Where were you when you realised Elon Musk's idea is a pipe dream with no real contingency?

Where were you when you realised Elon Musk's idea is a pipe dream with no real contingency?

>risk your life, travel several months, strand yourself on a desolate planet, literally more inhospitable than Antarctica and that's if things go well.

>b-b-but muh expansion of knowledge!

I'd rather that than risk staying on one planet until an extinction level event we cannot surpass eradicates us. I had children to preserve my genetic legacy and will go to any length to ensure the longevity of organisms that are my progeny.

Yeah, he should have other reasons to be going there though if it's to garner popular support other than
>muh genetic "save" of humanity

It's not even that, my ego just likes having a legacy; I'm a really selfish soul.

I mean when you put it like that, it sounds like going to Mars is a bad idea. But can you really think of any better way to get there and start a colony? Pioneers from Europe were rolling the same dice when they came to the new world. Even if someone at NASA or ESA proposed the same idea as Elon Musk, it would still sound shady and audacious. Elon is the first person that has the power to do something as crazy as go to Mars that set his foot down and decided we need to do this soon. If not now, when?

>Pioneers from Europe were rolling the same dice when they came to the new world
Why do people keep saying this? Pretty sure America has a breathable atmosphere.

Well that's obvious of course. But it probably keeps coming up because most people look at the bravery and the risk of human life on the journey there. Also, this is space travel. When you sign up, you better be expecting that there's not going to be a breathable atmosphere around every corner.

>Pioneers from Europe were rolling the same dice when they came to the new world
what do you mean by this, you mean kinda like how America was devoid of food, devoid of useful resources, and had a gravity which meant your muscles and bones would waste away?

Good thing Europe kept sending those ships full of food and equipment though, hey?

like 5 years ago? going to mars is uninteresting

trump is president now, join us and Elon or die.
america selection bitch.

So America is Mars now? No. Yeah, there is bravery that is expended when going to Mars, just like the bravery that arose when travelling to America. You guys are reading to deep into the analogy.

They received support and supplies from the European empires though. On Mars, you'd be on your own.

> But can you really think of any better way to get there and start a colony?
Yeah. First, improve our space-faring capabilities by a couple of orders of magnitude, /then/ go to Mars.

Right now, ISS is about the right ballpark. It's producing a statistically-significant sample of people who've been in space for 6 months or more, providing a test-bed for life-support systems, etc.

Next step should be to do the same on the moon for about a decade. Gravity lower than earth but non-zero. Outside the magnetosphere, so radiation will be a factor. Close enough to Earth that it's not a suicide mission.

Talk of manned Mars missions is 100% pure hype, whether by private corporations trying to increase their stock value, or politicians that need to make promises (that are, conveniently, far beyond the end of their 4-year term).

I just have hope for a multi-planetary species.

Its been half of a century since humans have set foot on another celestial body.

Also, think about the discovery and exploration achievements we can accomplish. A whole new field of research would develop!

No reason to hang around in LEO for no reason, when you can go direct to mars

> think about the discovery and exploration achievements we can accomplish.
This is Veeky Forums, not /a/.

In anime, achieving your goals doesn't require competence, planning, discretion, or any of that wimpy stuff. You just need enough determination.

But real life doesn't work like that. The reason people manage to achieve really difficult goals is that they don't delude themselves into thinking that they're easy.

Realistically, you won't see a human set foot on Mars and make it back to Earth alive in the next couple of decades, maybe not in your lifetime. And that won't be because of lack of ambition, but because that's how long it will take to attain the necessary capabilities.

Pretending /really hard/ that we could do it right now, given enough money, won't advance our capabilities one bit. In fact, the resulting fatalities would probably delay them by a generation or two.

>I'd rather that than risk staying on one planet until an extinction level event we cannot surpass eradicates us
This argument will never be compelling enough to get enough people interested in a mars mission

people are willfully destroying the only planet they currently inhabit, dooming the future of their own species
and they do it happily

What part of SpaceX's plan is physically impossible ?

Cynicism is boring and transparent, you're not impressing anyone with your "realism". Instead of hollow theorising to ameliorate your own insecurities consider doing something of value.

>Musk born and raised in South Africa
>riots were prevalent
>he learned Trump was running for president
>PTSD.jpeg
>sets up SpaceX
>wants to bury himself on mars

That's how I see it. At heart, Elon likely doesn't fit in what better way to flick off humanity than to bury himself on another planet, devoid of human life?

Maybe not soon but you don't think humans will be stuck living on earth till they go extinct, do you? Must have zero imagination.

Yeah, it really pisses me off too. Being skeptical is good, but just being cynical about everything for the sake of it is just proper bullocks.

Have to start somewhere. I wouldn't want to be a Mars pioneer, but I'm glad that other people probably will decide to go there.

it'll be probably 100 years before climate change becomes dangerous (we'll have adapted by then) and 250+ before overpopulation requires planetary colonization. It's a waste of money and time to worry about moving to fucking Mars in 2016

OP here, I'm not being cynical. What I'm trying to highlight is that there needs to be more of a reason to go to Mars than the reasons Musk has outlined, currently there's absolutely no economic and political premise for doing so (like there was with the Moon). These, historically, have been the greatest motivators for scientific progress.

I'm saying that Musk needs to make Mars more appealing beyond his dream of "making life interplanetary" which is an abstraction only those living in third world countries would really buy into, or perhaps Russians since their government has been hammering in the idea of an impeding nuclear war during the elections. And the opinions of these people don't really matter.

Essentially what I'm saying is Musk NEEDS to re-frame the philosophy behind SpaceX, beyond making it his own little pet project. . That is if he hopes to get a research facility on Mars within his lifetime, let alone a "colony" of "2 million people." As it stands his reason for going to Mars is, basically meme-tier and something someone from Veeky Forums would probably come up with.

I'm not sure how he could expand his philosophy though, this is just a criticism I have. What do you guys think?

>a pipe dream
we don't have those any more, Grandpa

Well the whole pitch is to provide the transport to get people there, so it's there for organisations/individuals who do have a reason to go. SpaceX will just get you there, what you do there is up to you.