I'm definitely reading too much into it but the seemingly unintentional metaphor of Cody talking about not contaminating a habitat while walking to a piece of debris he himself created only to pick it up is kind of beautiful.
@@theCodyReeder Since you had brought up Musk somewhat early on in the video I was half expecting you to say you had some SpaceX debris land near your house hehe.
2 місяці тому+158
Also note the date, it is Indigenous peoples' day (aka Columbus Day) in the USA. Beautiful.
The thought of arriving, taking pictures, leaving and detonating a nuke sounds like an interesting idea for a book where aliens do that on earth and humans misunderstand that for an act of war.
I agree to some level. Honestly we should colonize our own moon before we try to go anywhere else. It’s closer and would be a good place to start and learn/test things.
Pretty much my thoughts..space stations first, then lunar colonies..maybe the asteroid belt next. Gain experience relatively close to home before heading out.
Until we've developed our space program enough that the ISS doesn't smell like a sweat lodge built on top of a cesspool, we should keep our astronauts close to home, if only so they can take a real shower once in a while.
@@newax_productions2069 Who needs to terraform? Terraforming is a science fiction novel video game fantasy. Human existence on other worlds does not have to look like - and in all certainty would never look like - human existence on this world. Human habitation of another planet should start with the one that is literally on our doorstep, where rescue or resupply is only days away rather than months or years. Also, terraforming is exactly the problem Cody is talking about here. Europeans arrived in the Americas and "Euroformed" these two continents, erasing entire cultures and their languages and their histories from existence in the process. Terraforming is a thing that should be avoided.
I agree. We should go back to the plans we had for the moon in the 1960s, and implement the moon colonies we would have had in the 1980s, if the Apollo program had run its full planned course.
It does not prove the point. The trash did not kill all life on Earth. Same for Earth microbes - they are good at multiplying when warm or even hot, but not when below the freezing point. It would take 100s or 1000s of years for the microbes to wipe out all life on Mars, if they even could, which is very doubtful.
@Just_Sara I think what you said is correct. I have noticed this about myself for a few years now. Other people have been able to notice certain things, especially in my workplace or about people, that I have not been able to.
Still my favorite youtube channel. It has that old school yt vibe and is yer always entertaining and fresh. Fly high our glorious mine loving, desert dwelling, space man.
I recall a short story from a few decades ago about explorers on Mars. The one guy is out in his survey vehicle and picks up lifeform readings, he's excited and it gets closer. Once he's able to get a sample he finds it's contamination from one of our probes decades earlier, he ends up just getting drunk because his job doesn't matter anymore. It was titled something like "All the Beer on Mars". Most likely from Asimov Magazine of Fantast and Science Fiction magazine.
Reminder: the results of the Viking life detection experiments were positive. That doesn't prove that life is there, partly because NASA only sent half the experiment, but it is a strong indication for life. And somehow there hasn't been a follow up in 50 years.
The best point is that there is nothing much to gain from colonizing Mars beyond scientific research. The totally unknown factors are the most valuable resources on Mars. Passage is tremendously risky and costly, and there is no short term material or financial incentives. As far as I can tell it is all no more than a futurological sales pitch meant to increase sales and investment in a particular space company, and one that is drawn from scifi that is popular, but outdated by a century. We're long past the time when inhabitable Mars was plausible. What you said about the Columbian exchange is a good comparison, but the differences are maybe just as useful to look at. The Americas were rich in resources. Mars is as you've noted, somewhat lacking in oxygen. The cost of passage to the Americas was high, and I'd actually like to see the real breakdown. How much did it cost to send a kilogram across the Atlantic and back, vs what does it cost to send the same kilogram to Mars and back? It is just logistically materially inconceivable that Mars colonization will happen so soon
Reminded me of this Google Maps -game where you win if you drop a Street View somewhere in India and see not a single trash on the ground. To this date I have not yet won in that game.
For what it's worth you'd, unfortunately, be hard-pressed to find someone doing that in my rural area too. People here seem to struggle with even just getting their beer cans home with them.
No matter the logic we will go there for one simple reason. Its there and we cant help ourselfes to not go there. Just like we have been to every nook and cranny on earth.
@@Trenz0 have you visually observed every nook and cranny of your home? like under the floors and behind the walls? no you don't need to, you know it's there, you know it's not interesting, you know how it works, it'd be a waste of time. we've explored everything we want/need to on earth. we know how things work here, but we don't know how things work on mars. there could be a completely different type of organism that work like anything on Earth. that's important to know, just for the sheer pursuit of human knowledge.
