeding, and Mars seems the obvious next “never been done before, and we pulled it off, yay us!” step.

Sure, there are technological hurdles, and a lot of risk, but as a species we’ve dealt with both.

3

It’s certainly technically feasible to land a human being on Mars without resorting to the need for extreme science fiction.

That’s where it’s different from the Singularity, which is mostly a loaded SF term. There’s never been any real scientific support for the notion of a Singularity, while a manned voyage to Mars is not such an extreme idea, technologically speaking.

What has been lacking for Mars projects has mostly been money. If we kept NASA funded at Apollo levels (or more) adjusted for inflation and told them in 1970 to get cracking, we’d likely have gotten somebody over there and back by now. We’re telling NASA to make the attempt with a fraction of the resources they need. Of course, that will eventually lead to failure, but not due to any fundamental scientific reasons.

The current issue with Virgin, SpaceX and other companies is that they don’t have Cold War era conditions. They need to show an eventual profit and can’t kill too many of their employees (unlike the US and USSR). So, they’re focusing where they can make a good return on investment, i.e. space tourism and cargo. And even so, they’ve killed fewer people than the US and old USSR in developing their technology. They necessarily have to be more risk averse, which means sticking mostly closer to home.

You may be right that we won’t land a human being on Mars within our current lifetime. But that won’t be an issue with scientific development (we’re mostly there now) but will political will and the lack of funding.

4

There’s no question that someone could do it given enough time, money and resources, but the question is whether anyone would do it given the tremendous cost and risk involved.

It would be a boondoggle since it’s not like colonies on Mars are needed any time soon. Would a country like China be willing to spend the money just to show everyone that they can do it? I doubt it.

It mattered that the US beat the Russians to the moon, but does it really matter that China, or anyone else, beats the US, or Europe or Russia to Mars? Aren’t there better ways to spend that money here on earth, for example dealing with the effects of global warming?

5

The first human will step foot on Mars ten years after we decide to go. There’s nothing inherently hard about it. We just haven’t decided to go yet. And maybe we won’t decide to go until after we have cheap access to space, but that’s OK, because that’s going to happen sooner or later anyway. The biggest obstacle to a space elevator is the development of the material needed, and we know that material is theoretically possible, and would be enormously practical (and profitable) for a great many other applications. Develop nanofiber for use in golf clubs and fishing line and suspension bridges, and the elevator will follow soon after.

The money for a Mars trip would all be spent here on Earth.

6

Where else do you think that money will be spent? Do they lift barrels of hundred dollar bills into orbit and use them as protection against cosmic rays so the astronauts don’t start stretching or turning invisible?

Americans spent an estimated $350 million on Halloween costumes for their pets. Shouldn’t they spend that dealing with the effects of global warming? Americans will spend an estimated $200 million on Kim Kardashian’s Hollywood app. Shouldn’t they spend that dealing with the effects of global warming? The NFL’s revenues this year will be an estimated $9.5 billion. Shouldn’t Americans spend that dealing with the effects of global warming?

There must be worst arguments against spending that money, but I don’t want to hurt my brain by hearing them.

7

I doubt you will find much factual information on this question.

Here’s a previous thread/poll on Mars footsteps from IMHO.

8

I can imagine a group of university graduates and their clever friends in the mid 15th century sitting in a tavern and discussing the idea about sailing across the Atlantic to find a new continent. “Waste of money.” “What’s the point - There’s nothing there.” “They will fall of the edge.” “Better to build a new wing on the uni.”

Of course when Q Izzy and King Ferdy anteed up the necessary, off he went and found the Bahamas.

9

I’d be surprised if someone walks on Mars in the next 10-20 years and ever makes it back to Earth alive. This is so much more complex than landing on the Moon, I don’t believe anyone knows a practical way to land on Mars and then leave the planet again, all packaged up into a multi-year transport system to get there in the first place. With enough resources applied maybe in 30 years it’s possible, but short of technology breakthroughs or some tremdendous socio-economic change it’s not going to happen. Attempted, maybe.

10

Not a chance. The Martians charge for parking.

