Why a Mars Colony is a Dangerous and Stupid Idea

hi there known genius elon musk here full of good ideas that always work out tell me wouldn't it be epic to live on a mars colony live on the red frontier what could be more epic reddit 420 kian reef than that but just what is a mars colony well it's a colony on mars it's the reason why spacex exists in the first place and they are already working on it the establishment of the colony itself together with the lunar base is scheduled for 2022 as announced in 2017. following five years of feverish work the project is already in the cgi rendering stage the colony will feature cool surface domes a ton of solar panels and the remote controlled self-destruct mechanism in case colonists tried to unionize join us on this exciting suicide mission which doesn't have any practical goals or justifications beyond the law or on mars yeah a mars colony is an extremely stupid and dangerous idea and it will be for the foreseeable future and i'm here to explain why if you are excited about the mars colony chances are it's because of elon musk people like elon musk who pay millions of dollars to market themselves as real-life tony starks have managed to convince a lot of people that our level of technology is far more advanced than it actually is i call this the marvel effect since their movies do the exact same thing don't tell me that when you first saw the shield helicarrier you didn't think it was kinda sorta possible to build in real life with our existing technology and don't get me wrong we have come a long way in terms of what we can accomplish but colonizing mars let alone [ __ ] terraforming is still out of our reach but even if we had the technology to reliably colonize mars right now doing so still wouldn't make a lack of sense and so throughout the video we'll be considering the following points the logistics of getting to mars the potential justifications for economy the practical problems of living on mars the psychological effects on colonists [ __ ] terraforming better alternatives to mars and a mystery point code name absolute train wreck and i find the psychological effect especially concerning your mental health and mars aren't exactly a match made in heaven exercising mental hygiene is hard enough on earth but thankfully fabulous is an app that can help you do just that the sponsor of today's video fabulous is your digital coach a happiness trainer so to speak it's the number one self-care app out there to help you build better habits and achieve your goals fabulous really helped me maintain my mental health after reading about ela musk's mars related ideas based on behavioral science it helps you develop great healthy habits and routines backed up by science real science for a healthier more productive and fulfilling lifestyle the app will help you create your own rituals these small steps that lead to big changes the two main ways to use the app or habit tracking and dedicated programs in heavy tracking you can choose from 100 plus 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and mars don't orbit the sun at the same speed so you can just launch a spacecraft fully nearly you have to time it right in a so-called launch window so the trip is as short as possible this launch window is about 30 days occurring every 26 months launching in this window means that the trip to mars will only take seven to nine months the logistical implications of this are of course pretty severe if a resupply mission fails for whatever reason you're potentially looking at a more than two year delay of supplies not to mention the risk of something going wrong during a landing now recently the rate of failure for mars missions seems to be lower but compared to a mars colony those are very simple missions where you aren't trying to land years worth of supplies or actual colonists for me this would mean sending twice or even three times the amount of needed supplies at the same time for a mars colony with separate transportation just in case one or even two of them crash land or something of course cargo can stay in space for longer so i can imagine you could also pre-launch a whole lot of cargo ships even outside of the launch window in a way that they would reach mars at predetermined times but this is still suboptimal unmanned missions can afford risk of failure manned missions cannot nothing can go wrong which means lots of fail saves lots of backup consequently the costs will be horrendous and for what let's take a look at the potential justifications for a mars colony and the problem is there are none discounting vagaries like it's for science or the atiq lower on mars currently we have absolutely no reason to be there in person there are no valuables to extract in large quantities but even if there were shipping them back to earth would make it the most unprofitable venture in human history in terms of science there is not much humans could do that rovers can't mars is a rock desert there is not much opportunity to be productive now overpopulation and escaping climate change are reasons people sometimes bring up in favor of colonizing mars and both are rather stupid first off with appropriate planning and technology earth can support vastly more people overpopulation is only a problem with our current wasteful space use and inefficient food production if we fixed those with the magic of science overpopulation would stop being a problem if you expanded the population the city of the netherlands to the planet its entire land surface you could theoretically house 75 billion people or even if we take half of that that's still 38 billion about 5 times the earth's current population but if you insist on decreasing the earth's population through a mars colony realistically you'll have decreased it by about 50 and it only costs you 40 billion dollars per person so if you want to affect the overpopulation problem instead of assembling a colonization mission to mars you would achieve more by bulk ordering condoms and handing them out on a street corner for free as for climate change people including elon musk make it sound like mars would be humanity's plan b in case of a climate disaster on earth but by humanity elon actually means the select few aka the top one percent what you thought you would be on the evacuation rocket even assuming we can put together a city-sized functional colony on mars and we can evacuate say a million people via rockets those seats will be distributed based on leverage you will be on the rocket if you can buy lobby or otherwise force your way onto it and while there are