@@keyboard-commentator On almost every deep sea dive mission there is a new species discovered... also there were scientists in Queensland who during the pandemic documented over 1,000 species in their backyard, 3 of which weren't yet recorded in Australia's biodiversity database.
@@MrAlziepen that's great! i'm certainly not arguing against scientific exploration anywhere. i think we should collectively be spending way more money and time exploring oceans, AND space.
@@bilalbaig8586 "Fractional Orbital Bombardment System" uses partial (fractional) orbits to travel to target rather than the hyperbolic arcs of ICBMs. You can read the wikipedia article for FOBS.
mars is DOA. its too small to hold an atmosphere or magnetosphere. You would need to bombard it with asteroids to increase its mass and life materials while keeping it in the green zone. maybe hit mars with ceres.
Proper space agencies spend a huge amount of time and money to sterilize their landers/rovers -there are entire career profession/education paths at NASA/ESA/JAXA/etc. based around it....I'm not sure non gov entities would be willing to "waste" millions of dollars to do same.
@@morowenidi4621 I believe, what you see is what you get. We should not be too overconfident, but to our knowledge, we are the most intelligent and wise (although not very wise lol) beings we know of, thereby meaning, if anyone is going to call the shots of what little can be done to affect the universe it should be us. basically, we are the closest to god you are gonna get. I don't see any logical reason to say that humans affecting the universe is some kind of taboo.
@@jamessever8936 i was just pointing to the inevitability of us spreading life around one way or another if we want to leave this god forsaken rock. Isnt that the whole point anyway?
This idea at the end about putting an orbital nuclear system around Mars is _really_ bad. 1) If the resources required to erect such a contingency were instead used to send dozens of probes to Mars to rapidly answer the question of Mars Life, it would be a moot point. 2) If we put nukes into space around Mars, we'd be opening the Pandora's Box that is *"developing the technology required to put nukes into space anywhere,"* including around Earth, bringing us that much closer to potentially ending, rather than ensuring the survival of, our species. 3) If such a contingency ever had to be employed, it might precipitate a nuclear war on Earth. Also, and this is hardly important when weighed against the three points above, such a system would probably be trivial to disarm (if you're sending humans to Mars, their ability to conduct a counteroffensive against drone satellites would simply be too good, they could just shoot those things down before landing) which might result in tons of radioactive debris orbiting Mars. Great.
@@migarsormrapophis2755 point 1: fair point 2: we already can do this point 3: see point 2 i agree it's not really a good idea, but humanity certainly has the capability to pull it off.
@@Wulthrin Point 3 was _"If such a contingency ever had to be employed, it might precipitate a nuclear war on Earth."_ Why does your assertion that we could easily set up such a system address this concern? I could easily cut off my arm (I have the technology). One of the concerns, if I were to do that, is that I might suffer from massive shock and die. _Well, it's trivially easy for me to do it, so the fact that it might cause me to die isn't really a concern._ Wait, what?
What I find most admirable is the ability to change when it involves a significant sacrifice: giving up a lucrative idea on which our dreams, faith, and social status are based, simply to care about something other than oneself, is an exceptional quality.
I’ve honestly never really thought about it from that aspect and have to say this video changed my mind on the subject unless I could hear a better argument against it. I’ve not put enough thought into this to consider it a strong opinion, but as someone who previously had the default position of going with humans, this will be my new default position until I hear something better. As Cody said in the video, the “eggs in multiple baskets” argument isn’t it. It’s never made sense at the level of technology we currently have.
@@Wiibiplaythe only thing we can do in the foreseeable future is study it. Sending people (for all the reasons discussed in the video) is counterproductive and would likely make studying mars harder due to contamination. So it's not a matter of what we should be "allowed" to do. It's about the best way to achieve what we want to do, which is very likely to keep exploring without humans visiting mars.
There are 24 landers, probes, or rovers littered across the surface of Mars from 15 separate missions dating back to the 70s. These probes, even the most modern ones, were not decontaminated to the extent that would be desirable for a probe designed to look for extraterrestrial life. (That's actually part of the reason NASA didn't sent the any of its most recent probes to the areas of Mars that would be most likely to host post or present life.) If contamination from a manned flight is a really threat to the entire potential global ecosystem of Mars, then unfortunately that threat was likely introduced 53 years ago and has had all that time to reproduce and spread. The benefit of having humans on the surface to look for like and try to rapidly identify it far outweighs the risk if additional contamination as we're already far more likely to find earth based life on Mars than true extraterrestrial life.
