Fifty SpaceX Falcon BFR could technically enable sustainable orbital colonies for 2 million people

NO, that is the wrong outlook.

It is more within our power to fix Earth than it is to make Mars a planet that can support life. We can't even fix Detroit and you want us to engineer a planet from a barren wasteland with no breathable oxygen or drinkable water.

If you want to fix Earth and then look for other options, I'm game.

This leaving Earth and making pretend we have back up options out there is just a tremendously irresponsible, selfish, and short term view.

You make it sound like humanity is incapable of taking on more than one thing at a time. What do you do for a living? I hope you're some sort of clean energy engineer.

We've located Earth-like planets billions of miles away, but we have no evidence to confirm whether or not they're capable of supporting human life, or if they even have water or atmospheres. We've located planets like ours nears stars like ours at similar distances from those stars, but again we have no evidence to support whether or not they're capable of supporting life and they're well beyond our range.

At this point in time, humans traveling to and landing on Mars is just a theory, let alone some other planet light years away.

We have no ability or technology to terraform Earth, let alone a planet that is millions and billions of miles away. It's a fantasy at this point

If we can't terraform Earth while we're already here we're not going to be able to terraform an alien planet billions of miles away.

Do you think it's possible that travelling to Mars, even if we don't make it livable except within man-made structures, will improve our space travel technology and knowledge to begin travelling deeper into our solar system, and eventually out of it? It seems to me like we will never have the abilities to travel deep into space until we begin doing so, and Mars is obviously our best first option.
 
You make it sound like humanity is incapable of taking on more than one thing at a time. What do you do for a living? I hope you're some sort of clean energy engineer.



Do you think it's possible that travelling to Mars, even if we don't make it livable except within man-made structures, will improve our space travel technology and knowledge to begin travelling deeper into our solar system, and eventually out of it? It seems to me like we will never have the abilities to travel deep into space until we begin doing so, and Mars is obviously our best first option.

I think until you find a planet in our range that is livable out of box or provide proof that terraforming is even possible by humans, we need to fix what we've got going on here first because we can't live anywhere else.
 
Why can't we fix Detroit and our climate and ecosystems first?

Provide a proof of concept and then I'll be more willing to entertain the idea. At this point in time we don't have a fucking clue.


We have provided plenty of proof of concept, you must not pay attention to any of the threads. And yes we should fix Detroit and upgrade the entire city, tell you what....

Cut defense and give me 40B for nasa/science and STEM

And you take 100B and fix Detroit and everything eelse.
 
@Rational Poster

i agree we should fix things, but hell im asking for a pretty small increase to the nasa budget. Thats all, hell you want proof of concept wait tell the Zee german @JDragon comes in
 
We have provided plenty of proof of concept, you must not pay attention to any of the threads. And yes we should fix Detroit and upgrade the entire city, tell you what....

Cut defense and give me 40B for nasa/science and STEM

And you take 100B and fix Detroit and everything eelse.

Where have we terraformed anything?

We fixed global warming?

You're talking about climate engineering on a scale we've never even tried. You're making pretend we're going to be able to create an atmosphere from scratch when we can't even stop our own atmosphere that already exists from killing us.
 
I agree with everything you said. Like people were saying about Musk launching a car into space. I keep hearing how it will get kids interested in science and all this. Fantasy. Musk wants to be buried on Mars. So therefore he must use our taxpayer money to fulfill that ego of his. Elon Musk must die on Mars or we must find a way to get his corpse up there. We just must do that.

Not content to be the richest person in a cemetery. The richest person in a Mars cemetery.
Musk is one of today's greatest innovators and visionaries, but if he doesn't get his ego in check he'll just become another Mark Zuckerberg with no one to give a shit when or where he's burried.
 
At this point in time the only place in this universe mankind can survive is right fucking here bucko.

How about we work on terraforming Earth before we make pretend we can terraform Mars from scratch?
Oh but we absolutely do have proofs of concept for protecting and renourishing our environment on earth. It's no secret. The problem is you can't turn a profit on fixing ecosystems.

