A million of Martians
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Generally, that is true. KSR is a little different in that he describes the science behind most of his premises. David Brin does that quite a bit too since he is in fact a scientist.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
Sidetracking a little here: I will say the same about James P. Hogan. I have a Comp.Sci Masters degree and 40 years of experience, judging his books from the perspective of a computer expert. I picked up the 1979 "The two faces of tomorrow" again not too long ago, and it still holds up. "Realtime Interrupt", 16 years later (but 25 years old today) still raises essential questions that cannot be pushed aside. (And a few of my collagues, to whom I have recommended the book, have had nights of bad sleep, essentially because the comp.sci parts still holds water after 25 years. As a computer professional, I know that the issues are real. People with less background tend to laugh it off as more or less pure fantasy. If I read books too far out of my own field of expertise, I would like to have other experts confirm the realism. For a Mars settlement, there are so many issues that it would take a large flock of experts in different areas to confirm the realism of it. That is what Weisman did with "The World Without Us". While he wrote the text, and is fully responsible for it, in every chapter he leans heavily of one or more top experts in the field. (Hogan also use to include thanks in he preface to those experts that have read through the manuscript to verify that there are no factual errors or impossibilities in the story.)
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I do read a fair amount of SciFi, but consider them science fiction. The author is free to ignore any law of nature, any technical problems, and may assume whatever issue "solved two thousand years ago". Most (high quality) SciFi does not aim to solve practical issues, but to create a setting for discussing a large set of other, usually non-technical issues. So while I might pick up that Mars series (I am not familiar with it), what I am curious about this time is the Science part rather than the Fiction part.
KSR wrote what was reasonably solid hard SF at the time in designing the initial colonization ship and terraforming program; the biology stuff (anti-aging and brain reset) used to help keep some characters alive for centuries was always a bit iffier. The bigger issue at this point is just that he started writing in the 80's and some parts of his science/tech have become dated since. ex the first Mars ship was build out of US and Soviet Space Shuttle external tanks, and he totally missed the last 20 years of laptops and then phones providing computers everywhere. Caveat, it's been at least 15 years since I last read the books.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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Practicalities aside, I think it dubious that you'd find a million people willing to leave the lushness of Earth to die on a baron airless rock. It's not exactly Tahiti...
Regards, Rob Philpott.
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F-ES Sitecore wrote:
Solve propulsion problem to allow us to get to MarsStarship SN01 is being built in open sided tents in Texas today.
Solve renewable water problemLand at a location where orbital sensing indicates large amounts of water frozen a few meters down in the regolith. Then start mining. The amount needed as an input (along with CO2) to the sabatier process to create the methane needed as fuel for the trip home and as a backup power source during sandstorms will dwarf that needed for human consumption.
Solve renewable oxygen problemThe previous step gets this one for free because you want to run your rocket engines fuel rich in order to keep the chamber temperatures low enough to avoid melting and burning them.
Solve renewable energy problemTesla and Solar City.
Build StarbucksI'm pretty sure he can get Starbucks to pay him for the privilege of being the first franchise opened on Mars. (Just threaten to go to Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, etc instead.) :-\
Transport peopleBuild a bunch of Starships. To fund doing this he's building Starlink; which is expected to a be $15-30bn/year printing press for money. And although you neglected it, The Boring Companies tunneling machines can be used to dig the large underground vaults needed to build habitats on Mars. Elon's reach may exceed his grasp; but all of the projects he's juggling feed into his long term goal.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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He said he'd put a million people on Mars by 2050. He didn't say they'd be alive when they got there. It's probably feasible now to put samples of the cremated remains of 1 million people on a vehicle and have it soft land on Mars.
Software Zen:
delete this;Gary Wheeler wrote:
It's probably feasible now to put samples of the cremated remains of 1 million people on a vehicle and have it soft land on Mars.
If crooked politicians can vote the graveyard, why can't Elon? :D
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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There's a reason why space geeks joke about "Elon Time". :laugh:
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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Ever notice how there's entire flock of people who fawn over every word Elon says without thinking about what he's saying? Yeah, this is one of those cases. All marketing. No substance.