The difference here is that the things had to enter an atmosphere... That's a bit of a sterilisation step in and of itself. Us, on the other hand. We will arrive with a container specifically designed to sustain life through the landing. There's a chance life has not contaminated mars - that chance drops to zero when we arrive with our airlocks.
Hmm I'm not sure I agree, yes we certainly already brought life there but the quantity matters, more bacteria are more likely to survive and proliferate. And yes we might be 100 times better at finding life there in person but if we bring 10000 the amount of life stuff there with us it will might not be worth the tradeoff.
The threat goes from a possibility to a certainty. Humans are a vessel to protect Bacteria from space that wouldn't exist on a probe with no life support attached. Besides, is it wise to increase the potential for a threat to pre-existing life in the assumption that the threat is already there?
@@BruceNJeffAreMyFlies Really depends on what you are doing once you arrive - you could keep the people and their pet bugs and microbes contained relatively easily. Which means putting a lab on Mars in which nothing living can get out but all the Martian samples can be brought in for rapid study is perhaps the right move. And it doesn't matter which decision is made there really it could look to be the wrong one in hindsight - if you stick with long range robot probes and eventual sample return missions it takes so much longer, with so many landing sites with so may individual contamination risks we are not able to monitor it could prove the wrong move as it takes so long all you get is the spread contaminations from previous landings and you don't have enough data to track that, or send the lab and potentially have a greater single contamination point but so much more rapid processing of the samples you hope to find the evidence of native life first. (edited for clarity - and I think could use some more help there...)
Personally for me I don't think it is massive - the goal is the same, it is just the technological landscape has changed. Some shifting yes but not on the actually important part of the goal, just the methodology. You wouldn't get folks in the 70's really wanting to go back to or invest in steam powered railway for practical reasons (outside of perhaps the odd edge case - for instance where the combustion or sparks off an electric motor is a bad idea so your 'steam' engine is a boiler less design with a pressured tank of steam made a safe distance away), as the diesel and electric are just so much easier to operate and efficient.
honestly the setting up on the moons of mars thing is quite a good idea. we could have humans using haptic suits to control humanoid robots on the surface if we really wanted to. phobos' orbit has a semi-major axis of only 9376km or 0.03 light seconds (way lower than the 384748km or 1.28 light distance of earth's moon) meaning light delay is near instantaneous and might not even induce motion sickness in some robot operators (emphasis on might). a phobos base could also benefit from options such as aerobraking using mars' atmosphere and landing/taking off from the much lower gravity of phobos the only thing it really doesnt have is the option to use ultra-lightweight aircraft
My only argument is this: there are more planets like Mars out there, and arguably the hardest part of human space exploration is not finding more planets to study, its ever reaching them. In my view, Mars MUST be our target to sufficiently move along our space travel technology such that we even have a chance to reach them. Humans will only get excited by mars, not its moons or our moon.
If life could be common enough to have x 2 Genesis in our own solar system, i don't think us contaminating or even out competing mars life would be that bad. Whereas If life is so rare that our planet is a damn near one off in our galaxy / universe. Well damn let's spread this stuff out, I'm in favour of spreading extremophiles far and wide, so millennia from now, the diversity complexity amazement of life gets to keep being the most interesting thing in the universe. I don't know if humanity have a few hundred or thousands of year's left around on earth, but it took billions of years for life to evolve to a point where spreading across the planets / cosmos is even a capability.... Let's not squander this maybe one shot of powerful intelligence we currently have, and not share life... This beautiful complex entropy fighting system that comes to make the universe know itself. I love your channel your projects your smarts, I understand your reasoning, but I just disagree with this opinion.
@@theCodyReeder To Mars? Sure. There's countless other viable planets and planetoids that have a much greater chance of actually sustaining life. Delaying research and progress for no demonstrable gain is completely illogical and rooted in nothing more than emotion and anti-humanist philosophy. Maybe you'll see from the comments you're receiving on this video. Your intentions may be "good", but those who tout the "anti-exploration" position want nothing more than the complete regression and dismantling of civilization and the human spirit.
The risk isn't wiping out mars life in itself, as if the life has value per se. It's the threat of losing the scientific understanding we'd gain from examining Mars life before it gets wiped out.