You need drastic measures like outlawing individual car ownership, very strict limits on water usage, outlawing ALL packaging of EVERY sort, banning all but the most efficient means of electricity, never mining a single mine without 100 miles of aquifers/bodies of water, etc.

To be realistic about fixing climate issues we have to take ourselves back centuries. So the next best idea for rich people is to just leave this rock, but continue to remain dependent on earth.

This is becoming an absurd pet project.
 
Oh but we absolutely do have proofs of concept for protecting and renourishing our environment on earth. It's no secret. The problem is you can't turn a profit on fixing ecosystems.

You need drastic measures like outlawing individual car ownership, very strict limits on water usage, outlawing ALL packaging of EVERY sort, banning all but the most efficient means of electricity, never mining a single mine without 100 miles of aquifers/bodies of water, etc.

To be realistic about fixing climate issues we have to take ourselves back centuries. So the next best idea for rich people is to just leave this rock, but continue to remain dependent on earth.

This is becoming an absurd pet project.

Until we can turn dirt into water Mars is a pipe dream for human civilization.
 
yep we should, why the mars colony is important.
Totally agree. All we need is to exercise some fiscal budgeting and reallocate some funding from other bloated programs. Manifest destiny for the twentieth century. Unfortunately, as a species, we sometimes need a kick in the ass to get the ball rolling.
 
Regardless of whatever problems we face on earth, we as a will eventually venture out further into space and colonize other planets. Humans are geared towards exploration and gaining new knowledge. Centuries ago, the same conversations were being held, "why should we colonize far away lands while our own country needs work?"
 
Stop saying none sense, and for the record we have already extracted water from dirty. :D

Enough to support human life?

Is the equipment on Mars? Can the equipment even function on Mars? Is it compact enough for space travel?

You're talking about extracting water from dirt, that implies the water is already there and we just take it out.

I'm talking about creating water from nothing.
 
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2 trillion dollars at least if not much much more. Elon sounds like Hadden from Contact.

 
Until we can turn dirt into water Mars is a pipe dream for human civilization.

Richard Feynman said there is plenty of room at the bottom. Talking about nanotech. I am saying it about the oceans. Why not start building shit down there? We know more about our solar system than our oceans. We are totally uninterested in the ocean.


Here is my pet idea: Werner Herzog made a great documentary on Antarctica. He was talking to diving scientist. What it is like down there. He said it is like a horror movie. So many monsters down there. Violence. lol. It is dangerous down there. So Herzog asked him the question, "Is that why life left oceans? To escape that?" And the scientist said yes, that is exactly what he believes.

So put it together: land life was originally marine life. the land was heaven to them. They finally reached it. Now they realize Earth is just as much hell as the water, so now we must go even higher. The higher heavens.

What dry land is to fish is what space is to human.

Watch this. We are that penguin

 
its not a waste, its a fantastic idea to get some stress off earth.

Not really, at least not until we get out of our addiction to fossi fuels.
 
Raptor rockets will be using liquid methane which could be produced using methanogenesis -- it also doesnt coke in the same way RP-1 does. Not sure how i feel about an orbital colony for the elite (unless im included) -- but its feasibility would not be nearly as wasteful as people think. Not like merlin rockets that uses 10'000 + barrels of oil per heavy launches.
 
Enough to support human life?

Is the equipment on Mars? Can the equipment even function on Mars? Is it compact enough for space travel?

You're talking about extracting water from dirt, that implies the water is already there and we just take it out.

I'm talking about creating water from nothing.


but but not enough resources or technology. According to you we will in 1845 and use steam engines
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/la...ace-industries-mine-asteroids-700-quintillion
 
Other than being cool, what would the point of that actually be? I think there's avenues for space tourism that won't require something this crazy expensive. Also, if something went wrong, you have the most fucked up diaster since the atom bomb.
 
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