“When you’re rich, they think you really know” – Tevye the Dairyman
Something occurred to me when I was in the pool (which is about the only place anything occurs to me), and it is this: the idea of colonizing Mars is just about the dumbest thing anyone has ever thought up. Ever. And I’m including alt-coins, Ice Capades, and molecular gastronomy in that list. It’s absolutely r-word level stupid.
Let’s take a step back and consider things from Alan Watts’ perspective, which is usually a very good idea. I am badly paraphrasing, but he hypothetically asked his audience to consider what it would be like to be God. You could do anything you want, you were omniscient, and as such, you knew everything that was going to happen before it happened.
Admittedly, this would be an awfully exciting and novel existence for any of us, but after a while – – probably just a few days – – we’d start to lose our minds. And, since we’re omnipotent, we’d endeavor to spice things up. So we would dictate that, once in a while, something unusual and unexpected would happen. Alan Watts goes on with this hypothetical, step by step, to illustrate that, as an all-powerful being, we would continue to modify your life, bit by bit, to make it more interesting and engaging, and to give yourself a chance to solve problems, and before you know it………...you’re back to your old life! Which, frankly, is probably pretty close to the truth anyway.
The point being………..your life is pretty close to what it should be. It might have some rough edges here and there. Maybe you need to exercise more. Perhaps you need to drink less. Or be kinder to fellow humans. But you’re probably about 95% right, and with a bit of effort, you’ll be right as rain. There’s no reason to start from scratch.
And that brings me to Mars. Because, quite famously, one Mr. Musk has made quite a stink about what an urgent task it is for humanity to colonize other planets. (Oddly, at the same time, he is wringing his hands about the fact that Earth’s population growth is slowing markedly, in spite of his own best efforts, and those of his elderly father, which seems to sort of fly in the face of the need to find more room for all these goddamn humans).
In any case, I’m a bit of a space nut, and God knows I’ve wallowed around gleefully in the world of Star Trek and, to a vastly smaller degree, Star Wars, for my entire life. My home office is littered with Star Trek ship models. But, having read about some of the realities of space travel, even to a relatively close place like Mars (which would take a mere eight months, in the best of circumstances), it has dawned on me that this is the most idiotic idea on earth, and the fact the richest man in the world has been touting it doesn’t make it any less stupid.
I’m not going to rehash what I’ve read about getting to Mars, or trying to colonize the place, because there’s reams of that information out there. The challenges of shielding humans from radiation for that length of time are enormous. I mean, Good Lord, we haven’t bothered going to our own moon (which is practically a pebble’s throw away compared to Mars) in half a century, and there are probably good reasons for that!
And even if you managed to put a few humans to Mars, the amount of equipment, effort, and expense to establish any kind of livable colony is simply beyond imagination. Perhaps in 500 years, technology will be in such a state that doing such a thing would be practical (although why it would make any sense is still beyond me), but I can’t think of any reason Musk would be going on about this topic, unless he just likes to see himself in the paper.
It’s sort of like this – – let’s say you had a really close friend, but you two had a quarrel. And you really wished you had a friend with whom you had no problems. So you decide to:
- Fly to Pakistan;
- Spend months searching for the nicest person you can find;
- Try to teach them English, or perhaps teach yourself Urdu;
- Fly back home with them;
- And hope that you two never have a fight.
Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to simply mend the fence with your existing friend over a good beer, and resolve your differences? It seems like about 1/10,000th the amount of effort with the same result.
Kind of like maybe focusing on taking good care of our beautiful planet instead of yammering on about flying off to a place with no water, virtually no atmosphere, and a temperature of 40 degrees below zero. DUMB!! Dumb idea, Mr. Musk!
