Cost of the Perseverance Mars trip.

[postman]

The money comes back in ,tee shirts,hoodies,key rings,mugs,postcards the gift shops are full of them.

 

[Once a Wheeler]

The question: Wouldn't it be better to spend the money on… ? misunderstands the nature of money. It assumes there is a certain amount of money in the world and the problem is to divide it up in the best way. This is not the case. The desire to do something raises the money to do it; that is, creates the money to do it if the desire is strong enough. During the entire Apollo moon programme, the USA spent more money on ski equipment than on space projects. Prohibiting skiing would not have enhanced the Apollo programme and cancelling Apollo would not have increased ski participation. The choices which these questions propose are often mistaken.

 

[matticus]

The money comes back in ,tee shirts,hoodies,key rings,mugs,postcards the gift shops are full of them.

I miss gift shops. Let alone martian ones ...

 

[mudsticks]

The question: Wouldn't it be better to spend the money on… ? misunderstands the nature of money. It assumes there is a certain amount of money in the world and the problem is to divide it up in the best way. This is not the case. The desire to do something raises the money to do it; that is, creates the money to do it if the desire is strong enough. During the entire Apollo moon programme, the USA spent more money on ski equipment than on space projects. Prohibiting skiing would not have enhanced the Apollo programme and cancelling Apollo would not have increased ski participation. The choices which these questions propose are often mistaken.

Of course, but where money for science funding is directed, is not neutral, or necessarily done for greatest human benefit.

Having grown up in an earthsciences family, with one parent being internationally renowned in that field, I still quite regularly, get invited to take tea with professors of geology and other associated disciplines, in their departments.

And its still very difficult to get them to fully admit that the activities of the petroleum, and other associated extractive industries, have been less than honest, or helpful to mankind in the longterm.

Science, and its funding, does not operate in an ethical vacuum.

Fully independently operating scientists, find it much harder to get resourced, or even peer reviewed.

Especially if there is not a direct, and fairly swift commercial gain in it, for someone.

I miss gift shops. Let alone martian ones ...

Mee too, although tbh, I. just miss all the frivolous 'shop' shops being open.

Because folks can't toddle off to IKEA, or 'golfworld' or wherever, it means they're all out 'discovering the pleasures of the great outdoors' and cluttering up my usually quiet, running and biking areas.

Can't wait for the 'great indoors' to open up again so I can get some solitude for five minutes..

 

[Oldhippy]

I always wonder what the black budgets amount to with NASA and the DOD. They work very closely on undisclosed projects and classified trips to orbit.

 

[nickyboy]

Flakes of highly conductive graphite floating around in a spaceship with lots of sophisticated electronics?

I used to work for a company that made carbon fibre products. We were forever blowing up shop floor-based computer terminals no matter what we did to protect their electronics.

Inevitably the first projects to tentatively explore the universe beyond Earth are all cost and no direct benefit. But this is a long game. As mankind becomes more knowledgeable we will get benefits. At some time mankind, if it is going to continue to exist, is going to have to look beyond Earth. This is just one of the very first steps towards this

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Wasn’t it funded via the sale of Mars Bars?

 

[mudsticks]

I used to work for a company that made carbon fibre products. We were forever blowing up shop floor-based computer terminals no matter what we did to protect their electronics.

Inevitably the first projects to tentatively explore the universe beyond Earth are all cost and no direct benefit. But this is a long game. As mankind becomes more knowledgeable we will get benefits. At some time mankind, if it is going to continue to exist, is going to have to look beyond Earth. This is just one of the very first steps towards this

This is the part that i have a slight problem with - i know that in x millions or is it billions ? of years Earth is going to disappear in a firey ball of fireyness - but thats very long term.

But sometimes, i think this whole 'terraforming another place to live in outerspace' fantasy, is played out, or over egged as an excuse for not really looking after our present home so very carefully.

There's so much more we could be doing to live well, and within our resource limits here on earth - so as to hand on a livable planet to subsequent generations. Even using presently available technologies and methods - which can of course be improved upon.

