Plan to colonize the moon and mars.

[luma]

What's the problem with the NASA Design Reference mission? It's supposedly within NASA's current budget.

 

[D H]

What's the problem with the NASA Design Reference mission? It's supposedly within NASA's current budget.

First off, the Mars Design Reference mission is not a colonization plan. This thread is about colonization. The Mars DRM is a plan to send a small number of astronauts to Mars and then return back to Earth after spending some time on Mars. Secondly, while defining/refining that Design Reference Mission is within NASA's budget, allocating money to implement those plans is not.

NASA uses design reference missions as the basis for costing a concept. Think about it this way: NASA (or any organization, for that matter) needs to have some idea regarding how much something will cost before approving and allocating monies for that activity. The Mars Design Reference Mission provides the basis for that costing exercise. Those missions are not within NASA's budget. The costs far exceed NASA's budget.

 

[sophiecentaur]

The private sector is not going to undertake some effort that will require the wealth of nations and hundreds of years of time (if ever) to realize a profit.

People will only put their hands in their pockets when the first asteroid looks seriously as though it's going to swipe us. It would have to be that scale of emergency.
Lets face it, the Great Public aren't interested in long term ecological threats on Earth. Why should they be interested in long term (thousands of years) planning for Space Living?

 

[spacester]

any good plan needs a timescale. We're talking in terms of at least une hundred years for this one. When you consider a really worthwhile project like Fusion, that's the order of magnitude involved and, until energy ceases to be a problem, the Dan Dare stuff will not be affordable. There are one or two other projects that could also be said to have priority.

Hi sophiecentaur, before I comment let me just say that I really like your posts elsewhere. But when it comes to this subject you are way off target.

Saying it is hundreds of years away as a founding premise is a total load of crap. Talk about a defeatist attitude.

Some of us like working on this stuff and you can keep that week stuff to yourself if you don't mind. I've read all this thread's posts to date and I'll deal with your more substantive criticisms in a few minutes.

I will commend you for your constructive criticisms if and when I find them.

The word galactic in a company's name proves what? Hello? Get a grip, please. Rationality is not to be applied here?

Energy will always be the issue. Are you saying mankind is too darn stupid to even try to solve the conundrum? Answers are in fact abundant.

 

[spacester]

I actually, seriously doubt that space colonisation will be a reality within hundreds of years because there is so little in it for us compared with the cost. It may be one of the sexiest idea around but it is way at the back of a very long queue of justifiable "challenges".
The very name "Virgin Galactic" says it all. What is "galactic" about the project"? It's a Fun Project in which a few rich people will see a black sky, felt microgravity and feel that they've been 'in space'. Mr B has spotted an excellent and possibly achievable commercial venture - good luck to him. But that's all it is. The numbers count in engineering and space colonisation needs to satisfy cost-benefit analysis to get off the ground. To my mind it represents extremely bad value compared with feeding the existing population. We are a long long way, even from that.

In the following, "We" = Space development enthusiasts and "You" = Those who think like sophie, who is far from alone in her perspective.

We refuse to let our dreams be held hostage due to a failure of Your imagination. You do not think any of this can be done, so You don't sit around finding solutions. Solutions abound. If you want to hear them, great, stick around, and put your listening cap on please.

So many fallacies in the above post. Funding is not perfectly fungible. Allocations to space development do not automatically come from funds for feeding "the existing population". By the way, those who pursue that noble goal could use a dose of the kind of scrutiny space flight development plans always work under. Bunch of fuzzy headed liberals who don't know how the real world works, for the most part. You can't even define the problem.

. . . an excellent and possibly achievable commercial venture - good luck to him. But that's all it is. The numbers count in engineering and space colonisation needs to satisfy cost-benefit analysis to get off the ground.

That's all it is?? A complete failure of Your imagination. First, this endeavor will have a huge cultural impact and today's kids will grow up in a world where visiting space is a growth industry. Secondly, these rich bastards - look, I am as egalitarian as they come, but that just means we have a green light to exploit rich bastards - will pay off the capitol investment in the new space infrastructure ALLOWING COSTS TO COME DOWN. Third, it doesn't stop with this generation of hardware, this business model has no limits.

