Thoughts on colonizing Mars?

Thoughts on colonizing Mars?

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space.com/8541-6-private-companies-launch-humans-space.html
jacobinmag.com/2017/02/mars-elon-musk-space-exploration-nasa-colonization/
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A pointless fantasy until we figure out a way to live on Earth that isn't incredibly self-destructive.

A lot of cappys are obsessed with this kind of stuff. Maybe we can send them all there.

Fuck that, I want red mars.

We definitely should colonize Mars.

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Ah, yes, nothing like perpetuating human suffering. Isn't one planet bad enough.

I'm down for it under a Commie society

You people are crypto-imperialists, you will awaken horrors you cannot begin to comprehend, I hope Lovecraftian macrobes enslave all of you when you uncover ancient artifacts on the edge of keiper belt. Pray you all die of exposure before you unlock the evil that lies in space

That sounds like a plus to me. Humanity is gagging for some real outside monsters to fight.

God created this universe for humanity`s benefit. It would be against his will to not use these gifts as we please.

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lol dude how funny would it be if zionists colonized Mars. planet israel dude lmao

#FreePalaaystine

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all of the universe is the property of g*ds chosen tbh

MCRN is kinda leftist/nazbol.

this guy knows what's up

this guy knows what's up (why did this not post the first time?)

venus is a giant hellish fart cloud dude

In this moment I am euphoric.

Read Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.
It's all about terraforming Mars. It takes a very scientific bent, getting into the nuts and bolts of exactly how terraforming would work.
But it also explores the economic, social, political, and even psychological ramifications of humans living on another planet. It's also Marxist as fuck. They even talk about Marx's relation to Hegel at one point.
Basically, people get sent to Mars because capitalism is having another crisis, and Russia and the US are attempting to use their space programs as a kind of last gasp, to mine expensive minerals that are rare on Earth. A lot of workers get shipped to Mars by corporations, and generally get treated like shit. A lot more happens, but that's sort of the background for the whole thing.

I think we'll do it at some point. It will be the first great terraforming project. The knowledge we gain from colonizing and terraforming Mars will then be put to use when we start expanding to other solar systems.


Venus is a shitshow, and we couldn't terraform it like we could Mars. Here's a quote from Carl Sagan about it:
Mars, on the other hand, has loads of water, nitrates (which can be converted into N2), and carbon dioxide (which can be converted into oxygen). It has a day that's only a few minutes longer than Earth's. And it has an atmosphere that won't corrode your spacesuit or crush you like a bug from the pressure. The only part of the terraforming process that would take a very long time (as in, more than a century) would be the oxygenation (converting CO2 to O2) and possibly the denitrification (converting the nitrites). At most, that would take 900 years. If we make some sort of breakthrough or develop a more efficient method, it might take no more than 100. If we heat the polar caps by just 4 Kelvin, a runaway greenhouse effect will melt them. We can even create a space elevator using current construction methods and materials–ordinary Kevlar!–due to the reduced gravity. In the long term, an artificial magnetosphere could be created by constructing 12 planet-encircling latitudinal superconducting rings, each carrying 10 GW (or possibly less). These rings could serve as a planet-wide power storage and distribution infrastructure, to reduce their cost.
Can you tell I've thought about this?

More like Liberate Mars, Porkies will be there by the early 30's.
space.com/8541-6-private-companies-launch-humans-space.html

didn't mean to sage.

It's extremely good

Haven't you read any Gene Wolfe?

In this moment, you're not making an argument.

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really makes you think

Mars belongs to the communists. It's red

READ "RED MARS", ALL OF YOU

Here are some quotes from Red Mars:

Yeah, they're used to colonising abandoned strips of nothing and making something out of it. Does this mean there will be space tankies and space baathists showing up to try and steal their shit tho?

Red Mars is based, though Green Mars is good too since it actually offers a vision of the planet post-revolution, and illustrates the creation of an anarchistic post-scarcity automated planetary society.

Blue Mars is where the trilogy shits the bed though, and starts wandering off into bullshit trying to rationalize away the massive crisis brought on by clinical immortality being discovered halfway into the first book.

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Yeah, I haven't read Blue Mars yet, but I hear it's a real drag compared to the other two books.

Also, the life extensions were a retarded concept to begin with. I get that they were kind of necessary from a plot perspective, so we could have long-term characters with consistent points of view, instead of just jumping to new characters every time someone dies of old age. But it was kind of lazy, and it's probably the least scientifically realistic thing in the book.
And the science these days indicates that normal people just can't live past the age of 115 anyway.

hm, maybe the Twitter tankies aren't so crazy with all their conspiracy theories about the Kurds

can confirm the Red Mars trilogy fucking rules.

But it as an argument, being a christfag in a science fiction novel? Nigga pls.

It could be possible. We could terraform venus by using an extremophile algues. It whould be far more habitable than mars, and a technology to efficiently transport mined materials from mars has yet to be discoverd, so Venus sounds like the best fit.

How? There's too much gas in the atmosphere. The only way to solidify it would be to somehow lower the temperature, but even if you did, as soon as you raised it again to make it livable for humans, the gases would all sublimate again.
It's much easier to work with materials that are already present, than to import or expel planet-altering quantities of matter. That's what makes Mars a much better (and, I think, the only realistic) option for colonization and terraforming.

What about mercury?