only a few thousand billionaires out there there are plenty of millionaires to go around more than willing to escape the planet in case of a global catastrophe humanity's so-called plan b in case of a climate disaster on earth would just be a rescue operation for the planet's ruling class nothing more but even if the ruling class or anyone else made it there soon the harsh reality would start setting in namely the problems with living on mars mars is a kind of orange hell for human beings with a wide range of dying opportunities available to you martian atmospheric pressure is less than one percent that of earth which means a very thin atmosphere which means harmful solar radiation and micrometeorites tiny stones flying like bullets aimed at buildings and your pressure suits visor moreover on earth the coldest temperature ever recorded was minus 89 celsius measured in the arctic on mars temperatures often go below -120 even if you have a warm period the thin atmosphere just won't retain any heat mers's outer core is also frozen solid meaning no dynamo effect meaning no magnetic shield meaning hazardous levels of cosmic radiation even if you dig in to avoid said radiation colonists will be exposed to higher than average rates for the rest of their lives that means after some years rates of cancer will be through the roof in addition gravity is one-third of that of earth so even though you would be able to lift heavy things and bound around thanks for tapiylan there's no telling what health problems low gravity would cause the longest stay in microgravity so far is less than a year beyond that we can only extrapolate how would the low gravity of mars affect pregnancies or your cardiovascular system who wants to be the first lucky one to find out in light of these dangers as far as i can tell pretty cgi and sleek domes on the martian surface are complete [ __ ] unless you're planning on dying but if you aren't your only option is to dig in and live the rest of your life in a martian underground bunker only coming out occasionally when there isn't a solar flare blanketing the surface with dangerous levels of radiation the wide variety of lethal dangers plus being crammed together in a small underground bunker with dozens of others for the rest of your life will surely do wonders for your mental health by the way and let's talk about that these psychological effects on colonists now some people might say we cannot tell for certain what the mental health effects on the colonists would be because there is simply no such precedent and they would be wrong to say that we absolutely have precedent and it's not looking too good consider this quartz article titled it's completely ridiculous to think that humans could live on mars in this article there's a useful snippet we will now read together despite having a completely breathable atmosphere and plenty of fresh water antarctica has no permanent residence nobody wants to live there scientists who work at arctic bases suffer from a mental health disorder called winter over syndrome characterized by symptoms such as depression irritability aggressive behavior insomnia memory deficits and the occurrence of mild few states known as the antarctic stair since it must be a bit like living with a colony of zombies it's no wonder that they want to stay drunk all winter imagine this but without the atmosphere outside plus all the deadly hazards the thought that you won't be going home ever again and the fact that your lives are constantly on a knife's edge because if your life support systems fail there won't be any rescue operations in such conditions all colonists would be varying degrees of insane after a month if just one of them starts a fire sabotages the life support system or opens the airlock everyone will be dead now these mental health problems are caused by mars being mars a hazardous rock desert but what if we could change that turn this dead planet into earth 2.0 so let's talk about [ __ ] terraforming okay first off let's get the obvious out of the way as things currently stand terraforming mars is [ __ ] magic we do not have the resources or technology to terraform a planet despite what elon musk would want you to believe that's more of that marvel effect i guess from the spacex website it's a little cold but we can warm it up presumably elon will press the magic big brain science button and mars will just get warmer the number one thing you would need to do on mars is to create an atmosphere but according to nasa if you combine all sources of greenhouse gases on mars you would end up with an atmosphere 6.9 that of earth 93.1 short of your goal nuking the martian ice caps as suggested by countless reddit and twitter experts would net you 1.2 percent of earth's atmosphere without an earth-like atmosphere there is not much else you can do and this would only be the first hurdle to overcome terraforming is something we just don't have the technology or resources for even with our current level of advancement terraforming to us is like traffic engineering to elon musk or basic empathy for his fellow human beings or not harassing employees sexually but if that's the case what else should we do let's look at some of the better alternatives to mars first off a simple alternative for all the enthusiasts out there if you want to try out what it would be like to live on a mars colony get together with your enthusiast friends and crowdfund a trip to antarctica that should curb all your enthusiasm within a few months but suppose we are really serious about colonization and why not but i think it's a good idea so why not create a colony on the moon first the moon has about zero percent atmosphere compared to mars is 0.6 so as far as you're concerned they're essentially the same you'll have a much nicer view of space and travel time is only 3 days instead of 7 to 9 months if something goes wrong you can go back to earth or at least have a panic module able to sustain you until help arrives on the moon your internet latency is only 2.5 seconds instead of half an hour and you don't have to deal with the soul-crushing realization that you'll never see your friends and family again having a permanent base on the moon could also have actual justifications like an observatory complex free of atmospheric interference or a spaceport that could take advantage of the lower gravity or space tourism facilities for rich [ __ ] or a massive solar panel installation that can beam back power to earth and so on some of these ideas are still highly theoretical others are more feasible but there is a good chance we'll