Yeah, at first I thought it was just an uncommon bad take by Cody, but he backed up his argument pretty good. I'm still sad that we won't be seeing any Cody's Lab videos from Mars within my lifetime. Oh well 🤷🏼♂. If you won't go and make videos on Mars, someone else will!
@@Splendisimo That live stream wouldn't be too live though. It takes light a minimum of 4 minutes and a maximum of around 24 minutes to reach Earth. That's a 480000ms to 1440000ms Ping, at LEAST 😅
We never think about that because it makes little sense. I imagine whatever contaminant human cosmonauts can bring with them, could just as well get there with the robots. Especially if we are to send enough of them to study the planet to an implied degree. Say if life was found on mars now, how are we sure _that_ didn't get there with the vessel? It can only remain uncontaminated if we don't touch it at all, and then what is the point.
I love the non scripted pieces. I do agree with what you say, and I think the asteroid belt is a far more valuable target for humanity to explore and set up camp in, and far less resource demanding. Keep up the excellent work, always a pleasure when theres a new video out 🥳
Define "thorough". Even if humans bring Earth life, and even if that life is able to survive and spread on the surface, it seems unlikely that it will be able to outcompete Mars life (if any) on its own turf.
I do not understand why the presence of perchlorate dust detected on Mars surface rarely enters disconsions of humans on Mars. As I understand it, this highly reactive toxic dust, that can not be easily cleaned or filtered from the air. It, along with the radiation risk, makes Mars a very hazardous place to set up an environment.
Yeah, that dust is extremely problematic. It's so microscopicly tiny and magnetic, breaks down machinery and is extremely toxic. It would require space suits that have to be kept ouside and being entered from the habitat wall to minimize potential contamination of habitat.
Uh, no, it's not "highly toxic" it's a bit more toxic then table salt, which, I'm sure you're aware from the phrase "salting the earth" also prevents you from growing crops. The Atacama desert also has perchlorates in the soil, and hardly anything lives there, but people are able to walk around, take samples, etc in regular clothes. It's also very high in altitude so there are a lot of telescopes there (probably less atmosphere to block solar rays = perchlorates form, but also great for telescopes). But anyway you can easily wash it off with water. It's a problem for *settling* mars but not for walking around. We also don't know how deep it goes, could be you just need to scrape off the topsoil and you'll be fine.
@@takanara7 If we can't explore the Highest summits, the amazon, Antarctica, or comb the depths of our own deepest oceans here on Earth, you have to be 'High' to think we are capable of settling another planet. I think ya'll have been watching too much Star Trek. This videos' comment section is full of nuts in denial.
@@blueshard4632 I said wrong. It's not exactly magnetic. It's so fine and much smaller than dust on earth so its electro-staticly charged and basicly sticks to everything.
Makes sense, there's no real point to human boots on Mars anyways. Luna and the asteroids are far more valuable prizes economically/resource-wise (you can't really ship anything off a planet economically), and far less sensitive environments. And arguably only slightly greater in difficulty to inhabit (rotating habitats in a vacuum can simulate gravity, if necessary, even spinning bowl habitats on a place like Luna if its gravity proves too low to remain healthy). If your priority is a backup population off Earth, Mars colonization shows nearly no possibility of being self-sustaining at any point in the next few centuries, but a fully-space-faring (asteroid belt, etc.) civilization seems far more likely to be able to recover from anything suddenly happening to Earth than a Mars-bound one would.
6:51 Something unforeseen may happen. Something unimaginable. Having 2 baskets sounds like a great idea. The second basket wont be ready for thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years, but redundancies seem like a good idea. Having said that, i completely agree with ur point that we should not contaminate mars before we get a chance to THOROUGHLY study every aspect of it.
This is the issue with overly intellectual naval gazing about potential problems with doing something. One can always find reasons not to do it, but sometimes people need to do things. If for nothing else than to jolt human out of introspection and to engage with the universe. We are a part of the universe, if we do damage so be it. We should explore and colonize it.
The universe doesnt matter if humans arent there. What good is knowing mars is pristine if no one is around to care about it. If we have the tech to go to mars, we would have the tech to not contaminate it. Putting a person there is a buff/boon for humanity's spirit, and taking precautions to not contaminate it doesn't have to go away to do this.
