Let’s not send a few thousand people to Mars as a big experiment in survival.

A book review on the latest Weinersmith creation. It’s true, there is so much we don’t know.

Just throwing this out there on this forum because missing technology is the problem that kills the dream of Mars, according to the authors.

  • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.worldEnglish
    52·
    1 year ago

    Which is why you don’t hear NASA going “yep we’re good to go! No scientifically obtained issues to worry about!” Also sometimes you have to answer the questions through physical experimentation, which is why we send science teams before we send spacecraft full of colonists.

    Books like this fall under the same grouping as those who hate Elon Musk so much that they have to also think space travel is dumb/bad as well because they can’t remove the douchebag from the field his company operates in.

    Space colonization is the future, it doesn’t matter if it’s ten years or a thousand. We are going to leave this planet. Case closed. The earth will not sustain us forever even in our wildest renewable energy/living fantasies.

    • 0x1C3B00DA@kbin.social
      5·
      1 year ago

      The point of books like this is to underline areas where we’re still woefully ignorant to guide future study. This isn’t just complaining. It’s taking stock of what we still need to learn.

      • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Unfortunately on lemmy its only purpose is so people can circle jerk about how dumb Musk is for wanting that to be the end goal of SpaceX hardware.

    • magnetosphere@kbin.social
      51·
      1 year ago

      Did we even read the same article?

      A City on Mars ends with a kind of call to action. The point is that we have a tiny space station, and we have the potential to build a lot of experimental facilities on Earth where we can investigate some of the practical problems. Let’s get the biology and engineering right before we send people to Mars.

      The authors aren’t against colonization. They’re against hasty, uninformed, reckless attempts.