I don't know. A single day on Mercury lasts almost 2 months, which means the temperature variance is extreme. It looks like there's probably water ice at the poles, so that's promising.
I haven't really done much research on terraforming Mercury, but from the little I know, it seems like it would just be an inferior version of Mars–vastly longer solar day, vastly wider temperature extremes, no evidence of liquid or subsurface water (though, to be fair, we haven't looked very hard, there might be some subsurface water ice). It does have a magnetosphere, unlike Mars, but it's a weak one and so we'd probably have to build an artificial one to complement it, especially given its proximity to the Sun.

Keep the red planet red!!

jacobinmag.com/2017/02/mars-elon-musk-space-exploration-nasa-colonization/

Any leftist worth his or her salt knows that space colonialism must be stopped, just like every other form of colonialism.

We must stand with Mars in its fight against Earthling imperialism! Combat moon liberalism!

2spicy4me

united states of space nigga, ain't even matter if people can't live on the surface

Mars colonization is a pipe dream. People wasted enough resources on stupid shit like cars, why should we burn the rest of the planet just to get a big fucking rock with nothing on it?

Well terraforming use a lot of energy and matter too, how do you expect to get it?

It will begin within the next few centuries, at most.

1. The resources required to get 400,000 people to Mars (the minimum needed for long-term genetic viability) isn't that much, relatively speaking, and the costs will only come down as space travel becomes more efficient. (For example, the reusable rockets that SpaceX is fielding.)
2. There's actually quite a lot on Mars, it's more than just a big rock. It has water, carbon dioxide (and so, eventually, oxygen), nitrates, and probably a bunch of minerals that are less common on Earth. It also has large amounts of deuterium, which is useful for nuclear energy.
3. The point of space colonization is to ensure that humanity's eggs aren't all in one basket–to make humanity unkillable. I can't think of a more worthy pursuit.

I forgot to respond to this part:
You'd have an entire planet of resources at your disposal. m80. Use the deuterium to construct nuclear power plants. Build solar panels and other infrastructure by mining and using automated self-replicating machines. At the end of the day, the planet's materials and the Sun's energy provide all the matter and energy you need for terraforming. We're not going to be shipping oxygen in bulk from Earth or anything as stupid as that.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I hope that all attempts to colonize other planets fails catastrophically. We must force Porky to stay here and fix the immense shitshow he created, or else he'll fuck off to another planet to grow fat on its resources, locust-like, while we have to survive in a Hobbesian nightmare of a barren Earth.

I have fantasies about some bougie country launching a colony ship with much fanfare and all, only for it to be immediately shot down by an ancom power laying down the law: no one gets out until there's no longer any need to get out.

I think we'll abolish capitalism before (or, at worst, shortly after) space colonization begins.
lolno
That job will fall to workers in a classless society. You can't "force" the bourgeoisie to do anything–if you could, they wouldn't be in power anymore. That's the whole point of revolution.

I don't think you noticed, but Porky has put that project on the fastest track. He really wants his lifeboat.

That's what bombings, kidnappings, terrorizing Porky etc. are for, user. The fight for a classless society includes forcing Porky to stay here whether he likes it or not.

Is that why NASA is terminally underfunded?
I'd rather just go all the way and actually, you know, seize the means of production and create a classless society, rather than drag environmental concessions out of the bourgeoisie for as long as possible.

Who needs big gubmint when private space companies are all the rage now? Noble visionaries like Elon Musk will take us to the stars :^)

Why not both? Besides, we have to force them to stay here because they'll skedaddle before we can properly kill them.

It's not possible in this century unless there is some unexpected break through in space craft. Anyone who thinks there will be a colony in thier lifetime is a moron.

Communism is an imperative on Earth; it's the cradle of our species and thus we must do all we can to preserve our ecology, and ensure an egalitarian future for humanity.

I am wondering though, couldn't we flip the "gay space communism" meme on its head and encourage capitalists to leave Earth and colonize space instead? Outer space has a natural scarcity of essential resources, and voyaging there represents an actual risk to those who construct spacecraft. Make Earth communist, but allow capitalist accumulation on Mars and areas outside Earth's gravity. It might serve as a useful 'safety valve' for those who would be unwilling to live in a future global communist society.

Nobody who has some knowledge on the subject actually thinks that. Private firms are becoming more capable in low Earth orbit, but anything beyond that is still viable only for governments.
Because revolution = classless society = no bourgeoisie and proletariat = no ruling class from which to extract concessions–it's like asking permission from your slavemaster to fix all the problems he created, after you've already imprisoned him and freed yourself.

No, it doesn't. It just requires a lot of work to transform them into a usable form. We shouldn't explicitly encourage people to "spread capitalism to space," because at some point, that could actually work, at least for a while, and that would be counterproductive.

Although, in the long run, automation will inevitably destroy capitalism and lead to communism, regardless of the desires of any person or group. Materialist conception of history and all that.

Third quote and response meant for

Who the fuck, if living in a future communist society on Earth, would say, "You know what? I'm just not being exploited enough. Come, my fellow workers, let us engage in hierarchical, exploitative relationships in space!"
That's an absurd notion.

Yeah, I guess your anthropocentric conception of God designed some of us with a propensity for war, murder and rape just for our benefit, you dim-witted faggot.

say it with me

RED
FACTION

RIP THQ.

Sociopaths, edgy kids, misanthropes. I'm sure there will be a few. It'd be naive to think everyone would accept even a truly benevolent society.
I'd just prefer to send them into space, rather than exile or murder them.

Or you could just not give them their way. If a group of people on Earth really wanted to be slaves and/or own slaves, we wouldn't launch them to Mars to accommodate them, we'd tell them to fucking deal with it.