Eventually, all life on Earth will be destroyed by the sun': Elon Musk explains his drive to colonize Mars

[Admin]

Elon Musk explained the rather depressing fate of life on Earth to Fox News host Jesse Waters, who had asked him why humanity should go to Mars.

Eventually, all life on Earth will be destroyed by the sun': Elon Musk explains his drive to colonize Mars : Read more

 

[Classical Motion]

Then there should be time to do it with minimum risk and minimum sacrifice.

 

[COLGeek]

So if the Sun destroys the Earth, why would anyone assume Mars is safe (assuming we can get there and make habitable...) from the same phenomenon?

In addition, wouldn't there be overall impact to solar system stability given the demise of the three inner planets?

 

[whoknows]

Building stepping stones out of our solar system might be necessary in the very long term.

But when resources are limited more immediate threats need to be overcome imo.

The Musk/Trump approach reminds me of Ben Elton's novel, written in 1989, "Stark"

Stark (novel) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

" The environment is being destroyed by a series of 'avalanches' – sudden upsets in the Earth's ecosystem, causing widespread destruction. The Stark conspiracy is a cabal of the world's richest and most influential men, who have long been aware that the planet's ecosystem is approaching total collapse. For decades, they have been launching uncrewed spacecraft loaded with supplies into orbit around the Earth and the Moon. Seeking to save their own lives and leave everyone else to suffer from 'total toxic overload', they secretly build a fleet of spacecraft with the intention of colonising the Moon.

Using crude intimidation, they purchase land from aborigines in Western Australia to use as a launch site. They sell their stocks and commodities to raise cash, dumping the assets at the same time and in high volumes to engineer a worldwide stock market crash and lower the price of the resources they need. They buy the Moon from the United States government, along with the hardware to reach it."

Not a perfect comparison, but it is a novel.

 

[Ken Fabian]

I remain unconvinced. Sorry, but saving the human race from the sun a few hundred million years from now - 'eternal life for humanity' - is too far off and too feel-good combined with too unrealistic (too woke?) for my taste.

Even for 'saving' a few whilst the rest die from big meteors Mars leaves a lot to be desired. I'd rather we work at meteor defense than 'lifeboats' to a miserable wasteland where just surviving past the first generation will be an extraordinary achievement.

It is not feasible. To work as some kind of stepping stone to a future for humanity in space it has to be feasible. It needs an economic basis that works or it will be Earth perpetually subsidizing Mars colonies and saving them from extinction..

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Trying today to figure out what will be feasible in hundreds of millions of years is foolish.

Humans might be extinct by then for entirely unrelated reasons.

Or, humans may have learned how to reach other star systems hosting planets with naturally livable environments - using scientific knowledge gained by then but thought to be impossible today.

So, this discussion topic is just "noise" when it comes to deciding what to spend our money on today. Going to the Moon and to Mars is currently considered scientific exploration for the purpose of discovery, not colonization, by nearly everybody, except apparently Musk.

But, I have no objection to Musk spending his money to develop the technological systems needed for transport to and survival on Mars. Or the Moon if we pay him with tax dollars for the closer target that he wants to bypass.

We can use the technology, even if we don't want to colonize Mars.