I've had a very similar thought process for a couple of years. I think it would be a lot more worthwhile to set up a permanent or semi-permanent colony on the moon, both because we know for sure that it is currently sterile, and because we could actually bring any colonists home if something goes wrong.
Counter arguments: 1.contamination is a human concept. Nature doesn't usually care about it at all, life goes where it can, if there's no competition or weak competition there, then it usually considers that a bonus as much as it can be thought to consider anything. 2.Humans are the only life forms capable of purposefully spreading life off earth to seed other planets, therefore it could be that this is our fundamental function in the scheme of life, the reason our road to this point is so clumsy and rare, almost like earths biospheres shared desire to spread expressed itself by manifesting us, maybe we're earths biospheres fruiting body like a mushroom is to the fungus; Almost like we have an obligation to the very lifeforms we're worried about contaminating mars with, to do exactly that. 3.Gather samples first sure but we're not going there to set up a safari for microbes, were going there to expand our reach, and we'll go anywhere we can, you can try and police that but for how long will you be able to keep that up with 100% success pro-expansionists just have to get lucky once, you have to get lucky every attempt. Which makes it a massive waste of energy to bother trying to stop it in the first place as you'll inevitably fail sooner or later and mars will come under invasion from earth's biosphere, as all Luke warm balls of rock us chattering balding apes can figure out how to reach will, it's only a matter of when not if; So all you're doing is adding nuclear contamination to the mix.
It's good to think about because in the next 15 years this will become less a hypothetical and much closer to a reality. I think it is good to do as you say and refrain from the human mission for now. However, if we do several mars sample return missions from multiple spots on Mars, recover them remotely, then send them back to Earth, analyze them, and find nothing, then I think you are okay to send humans. We should do a reasonable search for microbial life but not exploring ourselves when we can analyze things quicker, have greater mobility, and the ability to change plans based on data we gather and things observed is still valuable. If AI and robotics continue to improve to the point where robots could do the same or more than humans in the same time period, then we'll really need to consider if it is worth it at all to send people. At least for several years. As you said, Mars is an extremely harsh environment and going down into the gravity well is going to be very risky. If you could have a human work on the surface 6 hours a day and work twice as fast as a robot but have a robot do half the work for 12 hours, I'd send the robot every time. One final thing to consider is that we might already have contaminated Mars. A lot of the rovers sent especially in the early days of space exploration were not sterilized. Thus millions of microbes and bacteria from Earth likely survived the journey. It's also possible that Mars microbes are hardier and more resilient than Earth microbes. After all, Mars microbes are in a much harsher environment so could be able to out compete Earth microbes especially having millions of years to adapt to Mars. We'll also need to be careful about bringing Mars microbes back to Earth were they could thrive in the absence of things like heavy radiation and with abundant water/food. There's lots of important things to consider when talking about potentially visiting Mars. Thanks for the video and discussion Cody!
replying to this part here: "We'll also need to be careful about bringing Mars microbes back to Earth were they could thrive in the absence of things like heavy radiation and with abundant water/food. " but there are also radiophilic bacteria and radiotrophic fungi that already exist on earth(see chernobyl mushrooms). those fungi grow worse in non irradiated areas and thrive in the irradiated areas. i really doubt most mars life would thrive on earth.
15 years goes by fast and when it does things won't be much different than they are now. We are very far from being capable of successfully mounting a human mission to Mars. You probably won't live to see it. The challenge is far greater than most realize.
Definitely something to consider! I'm mixed on the subject, since I feel that a mission to Mars would, in itself, catapult the sciences forward. However, I do agree that this is a serious issue that needs to be adressed before we go. I've thought about it before, and simply assumed the people running the mission would have this planned out to a degree it wouldn't be an issue (perhaps a long airlock sterilization process?). A rover comparable in mobility to experimental proficiency to a human would definitely be the safer option.
This is why you've been my favorite youtuber for years now. I'd have never even thought of that cody and I love having new ideas to think about. Thank you sir
Mars is interested not only because of life. If we want to study other stellar systems and look for habitable planets then we need examples of lifeless planets as well and it is good to have one nearby. Remember stories like "scientists found traces of some molecule that is strongly associated with life"? But how do we know that this compound can not be produced on a planet without life? Yes. We need a planet without life as an example.
Cody I was just thinking of your project while visiting Utah desert. I love what you are doing and I love that you are not afraid to arrive at conclusions that don't necessarily agree with the original premise.
I'm thinking of the quote "I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." Only it was about the threat to humanity from the site not the other way around.
