Author Topic: Neil deGrasse Tyson doubts humans will ever walk on Mars  (Read 25350 times)

Offline mme

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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson doubts humans will ever walk on Mars
« Reply #60 on: 05/05/2017 03:08 am »
Quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson doubts humans will ever walk on Mars

This is quite a bold assumption. Ever/Never is a very long period of time. ...

This isn't something Tyson ever said.  If you read the article, you'll see that he questions how long it will take and when it will happen.  He never said that he doubts humans would ever walk on Mars.

That part about "ever" is just a horribly-inaccurate headline put on the article by an editor at Wired.  And, for some reason, this thread title followed that inaccurate headline.

Can we fix the thread title?  It really slanders Tyson.

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Offline cppetrie

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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson doubts humans will ever walk on Mars
« Reply #61 on: 05/05/2017 03:46 am »
Quote
Neil deGrasse Tyson doubts humans will ever walk on Mars

This is quite a bold assumption. Ever/Never is a very long period of time. ...

This isn't something Tyson ever said.  If you read the article, you'll see that he questions how long it will take and when it will happen.  He never said that he doubts humans would ever walk on Mars.

That part about "ever" is just a horribly-inaccurate headline put on the article by an editor at Wired.  And, for some reason, this thread title followed that inaccurate headline.

Can we fix the thread title?  It really slanders Tyson.

Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting

Quote
Aliquam feugiat enim eget neque cursus viverra. Maecenas nec quam pretium, feugiat nisi sed, finibus justo. Aliquam erat volutpat. Duis a molestie leo, ut volutpat nisl. Aenean sed tristique magna, maximus convallis elit. Pellentesque vel tellus arcu. Nulla tincidunt aliquet dolor. Cras fringilla arcu enim, a ornare dui accumsan a. Nam iaculis cursus magna, in tincidunt diam convallis id. Duis vitae elementum mauris, id feugiat nulla.
And 67% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson doubts humans will ever walk on Mars
« Reply #62 on: 05/05/2017 05:18 am »
Fair.

He's missing that this is not going to be driven by the old factors.. .instead, it's going to be driven by... manifest destiny, for want of a better word. These billionaires are gambling that they will be a forcing function that forces the economics to happen. If they're right, if it works... it's going to be spectacular. They're betting on the New World, writ large.

If it fails it will be a spectacular crater.

Even manifest destiny still needs $$$ for it to be viable.  ;)
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Online catdlr

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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson doubts humans will ever walk on Mars
« Reply #63 on: 05/06/2017 01:09 am »
related....
This astronaut says we're not ready for Mars

Tech Insider

Published on May 5, 2017
In an upcoming BBC program, Stephen Hawking has a new message for humanity: Get off Earth within the next 100 years or perish. In order to survive as a species, humans must colonize other planets.

But Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has previously said that humans just aren't ready to live on other worlds. In 2015, he visited Business Insider to discuss his thoughts on where humans will go next and why.

Hadfield became a mainstream figure thanks to his YouTube videos from space and wide social media presence. Now retired, Hadfield is the best-selling author of "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth."






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Offline mikelepage

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Quote
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/neil-degrasse-tyson-welcome-to-the-universe

I take from this the following:

1) He applauds the desire to go.

2) He is sceptical about the ways and timelines proposed.

3) He doesn't think the drivers of national strategy ("war") and commerce ("economics") are sufficient.

Point 1) shows he supports the general; idea. Point 2) is that he is sceptical of some of the ways and time lines, which is reasonable.  Most of us are sceptical of at least some of the ways and timelines proposed to date! Point 3 is that he is sceptical that the two big drivers of large scale space endeavours past and present are sufficient.  Based on what we currently know he has a point regarding settling Mars, though perhaps not with respect to exploration and science.

This! ^^^^ The title of this thread/that article is pretty inaccurate.

The thing no one seems to have picked up on is NdGT talking about "the money" being the main obstacle to Mars colony and then segueing onto that he thinks the world's first trillioniare will be an asteroid miner.

It's not an unconnected point IMO.  He's implying that the first Mars colony will be funded through asteroid mining.

As of today there are ~4500 NEOs for which it is easier than Mars to make return trips, so I think he's probably right to be honest.
https://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/~lance/delta_v/delta_v.rendezvous.html

Offline Ludus

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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson doubts humans will ever walk on Mars
« Reply #65 on: 06/06/2017 08:44 pm »
Tyson thinks the first Trillionaire will be made by asteroid mining, but thinks there isn't enough profit in Mars transport for it to ever happen.

I think there's some sort of confusion evident here.

Settling Mars and mining asteroids, bases on the moon and L5 colonies aren't entirely discrete activities. Making any of these things sustainable makes them all possible. The world's first Space Commerce Trillionaire certainly has the means to enable Mars settlement.

If Elon Musk can build Falcon Reusable and ITS to support an Internet Constellation that could be immensely profitable, he can use it to support mining asteroids or settling Mars or submarines on Europa. If the costs of operating in Space are much lower, the range of things that can and will be done in Space is much larger.

If Jeff Bezos can build New Glenn and New Armstrong, he can support a permanent Lunar base and and a lot of people living and working in Space. Bezos hasn't shown any lack of ability to make his interests support themselves.

ITS may be promoted as a system to settle Mars but it's really a general purpose system as it's name suggests, just as capable of doing the things Tyson thinks are profit centers (asteroid mining) and the things he thinks of as money pits (Mars).
« Last Edit: 06/06/2017 08:53 pm by Ludus »

Offline TakeOff

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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson doubts humans will ever walk on Mars
« Reply #66 on: 06/06/2017 09:21 pm »
More money doesn't help. They've wasted $43 billion on SLS and Orion, that's half a mission to Mars budget. Politics, corruption and incompetence prevents NASA from sending astronauts to Mars, or to the Moon for that part, regardless of what budget they have.

Offline Lar

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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson doubts humans will ever walk on Mars
« Reply #67 on: 06/06/2017 10:22 pm »
More money doesn't help. They've wasted $43 billion on SLS and Orion, that's half a mission to Mars budget. Politics, corruption and incompetence prevents NASA from sending astronauts to Mars, or to the Moon for that part, regardless of what budget they have.

43B ???  more like 200x a MISSION budget. and 2x the vehicle development budget to deliver a vehicle capable of that sort of mission budget. If Musk is to be believed. If I had to choose one to believe, you get one guess which one. (likely neither is wholly right, neither is wholly wrong, but you take my point)
"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk
"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

Offline QuantumG

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Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson doubts humans will ever walk on Mars
« Reply #68 on: 06/06/2017 11:29 pm »
Zubrin has been saying for 25 years that the problem isn't money. I remember back when NdT used to quote him. As a speaker his message really has changed over the years - and I think that's generally a good thing. Perhaps in the future he'll come around to private funding, or at least public-private.
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

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