11

The difference is, the lands Columbus and the other explorers found were habitable, often richer in natural bounty than their homelands. Not every historical analogy works for space exploration, at least not any kind of space exploration that might be possible in the foreseeable future.

It’s not an irrelevant argument at all.

I think it’s clear that this would have to be a national or (more likely) multinational effort funded by government(s), as it’s completely beyond the scope of any private enterprise, not that any private enterprise would have any motivation to do such a thing. Its value, such as it may be, is entirely scientific. And the problem of political will and money is the rather stunning absence of any compelling reason for manned expeditions to Mars or anywhere else, since the pursuit of scientific knowledge – the value of which I’d be the first to passionately acknowledge – is already being achieved by robotics on an impressive scale. And this absence of compelling reason is all the more persuasive when juxtaposed with the troubles of an increasingly resource-stressed population right here on Earth, and the demands it makes on our limited economies and our finite problem-solving capacity.

And that’s why it’s not an irrelevant argument. From the perspective of increasingly scarce resources for a burgeoning population and its deleterious effects on the environment it does become a direct question of allocation of limited resources from the common wealth. And the question boils down to this: what should be the relative priority of spending many hundreds of billions of dollars and dedicating priceless scientific and engineering resources to finding a way to live on Mars when we haven’t yet found a sustainable way to live on Earth?

If you couple that kind of entirely reasonable priority question with the observation that robotics has already done a great job of exploring the solar system and is only going to get better, at a fraction of the cost of human exploration, the case for manned planetary exploration in the foreseeable future seems weak indeed.

12

Since the OP is seeking opinions, let’s move this to IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

13

Within the next five decades?

Well, let me seriously actually tell you that although I believe we may well have the technical ability to reach Mars during the next 50 years, I can’t imagine how we could ever keep sufficient control over our own greedy and violent natures to prevent ourselves from F’ing things up to the point, where we won’t have the resources to take a 300 mile car trip - let alone a trip from Earth to Mars.

I don’t think there is any need for me to bring up all the problems we must solve in order to remain alive in 50 years. IMO, everyone reading this forum is well aware of them.

But, it is now time to have a good cry and say goodbye. Time to bend over and kiss our selves goodbye. Because I can’t imagine how the human race could ever make it for another 50 years. I’m sorry - seriously actually sorry.

14

Except nobody was trying to find a new continent. Columbus sailed across the Atlantic to try and find a shortcut to India (partially because he underestimated the radius of the Earth). Nobody had any idea land was where it is, including Columbus. Most people were defeatist about it because they figured it was all ocean between Portugal and some of the archipelagos off East Asia.

When it comes down to it, others were right about the size of the Earth and Columbus was wrong. I’m not going to go so far as to call Columbus a lucky idiot, but his plan “succeeded” for all the wrong reasons.

Just because something worked out in hindsight doesn’t mean it was actually a good idea at the time.

Edit: To be clear, I do support Mars expeditions, but I think the analogy fails. If anything comparing it to Columbus’ journeys makes it seem more like a bad idea.

15

Regarding the Singularity : I take it you believe there is no support for the notion of exponential growth? You don’t believe in self replicating machinery or robotics? I take it you don’t believe in the existence of bacteria, either?

Stripped of the hype, the “Singularity” is based on a few simple and undeniable observations, backed by centuries of scientific knowledge. In parentheses I reference each scientific fact or principle I base a statement on.

  1. The intelligence of human beings is limited by biology, which has not changed by very much in thousands of years. (DNA tests, theories of evolution, et al)

  2. It is possible to make machines that can perform any physical task performed by a human being, including making other such machines. (modern robotics competitions)

  3. The materials to make machines are spread throughout the earth’s crust and other planetary bodies. Near-infinite energy is available from the sun and certain forms of controlled fission. (spectrographs of the earth’s crust, the existence of solar panels and nuclear breeder reactors)

  4. The human brain is a complex network of atoms that perform computations as determined by the laws of physics. (physical laws, Hogkin and Huxley, countless other researchers)

Given these undeniable scientific facts, what the Singularity really says is that :

At some future date, humans will invent machines that can be made to self-replicate, growing exponentially until all available raw materials have been exhausted. At the start of the singularity, earth has, within 1 order of magnitude, about the industrial capacity we have today. At the end state, it has many orders of magnitude as much.