I think these are important conversations to have. I find myself in disagreement with Cody. It is true that there are unknown unknowns. However I think the benefit to humanity outweighs the risk of harming Mars. We have already cross contaminated Mars with rovers. What's the statistical probability of Mars life curing cancer. Research would go so much faster with boots on the ground. If we are really so worried about contamination we can find a way of sterilization and filtering. I think it might be short sighted to delay becoming a multi planetary civilization, my hope is that by being in two plants humanity starts looking at a bigger picture. Larger unification politics. I know it's a bit wishful, but there's only one way to know. There's going to be tragedy and setbacks, these things take so long, there's people that will dedicate their entire lives to make it possible for someone else to go. People already have. I feel that outweighs the risk of damaging unknown life in Mars, we have been looking for how many years without any confirmed results. How much longer, how much more research. I think that runs the risk of putting it off indefinitely. We need this, we need to do this while we have a personal that's willing to develop the technology. We have already lost the technology and processes for going to the moon. Best regards a fellow lover of science and I hope you the best Cody!
Even ignoring the issue with bacterial incursion, my argument against going to Mars just yet was that we need to first get experience developing housing and equipment for extra-planetary habitats by building on the moon before we try to go to Mars. Yes, there are plenty of differences between the two bodies, but the cost of error is far, far lower on the Moon which in the event of an emergency would only be a couple of days away, than compared to Mars, which is months away.
the thing that consistently distinguishes your channel from any other ed youtubers is you have such a beautiful soul like deadass what a thoughtful & hopeful video. mars as a nature preserve is so real.
@@Thejosiphas Mars is a dead planet, there is no "nature" there to preserve. It's covered in toxic perchlorates and has been bombarded by solar radiation for billions of years. If any life exists at all, it will be unicellular and exist underground.
What is the chance that some bacteria can catch a ride on the machines themselves? I think that is much more probable than some rock from earth reaching Mars.
@@chasethevioletsun9996I know a mistake happened with the moon landing but the bacterial exposed didn’t survive luckily. Hopefully they’re more careful now
@@Newt2799 that incident was part of why they have an obsessive protocol now, and why their spacecraft are assembled in Climate-controlled clean rooms, and not the beach in Texas.
Even robotic missions will be hard to completely sterilize, but definitely are easier than containing waste from humans living on Mars. A space station orbiting Mars would be the ideal platform to launch robotic missions from, or next best the station on a moon of Mars as you suggested. It is easier to create an earth-like environment in a space station too, so more pleasant for the humans. Dozens of Starships are definitely capable of carrying the materials to build such a space station.
If we could contaminate Mars we already did. Human presence won't change that, but it will greatly accelerate the search for life and technological progress, inspire the whole humankind. This worth way more that potentially keeping Mars presteene to make someone's job easier.
There are a few questions arising for me right of the bat: 1) Didn't we accidentaly already contaminated mars with the robotic missions? How can we know all the stuff sent there was perfectly clean? 2) Because Mars lacks a magnetosphere and gets radiation from the sun and space, is it even possible for life to still be there, or get and stay there? Also as you mentioned a few of the right people could do exploration much faster and I agree that a private company with settlement plans is not the best start. I'm not sure robots and AI, or people driving robots from orbit is feasible anytime soon. But humanity definitely has time, so why rush it.
You could repeat this argument to the end of time though and is an age old scientific problem: you can’t absolutely prove the lack of something with a potentially infinite dataset.
@@RichTapestrywe haven’t been able to get a craft back from space without people. That’s only happened since space x. Plus you have to take enough fuel to get there and back which takes more energy to lift off, which takes more fuel which takes more energy etc. etc. it’s expensive and we only just got the technology to do it. The Govt. budget for space expeditions was cut. So many people in the comments saying we need governments to go first. They don’t have the technology or the resources, but Elon musk does so what are we going to do?
@@Tryalittlebit It needn't be governments who go first. If Elon Musk has the technology and the resources then he also has the capacity to do it with some scientific rigor.
2 thoughts, how long do we search mars for life before giving up and colonizing? And is the hope of preserving said unknown life more important than preserving the human species by becoming multi-planetary? Not saying it is wrong or right, Personally i like the idea of colonizing astroids. Seems like more fun
Colonizing Mars is never going to happen. It is far too expensive, and such a colony could not survive without periodic very expensive supplies from Earth. It'll never be self sufficient.