To deny that the future space tycoons such as Elon Musk, Robert Bigelow, Sir Richard, Jeff Bezos, John Carmack et al are working to lower costs so that very large numbers of people of moderate means will have the opportunity to visit space is to call every one of them a liar. That's what they all want.

You darn tooting the numbers matter. I'm all over the numbers, just try me. And cost/benefit isn't the only way to look at things, at least not on the time scales our corporate consumer culture operates.

 

[spacester]

Well, you devote yourself to the development of better agricultural tech, and those of us whose interests are different will devote our lives to those things we want to happen.

(snip)

Now, if we want to be productive; we should help the OP learn what tech is lacking at the moment for him to see his dream come to fruition, and maybe he will be the one who makes a breakthrough in the field that allows his vision to become reality. (And he might just do it in his garage, thus saving you from having to worry about the GDP)

BRAVO! Well done!

 

[spacester]

BUT there are certain actual quantities associated with the sort of space use that is proposed here which make it very, very tenuous. Why are people ignoring that on this thread ?

It's just the Boys' Own, 1950s romantic thing that I can't take seriously. I sometimes think that people actually believe the Azimov trilogy is fact - right down to the Psychohistory thing. At least do some serious sums before you get too carried away with Space fiction.

sophie, were you beaten by a toy rocket as a child? Did Asimov's whiskers traumatize you?

J/K

This sounds a lot like projection - to whom exactly do you refer that suffer this tenuous grasp of reality?

Sorry, I'm on a roll at this point.

You know, psychohistory is not that far beyond current marketing strategies.

Anyway, I'll do all the serious sums you want. What exactly would you like to see addressed?

 

[sophiecentaur]

Hi spacester.

The posts are coming thick and fast!

A few rather 'judgemental' adjectives there, I think.
"Defeatist" implies that I'd go for it if only it weren't too much trouble. My main objection is to the priority which has been given to this idea. A fully thought out project, aimed at fruition in, yes, several hundred years' time would get my serious interest, as a theoretical exercise.
I have read a lot of stuff since Space Travel (Unmanned) was achieved and much of what Arthur Clark and others published before and after it was an actual fact. I can't imagine that anyone would seriously quote from practical information from so far back when talking about Electronics, Medicine or Computing in order to justify future plans in those fields and I am determined no to go overboard when shown pictures of '50s designs for spacecraft , either. Film clips from Kubrick's 2001 fall equally flat; they made my heart flutter in 1980, or whenever it came out. I really question whether some of the people posting on this particular thread are aware that Star Trek etc. is, actually, fiction. There are soooo many issues involved with the notion of space colonisation and what it would mean for the Human Race. It really would have to be the very last ditch solution to life becoming unsustainable on Earth - basically, a lifeboat exercise - not a Christopher Columbus style mission.
If I appear not to be constructive in this thread it's because I can see so many more exciting (in a real sense) things that we can do with our intellect and energy than to plan zapping about the Solar System as tourists or establishing what would be a penal colony on Mars. The fact that there have been no serious responses about funding this stuff, sort of makes my point for me.
My heart still flutters when I see a guy mending the Hubble Space Telescope - live on TV and when I hear of plans for yet another long term mission to observe the heliopause or
to find gravity waves. That is the true exploration and it's here and now.
"Virgin Galactic" is a lovely piece of Hyperbole and aimed at a just-achievable investment. Sir Richard, as usual, has a keen eye for the mid-term return on his investments. But what he offers to the punters is not really much more than a fairground ride - I'd love to be able to afford that but I have a bit of a conscience about my carbon footprint for such a jaunt.

"Energy will always be the issue. Are you saying mankind is too darn stupid to even try to solve the conundrum? Answers are in fact abundant."
Answers in both directions, I think? There is a certain amount of stupidity revealing itself in the Gulf of Mexico at the moment.