Part and parcel to this is that humans will also invent some form of synthetic mind that can be manufactured using the same exponentially replicating factories. These minds will have, at a minimum, the same intelligence as the engineers and scientists who developed it. More than likely, it will be able to self-improve to the greatest intelligence that the laws of physics and resource limitations will allow.

A world where entire moons have been ripped into factories, and intelligent beings who outstrip humans in every practical aspect is not one recognizable to humans today. It’s also not practical to predict what might happen in such a world - current geographical and cultural knowledge would be worthless.

Note that the technical details of exactly how the Singularity happens are to be determined. These factories might look like the massive workhouses in China, just staffed with shiny humanoid robots instead. Or, instead, atomically precise manufacturing (previously known as nanotechnology) might allow these factories to replicate themselves with minimum subunits thousands of times smaller, fitting into a shipping container instead.

The artificial intelligences might be purely artificially creations, known as AGI, essentially a juiced up version of Watson. Or they might be created by ripping the neural connection patterns from human minds by preserving human brains and scanning them. Or, we might discover that there is something “magic” about biological neurons and be forced to use living cells on a chip in a life support tank. No matter the method, this form of intelligence would not need to be “taught” more than once : you would be able to duplicate “educated” intelligent machines over and over, and they would be forever repairable and upgradeable.

Regardless, unless you disagree with thousands of separate and independent parts of known scientific knowledge, stating that “There’s never been any real scientific support for the notion of a Singularity” is pure bull.

16

Assuming the materials were developed tomorrow. How would they lift a 22,236 mile cable into orbit, and how would they then lower the end to Earth?

17

To throw a few more criticisms on (yep, I am pro Singularity but I think space elevators are a bad idea that is unlikely to ever be practical on Earth)

  1. How do you make sure there is not a structural flaw somewhere in 22,236 miles of cable made of the strongest fibers ever created?

  2. What happens if a deliberate attack or a natural event causes damage to a piece of the cable?

  3. You can only send up a few climber cars at a time to avoid overstressing the cable. This means that this elevator represents a huge capital investment (billions of dollars) yet there’s a very real capacity limit on how many “launches” (climbs) you can do per year. If you need to produce 10% of the capital cost of the cable in revenue, annually, and each climb takes about a week, how many (hundred?) million dollars does this tack on per climb? Whatever the cost of the electricity is to run the climber cars, this cost dwarfs that.
    There’s others but these are the top 3. I suspect #3 is the showstopper : a space elevator flight/climb could easily end up costing just as much or more as a conventional rocket launch done efficiently, per kilogram put into orbit.

#2 makes #3 much worse. Every space elevator you install, it’s a matter of time before something breaks somewhere and the cable comes down. Even if no real damage is done by a crashing elevator cable, this problem means that you have to get an elevator cable paid for quickly enough to pay for it to be replaced when it breaks. So there’s pressure to make enough revenue just to replace the cable. That drives costs for the, uh, “lift tickets” up even more.

18

Re: Singularity vs Humans on Mars

As other posters have noted, the technological challenges of landing humans on Mars are high but not intractable. The political challenges are just as, if not more, important.

That’s a fundamentally different situation from the Singularity. Popular Science did an article on this (and other similar topics) earlier this year, that summarized much more simply and elegantly than I can.

And a counter-point that sort of but doesn’t actually refute that article.

The take away is NOT that we won’t get increasingly impressive AI but that some kind of quasi-religious “divide by zero” moment is inevitable based on our previous progress. It may be possible but not inevitable. Or might not be possible, given human limitations (we’re the ones who have to get there in the first place, after all).

19

I wasn’t intending my question to be a criticism. Chronos knows a lot mopre about this stuff than I do. If he says it can be done, he’s probably right. But I want to know how.

Nobody in a black hat will be allowed within a mile of the base.

I’ve heard it said that once the first one has been built, many more can be built very cheaply.

20

Bit by bit. The same way we lifted the ISS into orbit.