be seeing at least one of them becoming reality within our lifetime but what if you just can't let this whole mars business go if a moon colony isn't enough for you you also want to terraform well i have good news there is a great opportunity for you to satisfy your scientism-oriented urges planet earth is a great candidate for terraforming there are vast areas on this planet that are unsuitable for large-scale human habitat how about we practice by terraforming the sahara desert and also making sure we don't kill the amazon rainforest in the process that would be a great first step and it would benefit most of everyone but that doesn't sound sci-fi enough so elon musk talking about mars because that's how you maintain the tesla stock bubble so as we can see mars colony planes are somewhere between complete absurdity and stock manipulation but there is one last part of this video the mystery segment promised early on one last point to hammer home the true extent of the absurdity of the agitation around colonizing mars we need to talk about the lowest common denominator on par with nigerian prince email scams and low effort nfds mars one holy [ __ ] and just what is mars one the project was announced in 2012 the goal to establish a permanent colony in mars by 2025 with volunteers who get a one-way ticket and will live out the rest of their lives on the planet the project was headed by a guy named bas lansdorp and no that text box wasn't me i took this picture straight from the official mars one twitter wow i remember when other serious organizations like nasa used ms paint for their promo material now you might be asking who in the name of jesus rotary christ would sign up for this and the answer is people who either have nothing to fear or nothing to lose usually the latter 200 000 people to be precise 100 of whom made it to the shortlist wife threatens divorce after her husband is considered for a one-way trip to space there's only a slim chance of mr sullivan being selected to live on mars as just 24 people will be chosen but his wife said he did not ask her opinion before completing the application form and said that she could not contemplate leaving her children however mr sullivan says he loves his family more than mars but also wants to be the first to live on the red planet and make a name for himself wow that's a that's one way to get a divorce i guess i'm not going to show any names or faces but looking through the list of applicants their faces don't exactly scream balanced happy life and healthy psychology now as for the mission timeline of mars one well you can find official but completely contradictory information online the dates are just all over the place go figure i'll just use the wikipedia page and one of their official promotion videos 2014 drafting mission concept studies requesting proposals from aerospace companies proof of concept for key technologies required 2015 reducing applicant pool to 40. the candidate pool was reduced to 100 okay in 2016 the first comes satellite and lander to demonstrate key technologies one initial concept study by lockheed martin lander and survey satellite technology orbiter not funded nor designed 2020 settlement components are set up on mars 2022 crew departure from earth and the first colonists would have arrived in 2023 with the second crew arriving by 2025 and by 2031 the colony would reach 20 colonists one of the participants though has a story to tell former nasa researcher joseph roach signed up for selection to help further popularize space science to his surprise he ended up on the top 100 shortlist out of 200 000 applicants the 200 000 figure was a lie worse according to roche some of the leading contenders had simply bought their way into their positions and were being encouraged to donate appearance fees to mars one after passing each filter applicants received points the amounts were completely arbitrary and applicants could get additional points by buying mars one merchandise and through gifts and donations otherwise roche despite being on the top 100 list of prospective mars colonists never met anyone from mars one in person the original plan was to conduct interviews at set locations and be tested for several days which then got changed into a 10 minute skype call medical examination for colonizing mars had to be done by each applicant on their own at their local doctor otherwise applicants had to fill out an online test and record a short video about themselves which they had to upload to the mars one website the skype interview came after during which mars one's chief medical officer quizzed you with questions from literature about mars and the mission that mars one had provided to all the applicants it's some very serious selection process you got there but for me personally the absolute best part of mars one is how financing was envisioned so how was it envisioned well of course through a reality tv show what yes this was the actual plan for funding televising the application process and then the colonists day-to-day lives on mars cool so besides the overwhelming stress and psychological pressure of living on mars with 19 others in a confined space people also have to be on camera constantly to shoot a reality tv show to gain funding on which their survival depends no pressure and i'm sure nothing could ever go wrong with that you know filming people under extreme psychological pressure with deteriorating mental health it's day 80 of the live on mars reality show brought to you by mars 1 over here we have john writing a manifesto on the wall which appears to be his own feces having done intense research into makeshift ballistic weapons in the hallway julie strangling maria in a fit of primal animalistic rage james is blackout drunk for the 75th consecutive day robert is hanging from the ceiling so where is mars one now i'm sure they're working hard to the company went bankrupt in 2019. well that's uh that's uh not unexpected uh humanity's hopes of colonizing planets have been dashed by this company that planned on colonizing mars through a reality tv show god damn this was stupid anyway so this was my video about a mers colony and why it's a stupid idea for the time being at least and i thank you for watching and don't forget to like and subscribe and i have a patreon if you want to support me monetarily making this sort of content and i'll be seeing you next time

Channel: Adam Something

Views: 2,946,751

Keywords: elon musk, elon, musk, mars, spacex, mars one, colony, space

Id: U9YdnzOf4NQ

Length: 16min 40sec (1000 seconds)

Published: Thu May 26 2022