Terraform Earth first, please.
We already are.
*with global warming
Not like that!
Beggers can’t be choosers.
Counterpoint: yes we can
Touchê
People keep talking about terraforming Mars while we can’t even stop ourselves from reverse-terraforming Earth.
“Building and supplying a coal-fired power plant on Mars has been ridiculously expensive and wasteful, but it’s important to bring our traditions with us to this new world.”
One very silly thing I often observe in these 50s-era depictions of space life is the absurd waste of space, as if (if any of this happens) every square millimeter wouldn’t be occupied by power or life-support systems (including, in this case, food crops).
Nobody’s gonna build a dome for your French Colonial revival house and giant lawn with, like, a couple of oak trees so that you can have your dog run around.
Red Mars pretty much depicted that as well, with a big plastic bubble enclosing the required green space. I think it’s reasonable to assume that you’d need the technology to create some bubbles well in advance before you could do anything on a planetary scale.
And I’m not arguing that there wouldn’t be, say, a bubble that was just an arboretum or something like that, just that such a space would be specifically designated and its size/resource requirements be limited.
Mars is a terrible planet for humans, should refocus and live in floating cities on Venus instead.
Why not both?
I mean, we could, if we would fund space stuff better.
Allowing multiple planets to be miserable with humans.
I know another planet that we should be worrying about terraforming through technology solutions first, though
100% serious
Les miserébles
I dreamed a dream that would not die…
Until it was crushed by capitalism
All of this anti-space doomerism is really pissing me off.
I am very much pro space exploration, but the current plans many companies present for Mars colonies just seem like they would add very little value, while bringing tremendous danger and strife for the inhabitants, should anything ever be built.
I think we need to separate legitimate interest in space and related technology from bullshit marketing with scifi flavour.
- A rat done bit my sister Nell
- With whitey on the moon
- Her face and arms began to swell
- And whitey’s on the moon
- I can’t pay no doctor bills
- But whitey’s on the moon
- Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still
- While whitey’s on the moon
- The man just upped my rent last night
- Cause whitey’s on the moon
- No hot water, no toilets, no lights
- But whitey’s on the moon
- I wonder why he’s upping me?
- Cause whitey’s on the moon?
- Well I was already giving him fifty a week
- With whitey on the moon
- Taxes taking my whole damn check
- Junkies making me a nervous wreck
- The price of food is going up
- And as if all that shit wasn’t enough:
- A rat done bit my sister Nell
- With whitey on the moon
- Her face and arm began to swell
- And whitey’s on the moon
- Was all that money I made last year
- For whitey on the moon?
- How come I ain’t got no money here?
- Hmm! Whitey’s on the moon
- Y’know I just 'bout had my fill
- Of whitey on the moon
- I think I’ll send these doctor bills
- Airmail special
- To whitey on the moon
Did you know that when a cell is copying its DNA the enzyme that unzips that DNA doesn’t just start in one place, but rather unzip multiple parts of the same strand at the same time? If that weren’t the case, unzipping the DNA would take too long, and the cell would die before it could be done.
Pretending that doing one thing is stopping us from doing other things is an incredibly idiotic way of thinking about the way progress is made.
And ruin both of them.
Mars is already dead, we can’t do much more damage.
It has a limited number of species we could drive extinct
But seriously, I fear we may have to attempted-engineering on earth but there is so much at risk, so much life in all its wonder and diversity: we’re going too much toward destroying it but what if geo-engineering makes it worse.
Mars doesn’t have anything to lose
Being miserable is kind of our thing.
