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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday January 18 2020, @05:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the you-are-here dept.

CNet:

The first aren't even built yet, but [Elon Musk] already has big plans for his company's spacecraft, which includes turning humans into an interplanetary species with a presence on Mars. He crunched some of the numbers he has in mind on Twitter on Thursday.

Musk doesn't just want to launch a few intrepid souls to Mars, he wants to send a whole new nation. He tossed out a goal of building 100 Starships per year to send about 100,000 people from Earth to Mars every time the planets' orbits line up favorably.

A Twitter user ran the figures and checked if Musk planned to land a million humans on Mars by 2050. "Yes," . The SpaceX CEO has suggested this sort of . This new round of tweets give us some more insight into how it could be done, though "ambitious" doesn't do that timeline justice. Miraculous might be a more fitting description.
...
fans, rejoice. there will be plenty of jobs on Mars. When asked how people would be selected for the Red Planet move, , "Needs to be such that anyone can go if they want, with loans available for those who don't have money." So perhaps you could pay off your SpaceX loans with a sweet terraforming gig.

Terraforming the planet should be easy if Quaid can get past Cohagen and start the reactor.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:11PM (10 children)

    by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:11PM (#945023) Journal

    Sounds like an excellent idea for a slave colony or rampant death cult living in windowless bunkers planning the end of the solar system.

    I liked those ad astra sceenes where brad pit is forced to go watch 4 wall TV for a few hours to 'get his sanity' back.

    Something to look forward to.

    /s

    WHY WOULD WE THINK ELON MUSK COULD DESIGN A MARS CITY WHEN HIS ONLY IDEA FOR THE CURRENT BROKEN CITIES IN AN ACTUALLY STILL FUNCTIONING ECOSYSTEM IS TO TRANSPORT CARS THROUGH UNDERGROUND TUNNELS

    The problem is not technologic, it is economic and political, and if you set the same forces in motion on another planet, you will get a replica of this planet, and interplanetary war that will in no way be an upgrade for anybody.

    But sure great way to suck intellect from society onto meaningless fantasies, can I get a job writing brochures and managing concept artists? Or selling tickets long in advance? Is there any way we can make this into a pyramid marketing scheme?

    Like, make people think a hard labor and exile in a prison colony is a LUXURY VACATION! For the whole family! Oh no, youll have to wait for the next shuttle back to earth in 2097, too bad. Should have booked earlier.

    How hard could that be? Not hard apparently, at least for you chumps, with your brain's capacity shredded by 24 hours a day of comfortable numbing outright lies in the form of degenerate tweets. You think you would at least be getting away form that, but nope, every day those tweets threatening sanctions and trade war with earth would be plastered on every surface of your dusty mars cubicle.

    thesesystemsarefailling.net

    Starting Score:    1  point
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       Interesting=1, Informative=1, Funny=1, Overrated=1, Touché=1, Total=5
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:35PM (4 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:35PM (#945031) Journal

    Sounds like an excellent idea for a slave colony or rampant death cult living in windowless bunkers planning the end of the solar system.

    It's also a great idea for a science outpost, or tourism.

    I liked those ad astra sceenes where brad pit is forced to go watch 4 wall TV for a few hours to 'get his sanity' back.

    You can have your slick VR experience in a basement, one-room apartment, or Mars bunker. It's up to you.

    WHY WOULD WE THINK ELON MUSK COULD DESIGN A MARS CITY WHEN HIS ONLY IDEA FOR THE CURRENT BROKEN CITIES IN AN ACTUALLY STILL FUNCTIONING ECOSYSTEM IS TO TRANSPORT CARS THROUGH UNDERGROUND TUNNELS

    Why would we expect Musk to design the Mars city when his main interest is the transportation infrastructure to and from Mars? Other people can come up with the designs. And no, some renderings and tweets do not constitute a design.