 

[spacester]

I have thought a lot about this and I have now realized why I 'took against' the idea.
It was nothing to do with the engineering aspect at all. I don't think I have made any serious adverse comments about that, although there are several 50 year old ideas in the proposal. Von Braun and Clarke were giants in their time but the politics, economics and technologies are not the same now. The date in "2001 a space odyssey" shows how wrong one can be!
My problem was, essentially, with the social aspect of the ideas in the original model. The word "tourism" strongly suggests a privileged elite enjoying the benefits of their wealth. Yes, there is a certain amount of 'spreading around' of that wealth in the tourist locations and there are spin-offs but, in what would be a very high-tech project, who would benefit? Tourism is not an altruistic affair. How many space trips would the average / underprivileged citizen expect and who would be prepared to subsidise some rich guy's holiday?
Also, there may be a good reason for space exploitation - getting materials from the Moon and Mars. That would be a very laudable idea and could make economic sense. But that wouldn't involve 'colonisation'. To be economically viable a space mining project would be more like a deep water Oil rig which, even though only a few miles offshore, is very spartan and not, by any stretch, a 'colony'.

So my objections are basically against the two words "tourism" and "colony" and have not been against the Physics or Engineering aspects at all - which is, surely, what the forum is about. More power to your elbow when you want to discuss practical solutions.

"who would benefit? Tourism is not an altruistic affair. How many space trips would the average / underprivileged citizen expect and who would be prepared to subsidise some rich guy's holiday?"

Subsidize? What are you talking about? It works the other way around: the rich bastards pay thru the nose so we-all go go cheaper later.

Ah, but you got us on "Colony".

It is my well considered observation that any plan that talks about Mars "Colonization" is fatally flawed from the start. Don't get me wrong, I want Man on Mars and I want it bad. But we cannot Colonize until we've Settled. I am adamant on this point. First we have to go, with the intention of staying, but with the purpose of finding out if and how we can colonize.

Settlers go and stay for life, or bug out and go home. They do not make babies if they know the babies will likely die. Colonists by definition make babies.

We are a long ways from making babies in a gravity field other than our home. We have to settle for Settlement as the initial master goal.

 

[sophiecentaur]

spacester
I think we may well be arguing in quadrature about a lot of this. My early posts were really a reaction to what appears to be a very dated view of space travel. The Universe is not actually 'shrinking' fast, like the Earth is. You can't just extrapolate from same day meetings anywhere in the World and project same-year jaunts to anywhere much outside the Earth. Neither can you extrapolate Cost Reduction ad infinitum.
I am presuming that Warp Drive etc. are not on the menu so where do we go? There's Mars, The Moon and a few other Moons around some other planets. Beyond that, we're talking human generations worth of travel time - almost whatever engines we develop. That certainly couldn't be called "tourism".

"beaten around the head with a space rocket" HaHa.
I did read about one Sci Fi book per week for several years and I enjoyed the fiction but even Azimov was a bit over glib about the Galactic Empire thing. Fair enough, in his day, but don't we know better now?

My Son is in marketing and tells me they can predict what people are going to do - but only to some degree. He hasn't got his Aston Martin yet!
Keep em coming.

 

[spacester]

To make your "plan" to colonize the Moon and Mars cost-effective, you need to find a valuable resource (hopefully very, very valuable) that can be mined and/or produced on them but cannot be found/produced on Earth. For example, the first thing that I think of when "mining" and "the Moon" are mentioned together is Helium-3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3). I'm not sure what you could mine on Mars however, perhaps some rare minerals or something.

Overall just returning soil/rock samples of the moon and/or Mars would never cover costs, because the more you returned the less valuable it would become. By the time they were colonized, their dirt would be worthless (where as right now they're basically priceless).

Hello, my fellow ME.

Years ago, I figured out the resource on the moon that will drive the killer app that makes commercial activity on the moon a reasonable business proposition.

