This should win a Pulitzer defector.com/neither-elon... - ThreadSky

burghpunk.bsky.social • 236 days ago

This should win a Pulitzer

https://defector.com/neither-elon-musk-nor-anybody-else-will-ever-colonize-mars?giftLink=9546e05ce56577db0e6e9cf6f3bf9955

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seospider.bsky.social•235 days ago

Yeah but the author didn't consider using the hyperloop to get to Mars. Rid ro quo Mr. Powers.

steenyswank.bsky.social•236 days ago

All the more reason to encourage Musk and his ilk to go there.

captain-mcfella.bsky.social•235 days ago

Musk just perpetuates this BS about a Mars colony and being a multi planet species because it perpetuates the "Tony Stark" myth that he is some mad genius that can do anything. People believe it and they either give him money or support. I believe his ego wants to be the first to put a man on Mars.

mmmmeier.bsky.social•234 days ago

No, it really shouldn't, sorry. Its not serious, scientifically informed writing, just a series of catchy tropes. No, Mars doesn't need a "magnetosphere" for people to live on it. No one claims you can introduce ordinary plants to the surface of Mars to magically transform it into a second Earth.

mmmmeier.bsky.social•234 days ago

Also, humans settling Mars is not the same thing as giving up on Earth. It can just be a question of expanding human civilization to these currently lifeless worlds out there. Not only Mars, but also Ceres, Mercury, the moons of the gas giants, and many more. Other star systems, eventually.

mmmmeier.bsky.social•234 days ago

Africa is still inhabited, even though humans moved out of there. Expanding humanity from the East African Rift valley to all of Earth (including, gasp, the deadly polar regions! The lifeless deserts! Crazy dangerous island hopping in the Pacific!) has created a much larger diversity of cultures.

jamula.bsky.social•235 days ago

Elon's Mars = Trump's Steaks

ummagummibear.bsky.social•236 days ago

And along the same lines, this classic:

https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm#fn63

charliemb.bsky.social•236 days ago

But we can still send Musk there, right? Like it's bad, sure, but it's not THAT bad.

hipstersasquatch.bsky.social•234 days ago

FUCKING THANK YOU!

There IS one method to make Mars livable for humans, but which we will never do: gradually introducing engineered microorganisms to make it less hellish. We'd never do it, bc, for one, it would take centuries of unified vision. Millennia, possibly.

With that, no reason to leave!

hipstersasquatch.bsky.social•234 days ago

If we all agreed on the path forward to *protect the Earth's livability* for, say, the next 500 years, Mars terrafirning would be nothing more than a silly vanity project.

hipstersasquatch.bsky.social•234 days ago

But if we all agreed they we wanted to duck around with Mars, by seeding it with microorganisms, deposited near the remaining water ice deposits, that would (VERY gradually, due to sheer inhospitableness) remove the perchlorates in the soil of that region, we could do that.

hipstersasquatch.bsky.social•234 days ago

It still wouldn't make Mars any warmer or wetter, and it would do fuck-all about the lack of a magnetosphere, but it would be one obstacle conquered. One down, multiple insurmountable ones to go!

tyrotcm.bsky.social•236 days ago

"In a saner society, a rich guy with Musk's well-known and unapologetically expounded views would sooner find himself under a guillotine than atop a space agency with the power to dragoon the world's resources into his k-hole John Galt cosplay."

Fucking poetry.

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