Asking questions is a skill CodeProject Forum Guidelines Google: C# How to debug code Seriously, go read these articles.
Dave KreskowiakDave Kreskowiak wrote:
All marketing. No substance.
I don't know about that. While I'm absolutely no fanboi of his, he did deliver on electric cars. And reusable rockets. And his tunnel boring machine. Any one of these is a lot more than most of his critics may have delivered.
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We had a discussion in the coffee corner about who we should urge to volunteer as settlers. I guess creating a list in this thread could lead to the thread being censored :-)
As someday it may happen that a victim must be found
I've got a little list
I've got a little list
Of Elon Muskés colonists, living underground
And who never would be missed
They never would be missed
...(With apologies to Messrs. Gilbert & Sullivan)
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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Last Monday, the CP Daily News brought the link to Elon Musk Says He’ll Put A Million People on Mars By 2050[^]. This set me thinking: Recycling water is quite straightforward. Recycling oxygen not so. I do not have enough information to even estimate how may tons of oxygen a million humans require a day. (A ton is a million grams, one gram per person.) Can anyone put me on the right track? Next question: How many plants does it take to produce a ton of oxygen a day? Obviously, a huge pine tree will produce more than, say, a tomato plant. I guess that plants will have to double as both oxygen and food sources; there wouldn't be room of huge forests within that plastic bubble. Do food plants vary a lot in their oxygen prodction capabilities? With Mars being roughly speaking at 1.5 times the Earth's distance from the sun, solar radiation is at 40-45% of Earth levels; I guess that could affect the photosynthesis. When the type and required number of plants, of various kinds, have been determined, we could try to estimate how much water would be bound in these plants and their soil. Transporting that water from earth would be a major taks. So would be an effort to break it loose from the south pole ice-cap and transport it the 2500 km to equatorial land, melt it and heat it up to a temperature suitable for the plants. With no oxygen available, we can't use diesel trucks for transportation, or any tool requiring oxygen for cutting the ice. (We obviously could cover half of the Martian surface with solar cells to produce electricity for electrolyzing the south pole ice cap, rather than using the water for growing plants. That is certainly not in the "sustainable" group of alternatives - and how much solar panels would it require? I suspect that the panels would all have to be brought from Earth.) I really liked the kind of analysis made in The World Without Us[^] by Alan Wiesman, and wish that someone would make a similarly scientifically founded evaluation of the realism of a one million people Mars colony. Well, I suspect that it could easily end up more like Solar FREAKING Roadways, Are they REAL?[
Member 7989122 wrote:
Can anyone put me on the right track?
420. That is the number Musk derives all his claims from.
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Last Monday, the CP Daily News brought the link to Elon Musk Says He’ll Put A Million People on Mars By 2050[^]. This set me thinking: Recycling water is quite straightforward. Recycling oxygen not so. I do not have enough information to even estimate how may tons of oxygen a million humans require a day. (A ton is a million grams, one gram per person.) Can anyone put me on the right track? Next question: How many plants does it take to produce a ton of oxygen a day? Obviously, a huge pine tree will produce more than, say, a tomato plant. I guess that plants will have to double as both oxygen and food sources; there wouldn't be room of huge forests within that plastic bubble. Do food plants vary a lot in their oxygen prodction capabilities? With Mars being roughly speaking at 1.5 times the Earth's distance from the sun, solar radiation is at 40-45% of Earth levels; I guess that could affect the photosynthesis. When the type and required number of plants, of various kinds, have been determined, we could try to estimate how much water would be bound in these plants and their soil. Transporting that water from earth would be a major taks. So would be an effort to break it loose from the south pole ice-cap and transport it the 2500 km to equatorial land, melt it and heat it up to a temperature suitable for the plants. With no oxygen available, we can't use diesel trucks for transportation, or any tool requiring oxygen for cutting the ice. (We obviously could cover half of the Martian surface with solar cells to produce electricity for electrolyzing the south pole ice cap, rather than using the water for growing plants. That is certainly not in the "sustainable" group of alternatives - and how much solar panels would it require? I suspect that the panels would all have to be brought from Earth.) I really liked the kind of analysis made in The World Without Us[^] by Alan Wiesman, and wish that someone would make a similarly scientifically founded evaluation of the realism of a one million people Mars colony. Well, I suspect that it could easily end up more like Solar FREAKING Roadways, Are they REAL?[
I do believe you are overthinking the problem. Q: Will Musk succeed at putting even one person on Mars by 2050? A: No There. Thinking done.