I do not know how many posts I've made to reveal and explain this answer to our space development conundrum. I have approached the subject every way I know. But the next person who gets it will feel like the first. It's not like people argue against it, they invariably ignore it. I consider this a failure on the part of my personality, not of the resource statement itself.

What can you do on the moon that has very very high value and that cannot be had on Earth or elsewhere? Physical substances, whether manufactured or merely gathered, cannot possibly meet these criteria, certainly not at anywhere near today's cost of transportation.

There is only one answer: The Experience of Being There.

Space Tourism is such a lame term for the kaleidoscope of human activity on the Moon for which people will receive value and pay good money. Doing things on the moon would be the fulfillment of the dreams of the ancients, and if you cannot market that you cannot market anything.

So we can go and do science and extract water and oxygen and make structures from local resources. But nobody is willing to "fund" such activity just for the sake of doing it. It MUST be an investment, one that will see at least some value returned to someone sometime and all those to a degree where a significant number of investors jump on board.

So we need to set up a lunar industrial park with a singular purpose: to learn how to build facilities to host visitors who pay good money for experiences. Once we learn how, we build those facilities and exploit them for revenue and close the financial loop.

Note that this strategy need not wait for actual humans to show up. Think lunar rover rentals, operated by customers using PCs at home.

 

[D H]

Ah, but you got us on "Colony".

It is my well considered observation that any plan that talks about Mars "Colonization" is fatally flawed from the start. Don't get me wrong, I want Man on Mars and I want it bad. But we cannot Colonize until we've Settled. I am adamant on this point. First we have to go, with the intention of staying, but with the purpose of finding out if and how we can colonize.

Settlers go and stay for life, or bug out and go home.

You are still missing a basic step: Exploration. Sending settlers without having a pretty good idea that the settlers won't "bug out and go home." That basic step of exploration is beyond the financial means of anyone country given current technology. It is very important to remember that this is the engineering section of PhysicsForums, not the science fiction section.

Another problem is that you are still begging the question, why settle/colonize Mars? A couple of reasons not to:

• Assuming we have the technology to send large numbers of people into space (essential for colonization or settlement), why go back down into a gravity well?
• Mars may harbor life. If it does, I venture that that would mean all plans for settlement would be off. Why plan for something that has a very real likelihood of being precluded from happening?

 

[spacester]

spacester
I think we may well be arguing in quadrature about a lot of this. My early posts were really a reaction to what appears to be a very dated view of space travel. The Universe is not actually 'shrinking' fast, like the Earth is. You can't just extrapolate from same day meetings anywhere in the World and project same-year jaunts to anywhere much outside the Earth. Neither can you extrapolate Cost Reduction ad infinitum.
I am presuming that Warp Drive etc. are not on the menu so where do we go? There's Mars, The Moon and a few other Moons around some other planets. Beyond that, we're talking human generations worth of travel time - almost whatever engines we develop. That certainly couldn't be called "tourism".

"beaten around the head with a space rocket" HaHa.
I did read about one Sci Fi book per week for several years and I enjoyed the fiction but even Azimov was a bit over glib about the Galactic Empire thing. Fair enough, in his day, but don't we know better now?

My Son is in marketing and tells me they can predict what people are going to do - but only to some degree. He hasn't got his Aston Martin yet!
Keep em coming.

Hi sophie, thanks for being such a good sport.

I read more SF than you did, so there. I was also fortunate enough to read a stern lecture from Harlan Ellison early in my reading career (this would be the mid to late 60's).

Modern media has adulterated the nature of Science Fiction (the kind found in books) in the public's mind, and it's a darn shame.

SF HAS NEVER BEEN ABOUT PREDICTING THE FUTURE

It still isn't.

SF is about exploring the human condition under speculative circumstances, often those caused by possible future technologies. All the way back to Hugo Gernsback and Alfred Bester, it is about how humans are and how they might be. If SF writers limited themselves to predicting the future, it would be a shriveled shell of what we enjoy. Even Jules Verne was about lots of societal things besides future tech. Even today's authors do not often mine the field of predicting the future. That's what Popular Science is for (and of course they are always wrong).

