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+--- Thread: Elon Musk says his city on Mars will have to pass acid test (space colony survival) (/thread-9244.html)
Elon Musk says his city on Mars will have to pass acid test (space colony survival) - C C - Oct 21, 2020
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a34428536/elon-musk-mars-city-acid-test/
EXCERPT: . . . Inverse reports: "The acid test, really, is, if the ships from Earth stop coming from any reason, does Mars die out?" Musk told interviewer Robert Zubrin during the livestreamed event. "For any reason. It could be banal, or it could be nuclear armageddon," he added.
[...] First, Musk recently also said that he expects many Mars settlers will die during the process of traveling to and settling on Mars in the longer term. That’s a common theme, from imperialist settlements like Jamestown or Roanoke to the explorers who first crossed Antarctica or sailed across the Pacific Ocean. ... Musk has always planned for some steady stream of new traffic to bring fresh supplies or passengers. And depending on how the technology evolves, those ships could even bring back what very little waste the settlement produces.
The thing is, they’ll likely be very rare. [...] the settlers on Mars will already have the mindset of scarcity, careful use, and circular economy. [...] So how do you plan in a way that includes resiliency on this level?
[...] As for what will cause the end of supply shipments, Inverse suggests Musk’s interest in the “Great Filter,” a large-scale event that will either destroy or extremely limit almost all the life on the planet, is playing a part. There have been a handful of major extinction events in Earth’s life so far, from the well-known dinosaur die-out to the much more deadly—as in 95 percent of life on Earth—mass extinction about 250 million years ago.
Existential threat experts have suggested that one of any number of events could befall humankind and act as a next Great Filter, from a climate event that kills all living things to, much further out, the heat death of the sun. One way or another, Earth is gonna go. And like any sensible technology entrepreneur, Musk wants to make sure he has a backup stored somewhere else... (MORE - details)
RE: Elon Musk says his city on Mars will have to pass acid test (space colony survival) - confused2 - Oct 25, 2020
If you had the choice of dying (for whatever reason) in a bungalow in the suburbs of a small town or ON MARS which would you choose?
RE: Elon Musk says his city on Mars will have to pass acid test (space colony survival) - C C - Oct 26, 2020
(Oct 25, 2020 02:11 AM)confused2 Wrote: If you had the choice of dying (for whatever reason) in a bungalow in the suburbs of a small town or ON MARS which would you choose?
No contest right now. Definitely wouldn't want to die there if I was the solitary resident, like self-ostracized Doctor Manhatten. Later... might make a difference if Mars was significantly populated by then.
OTOH, can even a colonized Mars ever feel like a friendly place to pass away on? Maybe if Earth was even more desolate at the time or filled with animated, flesh-eating corpses from a Zombie Apocalypse.
There's a distinction between dying and already being dead, though. Doubtless there's some pioneer who would be thrilled to have his or her cadaver cast adrift into outer space itself, to orbit alone in emptiness for eons. Like the astronaut mannequin in Elon's Telsa Roadster. Maybe a protective casket could even prevent the radiation and other factors from actually eroding the remains long before then, unlike the wretched mannequin that's either quasi-obliterated or gone altogether right now.
Some have already had their ashes sent into space. But again, that's not dying there. In space no one can hear you scream groan in pain. Or be frustrated that you prematurely faded into a coma without uttering last words.