Latest Articles:
Abusing Extension Methods, Null Continuation, and Null Coalescence Operators -
May be an interesting read - but it is classified as science Fiction, not a science. I pointed to "The World Without Us" because it is classified as Science (although somewhat popularized). The author (and his informants) have not take the freedom to ignore nature's laws when they are a hindrance for the progress of the story. I haven't read Man Plus, and the book may have a general respect for scientific knowledge, but when it is labeled as fiction, you cannot be certain of it. (And, the Wikipedia article does not give any impression of this story carrying any realism. E.g. the brain is one of they body's major consumers of oxygen, and that will prevail even if you create an artificial body.)
You're obviously not familiar with Pohl's work. He used to research more stringently than 99% of astronomers, and make up less cr@p than 100% of them.
Member 7989122 wrote:
the brain is one of they body's major consumers of oxygen
It also consumes (AIRI; can be checked) between 70 and 95% of all the glucose you ingest, depending on what you're doing, and harvesting monosaccharides is a tad more destructive to the plants than just letting them produce O2. Just find a list (there are probably hundreds of instances of them on-line) of nutritional needs at the biochemical level, and you'll easily be able to roughly classify them according to difficulty.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Sidetracking a little here: I will say the same about James P. Hogan. I have a Comp.Sci Masters degree and 40 years of experience, judging his books from the perspective of a computer expert. I picked up the 1979 "The two faces of tomorrow" again not too long ago, and it still holds up. "Realtime Interrupt", 16 years later (but 25 years old today) still raises essential questions that cannot be pushed aside. (And a few of my collagues, to whom I have recommended the book, have had nights of bad sleep, essentially because the comp.sci parts still holds water after 25 years. As a computer professional, I know that the issues are real. People with less background tend to laugh it off as more or less pure fantasy. If I read books too far out of my own field of expertise, I would like to have other experts confirm the realism. For a Mars settlement, there are so many issues that it would take a large flock of experts in different areas to confirm the realism of it. That is what Weisman did with "The World Without Us". While he wrote the text, and is fully responsible for it, in every chapter he leans heavily of one or more top experts in the field. (Hogan also use to include thanks in he preface to those experts that have read through the manuscript to verify that there are no factual errors or impossibilities in the story.)
A little farther aside - have you read anything by William Gibson? He was writing about virtual worlds decades ago. In the movie "Hacker" they called the supercomputer the Gibson in honor of him.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Practicalities aside, I think it dubious that you'd find a million people willing to leave the lushness of Earth to die on a baron airless rock. It's not exactly Tahiti...
Regards, Rob Philpott.
Tahiti, it's a magical place.
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Rob Philpott wrote:
I think it dubious that you'd find a million people willing to leave the lushness of Earth to die on a baron airless rock
Did Elon specifically say anything about people volunteering for this...?
That makes it sound like Australia, except without all the poisonous critters.
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."
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I do believe you are overthinking the problem. Q: Will Musk succeed at putting even one person on Mars by 2050? A: No There. Thinking done.
Latest Articles:
Abusing Extension Methods, Null Continuation, and Null Coalescence OperatorsNo objection. Myself, I never considered to be anywhere in the neighbourhood of realism. Not by a magnitude or two. But when you meet the fanboys, you often wish you had a checklist to point to, displaying 24 main reasons why the project is completely unrealistic, each of the 24 points certified by an internationally recognized expert. Okay, okay, I know: Internationally recognized experts don't have a clue when you try to defend your own job in the coal or oil industry; then the experts are just talking bullshit. If you are working with Ovibos moschatus[^], you do not want that work to be turned down, either. But a list of 24 well argued objections would be welcome.
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F-ES Sitecore wrote:
Solve propulsion problem to allow us to get to MarsStarship SN01 is being built in open sided tents in Texas today.