Ok, so if we want to go a-space exploring in addition to focusing on all of the above then maybe thats ok - although we don't really know what effect we may have had on Mars by landing there - a little bit invasive perhaps??

But all that notwithstanding, i think there's a real risk of it becoming an excuse for not, or distraction from, upping our essential and pressing, Original and Beautiful Home 'Care Plan'

 

[nickyboy]

This is the part that i have a slight problem with - i know that in x millions or is it billions ? of years Earth is going to disappear in a firey ball of fireyness - but thats very long term.

But sometimes, i think this whole 'terraforming another place to live in outerspace' fantasy, is played out, or over egged as an excuse for not really looking after our present home so very carefully.

There's so much more we could be doing to live well, and within our resource limits here on earth - so as to hand on a livable planet to subsequent generations. Even using presently available technologies and methods - which can of course be improved upon.

Ok, so if we want to go a-space exploring in addition to focusing on all of the above then maybe thats ok - although we don't really know what effect we may have had on Mars by landing there - a little bit invasive perhaps??

But all that notwithstanding, i think there's a real risk of it becoming an excuse for not, or distraction from, upping our essential and pressing, Original and Beautiful Home 'Care Plan'

If earth goes up in a fiery ball all the other local planets like Mars and Venus will do too. That isn't what it's about I think
It's depletion of Earth's resources. That could be just a few hundred years. So we'd better get on with figuring out how to get to and live on our neighbour planets so we can use whatever resources they have

 

[Oldhippy]

The Vulcans will land and we will join the Federation of Planets and all will be well.

 

[Edwardoka]

... not really looking after our present home so very carefully.

There's so much more we could be doing to live well, and within our resource limits here on earth - so as to hand on a livable planet to subsequent generations.

Very optimistic of you to assume that anything will be done to look after Earth. All the hand-wringing in the world won't change human nature.

Even when faced with immediate, visible, short-term danger, many humans would rather look the other way or scream "fake news" than accept the slightest bit of inconvenience to their lifestyle.

For instance, Covid: when presented with overwhelming evidence for its prodigious infectiousness, death rate and long-term health implications for survivors, many people choose to ignore the evidence because to accept that it is real is inconvenient, so they create false narratives to support their position.

Such people rather wander around as superspreaders, inadvertently infecting and killing vulnerable, rather than take the slightest hit to their lifestyles. Some are so inculcated into this incredibly selfish mindset that there are reports of people before being intubated saying "I can't have covid, it's not real". Those people: dead from covid.
When that happens you have people denying the reality of these deaths and say "oh that's different, they had underlying conditions".
Then when faced with cases of young fit healthy people who didn't have underlying conditions, they will say "oh, they died of something else, if anyone dies while they have covid they put covid on the death certificate. It's a conspiracy".

So deep is the false narrative embedded into these people's tiny lizard brains, they create false positions and then when those are overrun by reality they fall back to other positions, until they are arguing from a position of complete absurdity.

So, that was a bit of a diversion but with reason, going back to the main point, viewed in the context of how people behaved when faced with an immediate threat, the notion that enough people will take the much longer-term and less immediate but more deadly threat of climate and ecological breakdown seriously enough to enact the radical changes required is naive in extremis.

Look at what's going on in Texas right now, unprecedented winter weather caused the infrastructure to collapse.
Meanwhile the people who are meant to be in charge there are either raking money in hand over fist after gouging both electricity and gas prices, or are pointing the finger at the Texan renewables sector - which provides 11% of the power in the state. And people are believing them.

Predatory capitalists such as that CEO of the gas company who crowed about how much money his company made off the back of the crisis are lauded as the system working successfully.

So no, I don't think that any attempts to stop runaway climate catastrophe will work when there are people involved.

At every turn in history when faced with simple, wrong answers and complex, possibly correct ones, the majority of people have chosen the simple, wrong answer - every single time. And thus we embody the most nihilistic of the solutions to the Fermi Paradox.

The question isn't "how can we keep the planet sustainably livable for future generations?" it's "How many species will be left after we're done?"

