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this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Because it's better to have a backup than to put all your eggs in one basket.
Leave Mars alone. It is deeply immoral to send people there now. People have no business going there until we have thoroughly explored it and ruled out the possibility of indigenous microbial life. By studying such life, we may prove a second Genesis or prove the theory of panspermia. Either would have profound implications for our knowledge of the abundance of life in the universe. If we contaminate Mars, which sending humans would inevitably do, we may have to go all the way to another star system before we get another chance at answering these questions.
Let the billionaire space cadets stick to the asteroids and the Moon. Leave Mars the Hell alone. If after a few centuries of exploration we've thoroughly ruled out the presence of indigenous life, only then can we consider putting actual human beings on the surface.
It's much easier and more effective to do science with people and labs in-situ than with slow, complex robots. The first people to land on mars will be scientists. We won't be in a position to mess up the martian environment for generations. Stop spreading fear and propaganda. If finding life is what you're after, Europa, Enceladus, Titan and Ganymede are much safer bets than Mars. Those worlds are completely inhospitable to humans, so there's little to no chance that we mess them up. I'd much rather we start colonizing the moon, due to the relative ease of access, but due to its low gravity (and razor-sharp regolth particles) it isn't a great place for humans.
I'd argue it's actually immoral not to colonize mars. There will be no future humanity if we blow ourselves up here without a sustainable city elsewhere in the solar system.
Why is it so important to keep humanity going?
Because we're the most complex beings capable of the greatest changes to the environment anywhere in the universe, as far as we know. That's worth keeping around, IMO.
We are also fucking up the planet we live on like a cancer. The planet would be better without us, and there is no reason to think we wouldn't fuck up any other planet we went to. Just because we have abnormally large brains doesn't make us anything special.
I agree with everything you said up until your last point. The fact that we can fuck up the planet this bad is a testament to our ability to build, solve problems and work together. That isn't just a byproduct of large brain size (dolphins and whales have larger brains) but also our status as social animals, invention of language and writing.
Wouldn't the earth and all its creatures be better served if we put heavy industry into space? Better yet, most of humanity? I'd love nothing more than for us to scour the asteroid belt and build a ringworld. But before we do that, we need an outpost on Mars.