    The problem is not technologic, it is economic and political, and if you set the same forces in motion on another planet, you will get a replica of this planet, and interplanetary war that will in no way be an upgrade for anybody.

    You watched too much sci-fi if you think you would get an interplanetary war, and the economy and politics of a Mars colony would be very different simply because of the challenges of living there. It would also be a chance to start fresh.

    But sure great way to suck intellect from society onto meaningless fantasies, can I get a job writing brochures and managing concept artists? Or selling tickets long in advance? Is there any way we can make this into a pyramid marketing scheme?

    Like, make people think a hard labor and exile in a prison colony is a LUXURY VACATION! For the whole family! Oh no, youll have to wait for the next shuttle back to earth in 2097, too bad. Should have booked earlier.

    How hard could that be? Not hard apparently, at least for you chumps, with your brain's capacity shredded by 24 hours a day of comfortable numbing outright lies in the form of degenerate tweets. You think you would at least be getting away form that, but nope, every day those tweets threatening sanctions and trade war with earth would be plastered on every surface of your dusty mars cubicle.

    So you don't want to go to Mars, cool. Are you going to stop others from trying?

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:55PM (3 children)

      by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:55PM (#945042) Journal

      I will argue with them not to do it, I would probably not think this issue warrants violence to stop as the violence it imposes and makes inevitable will be so indirect to be covert.

      Yes, if it is a misuse of resources when there are real crisese which could be averted here.

      Yes, if it is just goign to be for the rich.

      Yes, if it is not going to be implemented with a new form of political economy.

      Yes, if it is managed by the same oligarchs who have almost completely ruined this world.

      There will be a honeymoon period, at best, before the tyranny, slavery, hierarchy, debt, and resource extraction sinks in.

      A clean slate, wow you are starry eyed aren't you? That colony would be 1 trillion debt within the first year, even if it doesn't turn into a penal colony. Even the people getting away from their earth debts would make it a slave colony.

      • (Score: 4, Funny) by FatPhil on Sunday January 19 2020, @11:06AM (1 child)

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Sunday January 19 2020, @11:06AM (#945247) Homepage
        Given all of the other clauses you list, and the reasons you are listing them, you do realise that the "the rich" clause could be reversed. Don't envy the rich down on earth's surface, send them all to mars (on the B Ark).
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
        • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Sunday January 19 2020, @02:32PM

          by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Sunday January 19 2020, @02:32PM (#945285) Journal

          I like the way you think, we could get along.

          Sadly, this is well worn territory, Asimov's Daneel R. Olivaw had to travel once to another planet than earth and it was just rich people on vast manors surrounded by only robots because all human contact had become dirty and pedestrian to them. So when someone died by surprise it had to be a robot, so the robo pscyhologist was called in, whodunit.

          Then there is Altered Carbon/Elsyium, to some extent Wall-E(or aliens vs predator comics...) where this kindof utopic garden of eden could be created in space or high altitude, but only for a handful of of oligarchs and their harems.

          Needless to say this does not ever result in improvement for the 99% on earth.

          I think Mark Passio is on to something with his order followers, the police and military have to learn the difference between protect and oppress, or any system turns into a shitshow.

          In Bolivia, the miiltary just recently decided poorly. In Venezuela, they are so far demonstrating that to a man they understand what is at stake, which is badass. #

          viva Chavismo! make sure they get this one, I think they'll like it:

            https://archive.is/dmjdm [archive.is]

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @01:57PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @01:57PM (#945277)

        Let me turn your ideas back to you. Given the state of the earth right now, do you really think humanity is on track to have workable solutions to our political and economic systems, our corruption, our oligarchy, within the next century? Within the next five centuries? I'm not optimistic.

        So one could make an argument that it makes more sense to populate the solar system as soon as it's practical, because spreading out the species gives us more time to figure out how to not suck before we wipe ourselves out.

