No Stupid Questions

49980 readers

593 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)

Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.

Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.

Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.

Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.

Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.

Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.

Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.

Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.

Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.

Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

technopagan@lemmy.world

347

Realistically, what do people plan to do on the Moon and Mars that requires a permanent, or long term human presence there? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 days ago by DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

353 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn't we do those things directly, without going there?

It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.

I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that's why we poors support it, but that doesn't "pay the bills." What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

yeah the cosmic radiation on the trip is gonna be.... rough.

can be ameliorated with shielding, and if you're going to mars you're gonna wanna cart along a shitton of water (can be used for fuel or oxygen or drinking) so that may work out....

decreasing the transit time is critical, so constant thrust engines like NERVA can cut the risk down by making the trip faster...

but the why remains most for me: why do we feel putting humans on mars is worth it? the risks are manifold:

contaminating mars with more earth stuff, and now with human gut biome (astronauts will poop, and they ain't bringing it all home)

one nasty solar flare and you run the risk of ending the mission right there - shielding be damned, a nasty one could cook all kinds of important tech.

the cost is astronomical (badum-tss) and the return - ? fuzzy at the very best. we're NEVER going to terraform mars in the next couple hundred years, and terrestrial life would need all the perchlorates scrubbed from everything, all for what - maybe a week running around taking pictures and digging around in soils already sampled by rovers that are still running? and your point it's got no magnetosphere so you'd live in a lava tube? pfft... why? we can live in lava tubes on the moon lol.

I just don't see any why that justifies it.

Moon has utility, mars is a waste of time and resources imho.