Solve renewable water problemLand at a location where orbital sensing indicates large amounts of water frozen a few meters down in the regolith. Then start mining. The amount needed as an input (along with CO2) to the sabatier process to create the methane needed as fuel for the trip home and as a backup power source during sandstorms will dwarf that needed for human consumption.
Solve renewable oxygen problemThe previous step gets this one for free because you want to run your rocket engines fuel rich in order to keep the chamber temperatures low enough to avoid melting and burning them.
Solve renewable energy problemTesla and Solar City.
Build StarbucksI'm pretty sure he can get Starbucks to pay him for the privilege of being the first franchise opened on Mars. (Just threaten to go to Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, etc instead.) :-\
Transport peopleBuild a bunch of Starships. To fund doing this he's building Starlink; which is expected to a be $15-30bn/year printing press for money. And although you neglected it, The Boring Companies tunneling machines can be used to dig the large underground vaults needed to build habitats on Mars. Elon's reach may exceed his grasp; but all of the projects he's juggling feed into his long term goal.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
Um, yeah, my post was just a joke to highlight how all major tech innovation seems to power nothing but vapid consumerism.
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Practicalities aside, I think it dubious that you'd find a million people willing to leave the lushness of Earth to die on a baron airless rock. It's not exactly Tahiti...
Regards, Rob Philpott.
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Practicalities aside, I think it dubious that you'd find a million people willing to leave the lushness of Earth to die on a baron airless rock. It's not exactly Tahiti...
Regards, Rob Philpott.
Quote:
Practicalities aside, I think it dubious that you'd find a million people willing to leave the lushness of Earth to die on a baron airless rock. It's not exactly Tahiti...
Probably not a million, but we already know there are thousands of people already signed up for this trip. I could see millions attempting to go on nothing more than a hope of a better life.
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Last Monday, the CP Daily News brought the link to Elon Musk Says He’ll Put A Million People on Mars By 2050[^]. This set me thinking: Recycling water is quite straightforward. Recycling oxygen not so. I do not have enough information to even estimate how may tons of oxygen a million humans require a day. (A ton is a million grams, one gram per person.) Can anyone put me on the right track? Next question: How many plants does it take to produce a ton of oxygen a day? Obviously, a huge pine tree will produce more than, say, a tomato plant. I guess that plants will have to double as both oxygen and food sources; there wouldn't be room of huge forests within that plastic bubble. Do food plants vary a lot in their oxygen prodction capabilities? With Mars being roughly speaking at 1.5 times the Earth's distance from the sun, solar radiation is at 40-45% of Earth levels; I guess that could affect the photosynthesis. When the type and required number of plants, of various kinds, have been determined, we could try to estimate how much water would be bound in these plants and their soil. Transporting that water from earth would be a major taks. So would be an effort to break it loose from the south pole ice-cap and transport it the 2500 km to equatorial land, melt it and heat it up to a temperature suitable for the plants. With no oxygen available, we can't use diesel trucks for transportation, or any tool requiring oxygen for cutting the ice. (We obviously could cover half of the Martian surface with solar cells to produce electricity for electrolyzing the south pole ice cap, rather than using the water for growing plants. That is certainly not in the "sustainable" group of alternatives - and how much solar panels would it require? I suspect that the panels would all have to be brought from Earth.) I really liked the kind of analysis made in The World Without Us[^] by Alan Wiesman, and wish that someone would make a similarly scientifically founded evaluation of the realism of a one million people Mars colony. Well, I suspect that it could easily end up more like Solar FREAKING Roadways, Are they REAL?[
There's non-biological ways to produce oxygen. A few years back I got interested in recycling of CO2 back to O2, and there's multiple paths to do that. There's also other ways to get O2, like by disassociating water. However, as raddevus pointed out about the biosphere project, making a long term viable environment is hard. The more closed, the harder.
I live in Oregon, and I'm an engineer.
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He said he'd put a million people on Mars by 2050. He didn't say they'd be alive when they got there. It's probably feasible now to put samples of the cremated remains of 1 million people on a vehicle and have it soft land on Mars.
Software Zen:
delete this;Per Douglas Adams, send the hairdressers and phone sanitizers first .. Oh! and the politicians. (no offence to hairdressers intended)
Live long and prosper