Ok, so if we want to go a-space exploring in addition to focusing on all of the above then maybe thats ok - although we don't really know what effect we may have had on Mars by landing there - a little bit invasive perhaps??

The concept of invading a dead rock is largely irrelevant. There is no evidence that Mars currently has any lifeforms on it. It would be a completely different kettle of fish if we were sending them to planets currently harbouring native life - there are atmospheric biomarkers (primarily the presence of complex organics) that would indicate that, none of which are present in Mars' atmosphere.

Right now we only know of one single closed-loop ecosystem in the entire universe capable of harbouring life on a long-term basis: Earth.
The concrete discovery of whether liquid water and/or life has existed on Mars in the past would further recontextualise our place in the universe.

While payloads sent into space are assembled in cleanrooms, all care is taken to ensure that minimum contamination of the target body takes place. The icy moons of Saturn are some of the likeliest places in the Solar System to harbour life under their ice sheets, so the Cassini probe was sent on a final trajectory that saw it burn up in Saturn's atmosphere, rather than risk it crashing into and potentially contaminating a Saturnian moon.

It's possible that we've contaminated Mars, but on a geological timescale, planets exchange matter all the time. There are meteors on Earth that are known to have originated on Mars, and it's not outwith the realm of possibility for the reverse to be true.

When large meteors impact, some of the ejecta gets flung with such force that it escapes the original planet's influence entirely.

But all that notwithstanding, i think there's a real risk of it becoming an excuse for not, or distraction from, upping our essential and pressing, Original and Beautiful Home 'Care Plan'

Yes, liferaft Mars is a rubbish sci-fi trope, but we currently don't have any contingency, we have no backup planet, but as said above, it's all largely academic, because nothing meaningful will be done about ecological collapse until it is long past too late.

We as a species are catastrophically terrible at foreseeing and forestalling unintended consequences, particularly when our current civilisation provides plenty of perverse incentives to look the other way. There's an argument that we should spread as far and wide as we can so that any future civilisation's archaeologists stumbling upon the ruins of humanity's artefacts can see "wow these creatures were really dumb."

Thank you for coming to my ED talk.

 

[Oldhippy]

Well written sir and sadly I agree.

 

[mudsticks]

If earth goes up in a fiery ball all the other local planets like Mars and Venus will do too. That isn't what it's about I think
It's depletion of Earth's resources. That could be just a few hundred years. So we'd better get on with figuring out how to get to and live on our neighbour planets so we can use whatever resources they have

Oh, this is an even more depressing reason than I first thought..

You mean like going in search of 'unobtainium'

Wouldnt it be altogether more cleverer to learn to live within our means, and not waste resources, here on earth, starting now...

There's already talk of mining landfill for the metals and minerals there.

There's enough sunshine that falls on the continent of Africa in one day, that's equivalent to our present global energy usage for a year.. And we could easily cut our consumption.

Regenerative agriculture done well, can run on contempory sunlight,

Already the human population is levelling out, dropping in some countries, and with even better empowerment of women, and freely available contraception that could improve too.

By all means go adventuring in space, if its so imperative, or irresistable to some, but let's not use it as an excuse for our present profligacy.

Not to mention the impracticality of transporting of these depleted resources which were allegedly going to source from there to here.

What if someone else already has the mining rights??

I've heard Clangers can turn right nasty, if you mess with their green soup reserves.

 

[Oldhippy]

You also write extremely well Mudsticks.

 

[mudsticks]

Very optimistic of you to assume that anything will be done to look after Earth. All the hand-wringing in the world won't change human nature.

Even when faced with immediate, visible, short-term danger, many humans would rather look the other way or scream "fake news" than accept the slightest bit of inconvenience to their lifestyle.

For instance, Covid: when presented with overwhelming evidence for its prodigious infectiousness, death rate and long-term health implications for survivors, many people choose to ignore the evidence because to accept that it is real is inconvenient, so they create false narratives to support their position.