Those of us who know this, and I certainly am not alone, are completely inoculated against the syndrome you seem to diagnose. We never expected flying cars in the first place.

To be sure, there are plenty of people found on the internet who live in a star trek mind set. They conceive that having transporter beams and replicators are just a matter of time.

But those people are not the people here. The posters on this thread are in my observation all about real world answers to this most difficult conundrum.

If ever there was a problem worthy of mankind's collective intellect, it is the development of space in spite of the fact that the most energetic possible chemical reaction is barely energetic enough to achieve orbit. A little more gravity and there's no way. A little less and it would be easy and done by now.

 

[spacester]

You are still missing a basic step: Exploration. Sending settlers without having a pretty good idea that the settlers won't "bug out and go home." That basic step of exploration is beyond the financial means of anyone country given current technology. It is very important to remember that this is the engineering section of PhysicsForums, not the science fiction section.

Yes I was missing that step, but I left it to you to fill the gap and so you did.

IOW I agree.

Feel free to slap me if you truly think I am straying into SF territory. But I am very cautious not to, so I do ask that you consider that charge well before making it. I was delighted that this thread landed on this forum and it has stayed here.

Certainly any Mars Settlement plan will need to consider exactly how initial expeditions would serve the goal of settlement. The conventional view would be that these missions would be essential before sending large numbers of people. Even so, one of my design alternatives would have us skip manned precursor missions and instead emplace the habitat robotically and have it operated remotely for a full 26 month cycle before people move in.

So your point is taken that there is a lower level of mission than Settlement, and that requiring Expeditions for the purpose of finding out if settlement is feasible is just as reasonable as saying that Settlement is needed to see if Colonization is feasible. But expeditions might be bypassed in some architectures.

Another problem is that you are still begging the question, why settle/colonize Mars? A couple of reasons not to:

• Assuming we have the technology to send large numbers of people into space (essential for colonization or settlement), why go back down into a gravity well?
• Mars may harbor life. If it does, I venture that that would mean all plans for settlement would be off. Why plan for something that has a very real likelihood of being precluded from happening?

I have two completely different answers for why to live on Mars and Moon. First, why go to space at all? Answer: Becoming a space-faring species is its own goal, because the benefits to mankind will certainly greatly overwhelm the cost.

So at the most basic level, the reason for going to both locations is simply that when that becomes reality ipso facto we will be space faring. It is certainly possible to become space-faring and stay out of gravity wells, but that is not what this thread is about.

More specifically, however, we go to Moon to turn it into a playground and to establish things that will last forever. For example, a record of life on Planet Earth that will last for eons. Many of the things we will do on the Moon will be because we can and we want to and it is fun. The idea is to use the power of economic activity, in a word, profit, to make it all go. The profit motive will be central but opportunities for government and private foundations to subsidize the early stages will abound. The profit equation will be stretched over generations.

Mars is completely different. First of all I feel like I shouldn't even be required to answer the question, because there are so many people involved with trying to make it happen. The 'cause' does not need my voice to be legitimate. But I'll answer anyway.

Mars is about exploration, expansion, insurance and science.

Mankind explores. We just do, there is no denying it. What happens when we cease to explore new terrain? (Yes I know the oceans offer another spectacular frontier, but deep water pressures are prohibitive.) Luna will be fun, but Mars is much more diverse.

Mankind needs to feel like it can expand. We need a safety valve. No one is talking about a mass exodus into space or starting over elsewhere, that's rubbish. We just need a safety valve, and Mars can fill that role.

Insurance against extinction of humanity is no small achievement and of great worth, cynics among us notwithstanding. Mars can offer that, that's what a colony would be about at its most basic level.

Science on Mars will be in little bits and pieces even after manned expeditions. It will not see its golden age until we at least settle there.

So those are the reasons why, as to your reasons not to. Gravity wells have resources and a stable maintenance free platform to build your facilities on.

