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From Aeon Magazine:
Musk did not give me the usual reasons. He did not claim that we need space to inspire people. He did not sell space as an R & D lab, a font for spin-off technologies like astronaut food and wilderness blankets. He did not say that space is the ultimate testing ground for the human intellect. Instead, he said that going to Mars is as urgent and crucial as lifting billions out of poverty, or eradicating deadly disease.
‘I think there is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multi-planetary,’ he told me, ‘in order to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen, in which case being poor or having a disease would be irrelevant, because humanity would be extinct. It would be like, “Good news, the problems of poverty and disease have been solved, but the bad news is there aren’t any humans left.”’
(Score: 5, Insightful) by umafuckitt on Tuesday September 30 2014, @10:42PM
"Instead, he said that going to Mars is as urgent and crucial as lifting billions out of poverty, or eradicating deadly disease."
Did he? And did he also say how we'll survive on a planet with virtually no water, a thin and useless atmosphere, and a surface that's bathed in radiation due to the lack of a magnetic field? Truly, we might as well start colonising the seabed. It'll be easier and more hospitable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 30 2014, @11:04PM
Agree: Mars' soil is pretty much nitrogen depleted, 1M sacks of fertilizer is still insignificant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 30 2014, @11:22PM
Or as the rest of the world calls them, "Americans".
(Score: 2) by CRCulver on Tuesday September 30 2014, @11:26PM
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday October 01 2014, @12:03AM
Andrew Weir covered that nicely in The Martian. It's about a guy who gets left behind on Mars on a NASA expedition because his crew mates think he's dead, and luckily he has degrees in botany and engineering. Best science fiction I've read in years, the guy took great pains to get all the science right. Action, adventure, lots of humor, suspense, great book.
How does he grow potatoes in Martian soil? Mixing it with a little Earth soil and shitting and pissing on it (which the agronomists on the Ag PhD TV show say works). Of course, he's growing them inside (and they die when a catastrophe happens).
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 01 2014, @02:34AM
I saw this article [ibtimes.co.uk] last week via CmdrTaco's new venture, Trove. Researchers in the Netherlands were able to grow crops in simulated Martian soil. It is also documented fact that human waste is a perfectly fine fertilizer for agriculture. The imperial Chinese collected it from outhouses as "night soil" to fertilize their fields when paternal inheritance patterns dropped per capita acreage to less than an acre and masses of peasants were pushed to the brink of starvation. Even today human urine is used--the Bronx Zoo has a restroom by the Bronx River Parkway side of the park that separates the streams and uses the urine to fertilize the landscaped plants and flowers.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday October 01 2014, @03:47AM
You've still got to flush the poisons (whose name escapes me right now, damn old age) out of the soil first. Luckily they're water soluble but you need lots of water or at least quite a bit of water and a vacuum still. Also would need quite a bit of shit. At least being your own shit you wouldn't have to worry too much about the bacteria in it.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday October 01 2014, @01:51PM
I just did a quick wikipedia search, it's salt perchlorates and wasn't confirmed, and the article said that Martian soil varies from site to site. But terrestrial farmers have been dealing with bad soil for a long time (salt perchlorates can form naturally here as well as Mars).
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday October 02 2014, @02:53AM
Yes, that's what I was thinking off. Not to bad to deal with as they're water soluble.
We need to explore Mars much more, probably with lots of robotic probes, just to find out things like how the Martian soil varies, how much water is available to be mined and I'm sure lots of other stuff. Most people forget just how big Mars is, basically the same land area as the Earth and there is a lot of various terrain on the Earth.
(Score: 1) by Webweasel on Wednesday October 01 2014, @01:42PM
There's a note on my toilet:
Wanna pee? Go do it on the compost heap outside.
Every bit of organic matter from the household goes into the compost. The only exception is excrement as it contains virus's
Hair from plugs, contents of the vacuum cleaner, ashtrays, floor sweepings, everything.
It gets mixed with garden waste then left to decompose for a year or so, then its left out in the rain to wash any salts out from reused soil (From plant feed) and allows the cat's to use it for their business.
After about 6 months or so, I have rich dark compost full of all kinds of nutrients. Usually anything planted in it won't need feeding for a long time and more sensitive plants need some inert matter mixed in (Perlite, vermiculite etc) to weaken it. It's so nitrogen rich that its too strong for some breeds.
The soil in my garden is slowly changing from solid clay/sand mix (I live on a drained marshland) to a rich fertile soil that's worth growing in.
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday September 30 2014, @11:30PM
Domes.
Solves all your objections.
Not that we've built any such thing to scale yet, but we'd need that for the seabed too.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Wednesday October 01 2014, @12:48AM
Sorry, domes are too close to phones with rounded corners, you wont be allowed to do that.
(Score: 1) by glyph on Wednesday October 01 2014, @01:31PM
Jesus Infinity Gauntlet.
Solves everything too. Problem is they are both fantasy.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Wednesday October 01 2014, @01:53AM
Hmm. well.. you got the part about the seabed being more hospitable correct.
As for the rest... Mars has plenty of water so long as you go to the right places. There is no liquid surface water but there seems to be lots of muddy places. There are also polar ice caps. Thin atmosphere.. yup. Not sure it is entirely useless but certainly not thick enough to lose the space suit. Bathed in radiation? Nope. Higher radiation than on earth. Certainly enough to be a problem during solar flares. Hardly enough to say it's "bathed" in it though.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 01 2014, @03:37AM
Which is being done, incidentally. But it's never going to have the draw of living on another planet.