        Don't get me wrong, I do share your frustration. The cost of Musk's Mars colonization plan could probably cure cancer world-wide and end poverty on a third of the globe. Sure, I would rather see that happen first and space colonization much later. But for example the United States net national wealth is above 50 trillion dollars and our annual GDP is above 15 trillion. We already have all the resources we need to cure every one of humanity's problems. The problem isn't a lack of resources, the problem is humanity itself.

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:14PM (#945047)

    Well, we're agreed that Mars is not the place for trannies.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @03:44AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @03:44AM (#945179)

    First step for Mars (or moon) is mole people and fertilizer.

    Digging holes in ground, MUSK KNOWS. This help protect against radiation and hold in "Air".

    Need lots of organic fertilizer to grow things, like food and CO2 processing. Large convertion and processing plants and organic material (both cases people) you get teraforming going.

    Soylent-Green? Is people right?

  • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:55AM (2 children)

    by deimtee (3272) on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:55AM (#945195) Journal

    Hell is other people - Sartre
    He may have been right, but heaven is also other people.

    A neglected aspect in discussion of the viability of a Mars colony is the effect on the society of being a group of people who self-selected to go to Mars.

    Regardless of what Musk says about anyone can go, there will also be further selection criteria. Can you survive the trip? Do you have or can you acquire skills that would useful? Can you afford a ticket? Is it going to be 90% nerd basement escapees? Should Musk enforce gender equality on passenger lists? Are they going to design a legal structure and get everyone to sign on before they go?

    These things will make a difference. I don't know of any society on earth that will be so homogenous in outlook. They will universally be; in favor of colonising Mars, enthusiastic and hardworking enough to get there, smart enough to qualify. The closest thing would probably be McMurdo Station in Antactica, but there is a very important difference - those people are doing a job and expect to go home afterwards.

    Here's hoping for longevity treatments so we can all hang around and watch.

    --
    If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
    • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Sunday January 19 2020, @02:48PM (1 child)

      by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Sunday January 19 2020, @02:48PM (#945293) Journal

      Recall Stranger in a Strange Land, they looked at every person on earth in combination for every other, for 6 people who would get along for the trip to mars, and found that any such combination would murder each other before the half-way point. I think that was heinlein's way of agreeing with satre....

      Consider Arthur C. Clark's Song's of Distant Earth, which I talk about all the time, because it shoves in your face the idea that once you are on that ship you have a whole new governance structure. To some extent movies like Aliens and Avatar make this point too, like once you are that far away, and there is a xenomorph in the equation, those orders from distant earth are going to sound a whole lot different. Then flip that and to someone/something out there WE are the xenomorphs....

      So we have to, inside of our Trumpenstein governance structure with Elon Musk helming a bizarro conglomerate of opaque oligarchic interests, are to expect that they are going to design sane governance, and glitch/RC free operation of your spacecraft?

      When we can't even get agree on how to operate the .org registry. When we can't get rid of the electoral college without total collapse and the risk of nuclear civil war? When epstein gets away despite the existence of a totalitarian surveillance system that we were told would protect the children? When intel processors are made with standalone surveillance subprocessors that probably have their own wifi?

      Every problem here doubles itself once you are in space doing anything other than telescope repair.

      And the real truth is that they are going to be doing all of this anyway without telling the public, because that is the real nature of whatever the united states military and corporate oligarchy has become, as well as the entangling alliances. That seems to be the number one goal of mass media propaganda in the united states, they need people who can be easily convinced to go die in a distant land.

      Or maybe even more distant. All I know is how much I don't know, and that there is a long list of powerful people who have not earned my trust, or are outright sinister. And they do not have my best interest at heart, this I know, so they are going to have a difficult time motivating me.

      For something that looked like the right hand side of this equation, I might do anything. For something on the left hand side, I am going to do nothing at all. And that is going to apply to every being, every planet, and every spaceship.

      https://archive.is/dmjdm [archive.is]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @12:01AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @12:01AM (#945557)

        Recall Stranger in a Strange Land

        I would really prefer not