Life on Mars as the show-stopper: not going to happen. Why let the possibility handcuff us from planning? That is "letting the terrorists win" - not moving forward as a society due to a fear response to a threat. If life is there it is deep and isolated and we can be cohabitants. Indeed there will be an imperative to have people on site to study it.

 

[D H]

Yes I was missing that step, but I left it to you to fill the gap and so you did.

This is the Engineering section of PhysicsForums, spacester, not the science fiction section. Far too many here have been leaving out that step.

Feel free to slap me if you truly think I am straying into SF territory. But I am very cautious not to, so I do ask that you consider that charge well before making it. I was delighted that this thread landed on this forum and it has stayed here.

The way this thread is going it is not going to stay here long. It started on a bad footing and has not improved all that much.

I have two completely different answers for why to live on Mars and Moon. First, why go to space at all? [Preaching elided]

Way too much preaching, here spacester.
Answer: Becoming a space-faring species is its own goal, because the benefits to mankind will certainly greatly overwhelm the cost.

It is certainly possible to become space-faring and stay out of gravity wells, but that is not what this thread is about.

Unfortunately, no. This thread has begged the question about why should we colonize the Moon and Mars from post number one.

Mars is completely different. First of all I feel like I shouldn't even be required to answer the question, because there are so many people involved with trying to make it happen.

Who? Members of the Mars Society? Certainly not at NASA or Roscosmos or ESA. NASA has a small number, a very small number, of people working on exploration of Mars by humans. The number of people at NASA who are working on colonizing Mars is very close to zero.

Mankind explores. [Preaching elided]

I hate to sound like a broken record, but one more time: This is the Engineering section of PhysicsForums. Please stop the evangelizing.

Life on Mars as the show-stopper: not going to happen.

If life is found on Mars, I would put even odds on humans being precluded from setting foot on Mars, let alone colonizing it.

You've read science fiction. Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mar faction is very real. There are several people who are highly influential in charting NASA's course (a lot more influential than Zubrin) who will work very hard to preclude terraforming or colonizing Mars human colonization should life be discovered on Mars.

 

[spacester]

I was not aware I was preaching. And you're not? No fury like orthodoxy challenged, eh?

Forgive me for instigating an interesting thread. There seemed a shortage of such, but I'm sure that's just me.

Major projects are not developed in a social vacuum. They need social context and a social imperative. Stating those parameters is preaching? This forum is too restricted for social context?

If I was preaching I am done. I thought I was laying the groundwork for the development of an engineering plan, and I pretty much covered it. So all I have to do to stop preaching is to not repeat myself on those points. Am I permitted to repeat those founding premises when asked about them?

I'll stick to facts and links, sir.

Who? Members of the Mars Society? Certainly not at NASA or Roscosmos or ESA. NASA has a small number, a very small number, of people working on exploration of Mars by humans. The number of people at NASA who are working on colonizing Mars is very close to zero.

The world of space development is not restricted to NASA, ESA, and Rosscosmos. Such as:

http://www.marssociety.org/ptf/index.shtml

http://www.marshome.org/

http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2005/07/68311

http://www.1000planets.com/mars_colony_page1.php

http://spacegeneration.org/

http://www.google.com/virgle/plan_1.html

http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/

[one_last_preach]
Those are just some of the enthusiastic amateurs. Say what you will, discredit them all if you can and if you must, but the list of private fortunes working on this stuff is much more impressive. I already listed some of them.

Seriously, you didn't even know these groups existed before? Or you consider them in the same category as UFO believers, or what?

Any chance you could lighten up and let the folks here have some fun?[/one_last_preach]

 

[D H]

I was not aware I was preaching. And you're not? No fury like orthodoxy challenged, eh?

Yes. I am preaching -- preaching about doing engineering in the Engineering section of PF.

 

[spacester]

I'll be back later with some engineering stuff then.

 

[spacester]

Just this for now.

