I've been following Carmack since the .plan day. He's a very smart and hardworking guy. Putting a person on Mars sounds like an epic and audacious stunt, but I can't figure out why he would think there's any reason it's something we would need to do as a species.
Take a moment and truly envision the alternative. What if we don't explore space? Are we content remaining confined to Earth for eternity? Do we stay on earth and watch ourselves destroy the environment, watch our resources dwindle, and sit back as the sun decays into a red giant and envelopes our planet?
The choice is obvious.
In my opinion, after a certain point, will become an economic necessity; i.e. a lack of resources on earth & cheaper manufacturing costs in space will drive humanity spacebound.
"As a species" is the right scale. I think if we could put a person on Mars it would mean we've learned to do so much more then just that and were on the path to go further still.
If we have a viable self-sufficient colony outside of Earth (even on the moon or in space) humanity has a better chance of survival if we manage to mess up our planet too badly to fix.
I still can't think of what sequence of disasters would lead to Earth being less habitable than Mars. Earth still supported life the day after the meteor hit. To bring Earth down to Mars level something would have to remove all the atmosphere, remove all the mineral resources, remove the oceans, and screw up gravity and the diurnal cycle.
The other day there was an article on the front page titled "America Will Collapse by 2025." The article summarizes scenarios of America's possible downfall, based on a Pentagon report. Something that stood out was the role of "space" from a military perspective. "The airforce calls space the ultimate high ground." According to the report, the advantage of space is so significant that ceding control is tantamount to defeat. But I guess that story is not as wholesome and hopeful as getting to Mars.
Seems to me that Musk should be investing billions in tech for recycling. That will be critically important. Probably sounds too "green" for his current friend group, oops...
Whether or not we actually stick around on Mars, the mere thought that hundreds/thousands of us are going to walk on its surface within my lifetime is just so mind blowing and exciting to me. For the life of me I can't see why Musk is the only person in the world able to will such massive things into existence, and nobody else, irrespective of the level of wealth, is even trying. Shit, not even the nation states are trying anymore.
Unfortunately people are struggling to have a nice life. When you struggle, you don't really have the ability to look beyond a very local horizon. The best way to ignite passion among the population is to figure out how to fix the destruction of the middle class and allow people to dream beyond if they can make rent next month or worry about medical bills.
And nation states operate based upon the population's support. If the population was clambering for a mars trip, we'd do one, but without that support, it just won't happen.
I'm not talking about people who struggle. Plenty of rich MFs out there who aren't really doing anything anywhere near as inspirational with their wealth. I mean them, the people for whom a few billion here and there is not going to make much of a difference.
Life in the top nations isn't as comfortable as it once was. Politics are more childish and socially harmful than ever. The public consciousness is a less fertile place for developing the will and excitement for big-idea things like exploration.
While visiting the Smithsonian Natural History museum two years ago, I teared up while touching a piece of a Mars meteorite. I was filled with dread prior to the James Webb's launch and filled with elation after the dang thing actually worked.
I dunno, I'm just saying: I'm passionate about this stuff.
And yet IDGAF about putting people on Mars. Mars is a dead wasteland. It will always be a dead wasteland. It's freezing, there's radiation, there's very little atmosphere. Life on Mars would be so far beyond bleak that it's beyond imagination. There's no science humans can do there that probes can't do better for a given amount of money. There's also a much higher risk of accident and death than the moon landings, and such things have a potential to be huge net negatives for the whole space effort. Aside from billionaire tourism it's hard to imagine any economic benefit either, though I agree that shouldn't be a hard requirement for scientific progress.
If we had a way to get there and back and put settlements there cheaply and safely it might start to seem more exciting. That can never be a reality with current propulsion technology. Maybe in 50-100 years if fusion becomes a thing?
Excellent points by Carmack! We should be running 10-1000 experiments under the ocean with habitats. Would be extremely useful. Basically have nations compete like they did with the space race or arms races.
The space race was to the death. Both sides thought that losing meant they'd get nuked or taken over by the other. A narrative like that for Mars is harder. "We'll take over the red planet and come back and take over the earth! . . . Someday!"
For better or for worse, the equivalent race right now is in AI.
> The space race was to the death. Both sides thought that losing meant they'd get nuked or taken over by the other.
... Eh? No they didn't, certainly not by the time people were looking at the moon. By then the nuclear doctrine was very well established. The space race was primarily about _prestige_; it was a propaganda thing. That's why it was dropped so completely once the arbitrary goal was reached; little technology from the Soviet programme and virtually none from the US one were used after both countries reoriented around lower-cost space programmes.
In hindsight, the moon race was pretty close to pure propaganda.
I'm not entirely sure they knew it at the time, though. It was likely a bit of a land grab as well?
The moon is potentially a treasure trove. Bringing anything back to Earth is obviously the challenge because of the energy expenditure but in the 50s and 60s they were considering nuclear-powered craft (Project Orion) and at the time, mining the moon probably seemed like it might have been feasible in the next 50 years.
little technology from the Soviet programme and virtually
none from the US one were used after both countries
reoriented around lower-cost space programmes.
Is this really true? We stopped putting people on the moon, but we certainly kept putting things into space (military and otherwise) and was much of that know-how not directly informed by the technology developed for Apollo? Building life support systems, the rockets themselves, etc.
I'm open to correction/clarification; I'm not an expert obviously.
> but we certainly kept putting things into space (military and otherwise) and was much of that know-how not directly informed by the technology developed for Apollo? Building life support systems, the rockets themselves, etc.
It was _informed_ by it, but, for instance the Saturn V's kerosene and hydrogen engines, developed at absolutely horrendous, unthinkable expense, on the justification that it was the moon race and that the cost would be amortised over expected hundreds or thousands of Saturn launches in the future, were thrown away (reusing the hydrogen one occasionally comes up as an idea, but has gone nowhere so far).
Same for the Soviet stuff, to a large extent; the N-1's engines, also very sophisticated, were essentially abandoned (though a derivative was used a long, long time later in a Soyuz launcher). The Soviets did at least keep the Soyuz orbital vehicle (originally developed for their moon programme), but little else.
This all made sense at the time; there suddenly wasn't much money, so reverting to the less capable, less complex, arguably by then previous-gen launchers was rational. But it was really a demonstration that, by then, neither state took any of this at all seriously (even before Apollo 11, the Soviets had all but abandoned their programme); if it had really been seen as a matter of national security, the Saturn C-5N and N1F and all the rest of the planned evolutions would have launched in their hundreds.