Such people rather wander around as superspreaders, inadvertently infecting and killing vulnerable, rather than take the slightest hit to their lifestyles. Some are so inculcated into this incredibly selfish mindset that there are reports of people before being intubated saying "I can't have covid, it's not real". Those people: dead from covid.
When that happens you have people denying the reality of these deaths and say "oh that's different, they had underlying conditions".
Then when faced with cases of young fit healthy people who didn't have underlying conditions, they will say "oh, they died of something else, if anyone dies while they have covid they put covid on the death certificate. It's a conspiracy".

So deep is the false narrative embedded into these people's tiny lizard brains, they create false positions and then when those are overrun by reality they fall back to other positions, until they are arguing from a position of complete absurdity.

So, that was a bit of a diversion but with reason, going back to the main point, viewed in the context of how people behaved when faced with an immediate threat, the notion that enough people will take the much longer-term and less immediate but more deadly threat of climate and ecological breakdown seriously enough to enact the radical changes required is naive in extremis.

Look at what's going on in Texas right now, unprecedented winter weather caused the infrastructure to collapse.
Meanwhile the people who are meant to be in charge there are either raking money in hand over fist after gouging both electricity and gas prices, or are pointing the finger at the Texan renewables sector - which provides 11% of the power in the state. And people are believing them.

Predatory capitalists such as that CEO of the gas company who crowed about how much money his company made off the back of the crisis are lauded as the system working successfully.

So no, I don't think that any attempts to stop runaway climate catastrophe will work when there are people involved.

At every turn in history when faced with simple, wrong answers and complex, possibly correct ones, the majority of people have chosen the simple, wrong answer - every single time. And thus we embody the most nihilistic of the solutions to the Fermi Paradox.

The question isn't "how can we keep the planet sustainably livable for future generations?" it's "How many species will be left after we're done?"


The concept of invading a dead rock is largely irrelevant. There is no evidence that Mars currently has any lifeforms on it. It would be a completely different kettle of fish if we were sending them to planets currently harbouring native life - there are atmospheric biomarkers (primarily the presence of complex organics) that would indicate that, none of which are present in Mars' atmosphere.

Right now we only know of one single closed-loop ecosystem in the entire universe capable of harbouring life on a long-term basis: Earth.
The concrete discovery of whether liquid water and/or life has existed on Mars in the past would further recontextualise our place in the universe.

While payloads sent into space are assembled in cleanrooms, all care is taken to ensure that minimum contamination of the target body takes place. The icy moons of Saturn are some of the likeliest places in the Solar System to harbour life under their ice sheets, so the Cassini probe was sent on a final trajectory that saw it burn up in Saturn's atmosphere, rather than risk it crashing into and potentially contaminating a Saturnian moon.

It's possible that we've contaminated Mars, but on a geological timescale, planets exchange matter all the time. There are meteors on Earth that are known to have originated on Mars, and it's not outwith the realm of possibility for the reverse to be true.

When large meteors impact, some of the ejecta gets flung with such force that it escapes the original planet's influence entirely.


Yes, liferaft Mars is a rubbish sci-fi trope, but we currently don't have any contingency, we have no backup planet, but as said above, it's all largely academic, because nothing meaningful will be done about ecological collapse until it is long past too late.

We as a species are catastrophically terrible at foreseeing and forestalling unintended consequences, particularly when our current civilisation provides plenty of perverse incentives to look the other way. There's an argument that we should spread as far and wide as we can so that any future civilisation's archaeologists stumbling upon the ruins of humanity's artefacts can see "wow these creatures were really dumb."

Thank you for coming to my ED talk.

Thanks Ed for informing us of what many of us have been railing, and working against, with very scant resources, and variable results, for decades already.

I know it all seems fairly hopeless, and that maybe all you say will come true.

But all this persistent hugging of trees etc , it's a hard habit to break..

And I don't want to live with zero hopefulness, that would be a sad way to exist.

At least i could then go to my doubtless wicker lined grave, at the top of the hill on this little organic farm saying "I did try my best.. *"

*Well in truth, I'm hoping I won't be saying anything, cos I'll be well and truly and properly dead, but you get the general sentiment right??

Ps ill be leaving a note, etched into a pebble saying

"Sorry, we tried telling em, but they just wouldn't listen :-("