My favorite first payload to begin development of the lunar industrial park:

http://www.higp.hawaii.edu/srr/SRR-VI-presentations/Joyner-Rod-Power_lander_SRR6.pdf

A power lander to establish a local grid with 250 KWe at 400 hz 3 phase delta, pick your voltage and 750 KW thermal energy for those ISRU processes that require large flows of heat. Solar or Nuclear. The grid would be by good old cable, not microwaves, because the different tenants huddle together for mutual support anyway.

With power and heat and another landing, we can start extracting oxygen and seeing what we can do with glass and plain old regolith. We can see if we can create a paved landing field in situ with a microwave apparatus. We can start building air tight structures and see if we can get some doors and windows shipped up.

With LUNOX, we can support a lunar landing system based on round trips to L-1, giving access to the lunar surface to anyone who can get their payload out to L-1 where our lander can grab it.

 

[luma]

Try to have a bit of vision. Men on Mars would be the grand conclusion symphony of our societies.

It must be hard having aspergers but thing's can have more value than their cold hard immediate gain.

 

[D H]

The thread has been moved out of engineering. While I am a mentor, I did not make that move. I am too involved in this discussion to be performing any kind of moderation with regard to this thread.So, now that this thread is in General Discussion, discussions of the ethics of Mars colonization/terraforming are very much fair game.

The views on this topic span a lot of ground. Here is how I see these views, from one extreme to another:

1. We shouldn't terraform Mars no matter what, even if it's sterile.
2. If Mars has life, we shouldn't terraform Mars, doubly so if the life is non-terrestrial in nature. Variants:
   • If Mars has life, we should leave Mars alone. Period.
   • If Mars has life, we should study it but only with unmanned probes that are completely and thoroughly sterilized multiple times during the fabrication process and a few more times on the way to Mars.
   • If Mars has life, it is obviously in trouble. We should aeroform Mars (make it more suitable for Mars life).
   • If Mars has life, limited human missions to Mars are acceptable if we take extreme cautions to ensure that we don't introduce any terrestrial life to Mars.
3. If Mars has life, we can still terraform Mars, but we should make little enclaves for those obviously dwindling remnants of Mars life -- if doing so doesn't cost too much.
4. If Mars has life, we should commit xenocide.

Some reading material:

"Ethics of terraformation"
http://library.thinkquest.org/C003763/index.php?page=terraform02
A summary article. Use this to get a flavor of the debate. From the article, "The vast majority of Mars scientists and planetary biologists belong to the 'Green' camp in that they believe that Mars should be made 'green'. They have several impressive arguments in their arsenal. ... The 'Red' camp, in the minority, is adamantly opposed to the terraformation of Mars. 'Reds' believe that humans have no right to essentially destroy the current face of Mars just for our own concerns, and that we should preserve it in its current state so that we might conduct scientific experiments and learn more about the planet."

David Grinspoon, "Is Mars Ours? The logistics and ethics of colonizing the red planet", Slate, 2004.
http://www.slate.com/id/2093579/
Dr. Grinspoon is the Curator of Astrobiology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and has served on multiple NASA and ESA interplanetary science teams. From the article, "But before we go there and set up greenhouses, dance clubs, and falafel stands, let's make sure that, in some subtle form that could be harmed by the human hubbub, life does not already exist there."

Dave Brody, "Terraforming: Human Destiny or Hubris?", adAstra Online
http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra_terraforming_brody-1.html
Summarizes the debate between Chris McKay, astrogeophysicist at NASA Ames and Bob Zubrin, President of the Mars Society. Zubrin ranks as a high 3 on my scale. McKay, 2c.

"Ethics of terraforming", redcolony.com
http://www.redcolony.com/art.php?id=0107290
This article does a semi-decent job of presenting both sides given that redcolony.com is a rabidly pro-terraforming site.

"Ethics of terraforming", Wikipiedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_terraforming
Listed only because Wikipedia has an article on everything.

 

[Evo]

I moved the thread pending a moderation decision.

