Comment by b112
6 hours ago
There is no scientific or economic case to even go to Mars
Nonsense. Just going to Mars with humans creates economic activity, and the R&D to do so, adds to scientific knowledge.
If you want to argue against going into further debt to do so, well, that's a different argument. One I agree with.
We are not in a meeting at SpaceX trying to please Elon. I dont think you realize what you are up against...Do you know what radiation does to humans?
For example Suni Williams went to the ISS and got stuck for 9 months. Come back white haired, with bone loss, muscle wasting, and vision damage. She retired from NASA within months. And the ISS is inside Earth magnetosphere...
FYI Mars has no magnetic field and almost no atmosphere. The Curiosity radiation detector measured the following:
Mars surface: 0.67 mSv/day (that is about 70x Earth surface)
In Deep space transit: 1.8 mSv/day
for example the ISS in low Earth orbit: 0.5–1.0 mSv/day
Even with VERY optimistic 3 month transits you are looking at a total for an astronaut of about 700 mSv if you have 450 to 500 day surface stay . That is well over NASA entire career radiation limit for astronauts in a single trip. A major solar particle event could add hundreds more in hours...
And if you say they would live underground, then you have sent humans 225 million km to live in a bunker...Every EVA would accumulate 0.67 mSv/day with zero medical infrastructure...And by the way aluminum shielding on the Martian surface actually increases dose due to secondary neutron production, you need meters of regolith or water to make a real difference. Meanwhile, Curiosity has radiation hardened hardware, and after 13 years is still going.
Send lots of robots...
SpaceX already shifted to focus on a Moon base and away from Mars.
The original plan was to send a few self-financed Starships to Mars as a first step which sounded reasonable as an experiment.
Nothing wrong with dreaming about solving hard problems like radiation and how to manage logistics at such a distance. Even if a human base ends up not making sense most of that stuff would still support a robotic base doing most of the exploration, with some temporary human visitors helping set things up.
You might enjoy A City On Mars by the Wienersmiths. There's a lot to consider that you are glossing over.
>> SpaceX already shifted to focus on a Moon base and away from Mars.
Oh boy….beyond Falcon 9 that is just a great but conventional rocket...SpaceX so called revolutionary Starship program is nothing more than a parade of explosions. Just in 2025 they had three upper stages exploding mid flight, one blew up on the launchpad during a static fire test in June, and a V3 booster crumpled during pressure testing in November. After 11 test flights... Starship has never once delivered a single gram of payload to orbit….Not one….Think about that for a minute.
Now NASA made Starship the sole critical path for returning the US to the Moon. The Artemis III lunar landing requires Starship HLS to work, which requires orbital refueling…
Something that has never been done with cryogenic propellants by anyone, ever... and requires roughly 12 to 14 tanker flights to fill a depot before each Moon mission. NASA own safety panel visited Starbase in 2025 and concluded Starship HLS could be years late.
The propellant transfer demo, originally scheduled for March 2025, has been delayed over a year. The critical design review keeps slipping. As a result, NASA just downgraded Artemis III from a Moon landing to a low Earth orbit docking test, pushing the actual landing to Artemis IV in 2028, and nobody seriously believes that date either...
And who is overseeing all this? Jared Isaacman that is Musk personal astronaut buddy, who flew twice on SpaceX missions, whose company Shift4 processes Starlink payments, whose deal with SpaceX exceeds $50 million... and who was literally recommended to Trump by Musk. Isaacman even publicly criticized NASA for giving Blue Origin a backup lander contract! meaning he wanted SpaceX to be the ONLY option...
As for the Moon pivot... what actually happened? In January 2025, Musk said: “No, we're going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction.” ….Twelve months later, after a year of Starship explosions and with an IPO approaching, suddenly it's “Moon first.” ...This is damage control. Any competent NASA plan would never have put a single unproven company, with a rocket that cannot reach orbit, on the sole critical path for a return to the Moon.
Agreed. At a bare minimum it's a hedge against terrestrial existential risks. And if Mars itself sucks, then, well, rotating space stations with simulated G, same principle.
One terrible thing wrought by billionaire Mars fantasies is a backlash that I think has become too sweeping. It's wrongheaded for a million reasons, but it's nevertheless true that hedging against terrestrial existential risks is something we should have an interest in.
Sorry, I'd love to hear exactly how a mars habitat with a half dozen people or a space station are "hedges against terrestrial existential risks"? Those are both "unfriendly" environments that lack the resources required to sustain themselves for any appreciable amount of time. And certainly don't have the number of people required to repopulate.
I'd love to see you make more of an effort to try and understand the idea you're engaging in than just engaging in an emotionally charged dismissal. I try to profess the principle of charity here from time to time, which means tackling the version of an idea that credits it with making the most sense.
So if the version of the idea that you're engaging with is one that doomed to fail, doesn't have the resources or technology or population to succeed... maybe assume that's not the version I'm talking about?
There are contexts where I love to get into these kinds of details (there was an amazing conversation on HN from a few months ago [1] about what would be involved in sending a bunch of voyager-style space probes to alpha centauri), but you have to want to try.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46058528
If I’m to believe the experts, LLMs are a panacea to all problems to have ever existed, like Blockchain before it.
Therefore it is a non-issue as given that LLMs have only gotten exponentially more impressive, in [current_year+n] you will be able to prompt Claude to materialize a fast terraforming machine and FTL it over to mars.
>> Nonsense. Just going to Mars with humans creates economic activity, and the R&D to do so.
Ok layout here your scientific or economic case...please. Because so far, the only trickle economic effects, where geriatric billionaires creating sub 100 km space rides to impress their Silicone Sally girlfriends...