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Mars Attacks: How Elon Musk's plans to colonize Mars threaten Earth.
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this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2025
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I think the average person (and average Musk acolyte) doesn’t grasp how hard spaceflight is, much less sustainably living there.
Colonizing the bottom of the ocean would be orders of magnitude easier. Or the South Pole. Or Kīlauea's open lava pit.
The tech you'd need to make living on Mars independent of Earth, like consciousness uploading, self sufficient friendly AI, extensive human/plant bioengineering, terraforming… Well, they're better at solving our problems on Earth anyway.
…Look, I'm all for science mission there, but "escaping" to Mars is the wildest fantasy. A few years ago I'd say Musk was lying or exaggerating, but I think he's actually drinking the Kool-Aid, and doesn’t even understand the basics of modern spaceflight.
That sounds like an argument for a Mars colony, not against it.
Not that I think continuousness uploading or AI have anything to do with a Mars colony... Even terraforming is totally unnecessary.
Honestly, I don't think Mars is a great candidate for a space colony, though probably not for the same reasons you're thinking. But I think it is in fact vital that we start colonizing space soon, and I think the technologies developed in pursuit of that goal will absolutely aid us here on earth.
Eh, none of that is something one casually develops for going to Mars. Is tech that fundamentally transforms the nature of society on Earth and being human, and again, is way more impactful than going to Mars.
Again, the argument I'm trying to make is that, by the time one can settle Mars without supplies from Earth, you mind as well get your robotic swarm to make space habitats or something.
Well, that's not exactly the goal. No nation is really self-sufficient in modern society. Everyone engages in trade. So the question is really, when will a space colony become profitable or maintainable? And that's trickier to answer, because it isn't "not for hundreds of years", but it also isn't now, it's somewhere in between.
Cheaper access to space would change the equation immensely. Being cheaper to resupply would mean the colony wouldn't have to be as profitable to be sustainable. In-situ resource utilisation (using water found off of earth for drinking, oxygen and fuel) will also make an enormous difference as it would reduce the amount of supplies needed from earth. (This is incidentally one of the main goals of NASA's Artemis program, to figure out how to utilize water resources on the moon)
It was the same situation when Europeans settled the Americas, at first it was just a money suck. Entire colonies were lost, lots of people died, they weren't really prepared. But then they started to figure out what crops worked there, how to survive harsh winters, etc. Once they figured out how to make the most of this new land, they thrived. Unfortunately, the way they treated the locals was pretty horrific. Fortunately, we're pretty certain there aren't any locals on the moon or Mars.
Truth be told, I think a Mars colony won't happen for quite some time, but I believe a moon colony will certainly happen before 2100. And if we're lucky, maybe since orbital colonies. That's where the future really lies, orbital colonies.
I think the (ideal) future looks more like an accelerated Orion's Arm, where humanity-changing technologies take over.
Again that’s what I’m getting at. We will never be colonizing Mars as squishy humans… We‘ll be augmented, modified, interfaced with mechanized AI, uploaded, maybe even just mechanical intelligences, something like that. We'll be using nuclear propulsion, at least. There will be no need to worry about drinking water, breathing oxygen, radiation, psychological/physical impacts of space travel/low gravity, or even traditional resupplies, because that will all be irrelevant.
The New World is (IMO) a bad analogy because baseline humans could live out an existence, mostly, from the local environment, and the incentives were clear from the start. The "profit" motive for Mars is purely scientific at this point.
While it is true that you have different sets of problems to solve, nope, they are only cheaper to get to, not necessary easier to colonize, except maybe the South Pole where you just need to build something that only need to withstand the cold, which is easy enough and you could go outside without a space suite or something similar.
The problem with colonizing Mars is the cost, which have as a consequence the cost of everything you send to that place.
But in the end I think that we already have all the basic blocks for a base on Mars (or the Moon) and what it is stopping us is the cost of putting everything together and send it.
We already know how to build isolated environments that can must stay sealed for month or years (subs and International Space Station), we already know how to recycle things like air and water, we already know how to produce vegetables in cramped spaces and with low or no exposure to the sun (think of every weed farm inside houses ;-) ) and minimal water needs, we already know how to develop and deploy complex industrial control systems and so on.