Project to colonize Mars in 11 years?

[auroraglacialis]

Sempu, I agree.
To me this project feels (!) like it is made either by overenthusiastic space nerds with good intentions and unrealistic plans or by some people who want to draw in money by inspiring peoples enthusiasm.

Originally Posted by Human No More

Citation needed.

I will not play the meme game. Talk to me like a normal human being and not like a dumpsite for memes and abbreviations and I might reply.

I point out inaccuracies, inconsistencies, fallacies and bad assumptions.

So do I - except I do it in terms of the idea behind that project, while you seem to be mostly focussed on "debunking" me or my criticism, instead of supporting the idea of this project with good and reliable information.

I didn't ever say this was some kind of actual viable plan that will have things done by its deadlines; it's as much a thought experiment to get people actually considering it seriously

For a thought experiment, these guys seem to take it awfully serious though. Including getting funding and hyping the media.

Scifi has nothing to do with it. Mars is a worthless dead planet, with maybe slight historical value. If it was something like that project to build an actual ship modelled on the original Enterprise, I could understand what you meant there, but it isn't. Try harder.

I personally think, that SciFi, with its dreams about colonizing other planets, mars colonies and easy space travel is deeply influencing the thoughts of people who actually do this kind of projects or dream about them. And in a way thats cool - fantasy can be a nice inspiration to actually making things happen. But what bugs me is that many people, you included, are caught by that dreams or fantasies in a way that conflates it with reality. It makes things seem all more plausible than they maybe are in reality, because there is faith involved. Yes, faith, the dirty word for scientists, but that is what it is. A lot of people who are talking about technology ins such an overenthusiastic way actually show faith in these ideas and belief in technology to make it happen and make it happen fast. Often this is based on not much solid ground at all. It is based on hypothesis, theories, ideas, hypothetical constructions, upscaling or transposing available technology to a new application and so on. And this is why I cann it SciFi, because that is what it is - it only gets hard Science when people actually build and test things, when they gather enough data to make a theory plausible. And it only get Technology when it passes that stage of Science and the theories are solid enough to risk building something that actually serves the purpose that was originally conjured up. This has NOTHING to do with Star Trek type of SciFi

Again, if an attempt to stop a particular mine or whatever failed, would you give up on all future attempts? I'd bet not, making a double standard.
[...]
I thought your objection was to launching anything radioactive into space, when, as I CORRECTLY pointed out, the USSR did it decades ago, and even with their abysmal safety record, nothing went wrong.

As much as one failure does not make future attempts void, one success does not make it safe. Not even a couple of them. In both cases.
To make it safe means to carefully try something several times until it works. I dont say one should not try a biosphere 3 or 4 or 5 - just that it was not done yet and to try it on Mars, risking real people in the process that cannot ring the alarm bell and get out at any moment, thats cruel.

I haven't paid a ****ing penny. I haven't joined anything. I have zero investment, interest or stake in this.

It is not all about money. It is about ideology as well. About publicity. Projects of that size dont go to crowdfunding websites to get pennies from people, they get millions and biollions of rich enthusiasts who want to see this happen, and these get inspired or pushed by publicity, medica echo, by the knowledge that funding such a thing allies them with millions of dreamers about this stuff in the world.
And idology is something that is an investment in itself. If you believe that this is going to happen within the next 10 or 20 years - or even within your lifetime and something comes along and makes a dent in that plan, maybe showing that you will not see it in your lifetime - that is something that would pull you down wouldn't it? It would make you feel sad - and the natural reaction then is to say "no, that cannot be, there has to be a way to make this work". That is ideological investment.

I never said it would deliver objectives on time; I am almost certain it won't as things stand. Chances are, it won't happen just because governments won't spend the money anyway

I am glad you agree that this project will not happen as they present it, because I think that they really are not honest in that timeplan. However, regarding funding - their argument was specifically that they want to make this cheap enough so that it can be funded by private investors - so if they would be right, it should be independent of government funding!

[auroraglacialis]