 

[spacester]

The views on this topic span a lot of ground. Here is how I see these views, from one extreme to another:

Nice post. I do not particularly like your scale however. It seems designed to support a Red position. There are a lot of options in the neighborhood of 3 and 4. Terraforming need not be presented as nearly the same as xenocide.

The reds will lose (yes, I read the KMS trilogy). They are in the minority and they always will be. Perhaps this ethical question ought not to be left to majority rule, but it likely will be and then the game will be over.

If there is even a game in the first place. This discussion is predicated on supposition, not evidence, and I for one don't like doing that. I think we've almost ruled out macro organisms on the surface, yes? And that currently it is a hostile environment even for those who evolved there, right?

So if there is life, it's deep. We will have to dig down to find it. If we go to enough places and dig down far enough, and turn up nothing, the game is over, right? How much do we need to dig up before we can proceed as if the place is as sterile as it looks?

What are the odds of deep life being macro life? Very low I'd say. Life may be ubiquitous on Earth but that would mean nothing to a sterile Mars, and based on all the actual evidence the only realistic hope for life on Mars is deep and microscopic. It will likely only exist in little micro environments and we will not be able to observe it without disturbing it.

So the moment of discovery will be the moment of contamination, or at least the point where we know how isolated it is from the surface environment. Either way its game over, Reds lose. If we have to go to that much trouble to get to the critters, we can carry out operations in the sterile surface environment without further messing with them.

Besides, exciting plot lines aside, terraforming is not a job for settlers. They are there to learn and adapt to the local environment. They should keep the hubris to a dull roar and make the general endeavor work. Once we know we can stay and what we're dealing with in terms of climate science, we can think about changing it.

I guess I'm a green when it comes to letting humans and their microbes interact with the environment on a limited basis, but a red when it comes to climate modification.

It would be really stupid for us to wait for a Martian beetle to walk in front of one of our cameras before setting up shop in person. The next rover should see any surface macro life if it is there to be seen. We don't need to wait any more after that to adopt an operating assumption for planning purposes that deep microscopic life is the only realistic scenario for Martian life.

 

[luma]

Mars is for the Martians and Earth is for Humans. The other animals are guests here.

Concern for speculative life on Mars from Humans is so noble. Earth should be the first grid we start this mission from the variety of smallest beetles to the singing whales. Yet Earth is abundant in life full of colours and driving the cycle of nature we rest on nonchalantly. Never stopped us trampling over the fine tuned ecosystems to crudely tear out that shiny piece of pretty metal.

And Mars is very big! Enough for two hosts lodging together.

 

[luma]

First off, the Mars Design Reference mission is not a colonization plan. This thread is about colonization. The Mars DRM is a plan to send a small number of astronauts to Mars and then return back to Earth after spending some time on Mars. Secondly, while defining/refining that Design Reference Mission is within NASA's budget, allocating money to implement those plans is not.

NASA uses design reference missions as the basis for costing a concept. Think about it this way: NASA (or any organization, for that matter) needs to have some idea regarding how much something will cost before approving and allocating monies for that activity. The Mars Design Reference Mission provides the basis for that costing exercise. Those missions are not within NASA's budget. The costs far exceed NASA's budget.

Colonisation, settling... Whatever you want to call it. Send a few people there regularly and it ends up becoming settled and then colonised.

Robert Zubrin says it's within NASA's current budget. How come you say it is not? Mars to stay is just Zubrin's plan but the astronauts don't come back. It's cheaper. I'd volunteer even if I knew I'd die after even a week. Don't care.

 

[D H]

Robert Zubrin says it's within NASA's current budget. How come you say it is not? Mars to stay is just Zubrin's plan but the astronauts don't come back. It's cheaper. I'd volunteer even if I knew I'd die after even a week. Don't care.

Yes, its vastly cheaper, maybe an order of magnitude cheaper. It's still outside of NASA's budget. The plan is also certifiably insane. Where would he get funding? No government agency, and no corporation, would be stupid enough to back such a plan. It is quite literally a suicide plan.

 

[Evo]

Over 100 posts and the arguments are circular. Closed.