Just the idea that we could be capable of colonizing mars within a reasonable timespan (or indeed ever) really shows that you don't understand the difficulties involved. Martian earth is toxic to earth life and, more importantly, isn't soil. It has no organic matter or microorganisms. So we can't grow anything in it. We would need to bring all our media from earth - literally tons of soil. There's not enough moisture, so we would need to bring water not just to drink but for food production. Mars is largely unprotected from radiation, lacking a magnetosphere,, so nothing - N O T H I N G - can live outside, including crops. The lack of atmosphere means that everything needs to be pressurised - again, including food production facilities. There's a lot less solar energy, so you'd need to bring a lot of fuel to heat everything up. I'm not an expert on the matter, and I'm sure experts can point out a thousand more things I've missed, but just these issues are insurmountable at the present time. Remember it is currently very hard and expensive to send an extremely small, unmanned mission to Mars. Imagine how much hard it would be with colonists and their supplies, even if it were possible technologically (which it really isn't) It's a pipe dream.
The most sensible argument to me is that contamination ultimately doesn't matter. It adds an additional level of tedium that really does nothing but stymie human progress. This also doesn't take into account the speed with which we can currently examine new things, develop new methods, restore things from the past, and where those capabilities will be in the near future. The whole notion that we shouldn't occupy the planet if we find a unique bacteria is absurdly defeatist. I think valid reasons to postpone could be 1) We should allow our technology and physics knowledge more time to mature, or, even further out 2) Mars needs more water to ever be a viable habitat, so how do we go about crashing Ceres into it before moving people there (and while we're at it, give it an active moon to increase planetary geological activity). As for "There is nothing we could to to Earth that would make it as bad as Mars", the assumption that human activity is the biggest threat to Earth is patently ridiculous. This suggestion almost indicates that you don't understand the scale of things. One good Sun anomaly could wipe out the whole planet. The same with a large enough unexpected meteor. The real threats to the planet are cosmic ones.
Hi Cody, astronomer here. Thank you for so effectively articulating an opinion Ive had since NASA announced their Moon to Mars architecture. Other scientific disciplines take extraordinary care to prevent contamination in their experiments. So should we
Wasn't Zubrin's argument that if we find life on an another planet, then it will either be identical to what we have on Earth (and so it had to get there from Earth recently) or significantly different (and so obviously not brought there by us)?
I agree that the idea of a mix-up seems unlikely. How could evolution have stalled entirely for millions of years to the point where life is indistinguishable on earth? Not saying contamination is awesome or anything, but this is a solid point
I've never heard this point of view expressed about the topic before, and I think you make an excellent point. We absolutely need to collect more data before we rush into manned exploration out of this sense of urgency that our time on this planet is running out. It's an absurdity to suggest that we should abandon our beautiful home planet to live in a radioactive desert with no oxygen just because some of us refuse to stop destroying it. That's like saying you should abandon your house to setup camp in Death Valley because of your neighbors.
There are people who consider this planet awful enough to consider Mars a vastly superior alternative, even empowered with all the facts about Mars. There is nowhere left to go on earth, everything is full, taken and owned. You can't stop the exodus, indeed the basics of geopolitics will ensure that you crab bucketeers are not allowed to stop people leaving.
I don't get this idea of sending people to mars will create a path to save humanity, on today's technology, a base on mars will still be 100% dependent on erath's resources, even more than just keep the humans here. Before anyone claim it's the path, I think it should be demonstrated that we can sustain life there without having to supply everything to them. The travel is the easiest part, though it isn't easy at all.
If im not mistaken that is the whole point of Cody's chicken hole base experiments is simulating a potential base on Mars using earth technologies and resources to eventually become self sustaining.
@@deangordon8993 And if those resources were instead spent on self-sustaining bunkers on earth that would provide a much better fail-safe against whatever cataclysm would threaten human extinction. Earth will always be more habitable than Mars - except for the Sun engulfing earth in it's red giant phase but, well, we've a few billion years before that's a concern
I'm not, mankind never got ahead by putting off stuff that needed to happen eventually. All that's gonna happen is NASA is gonna use their tiny budget to dick around for 100 years while the Chinese take ownership of the planet. We should go to mars, not for researching life, but for the same reason people went west. Yeah, but stuff happened, native stuff died, but overall I'd say it was a net positive for civilization. You could make up a million hypothetical for any tech progress and we would all be sitting on our hands.
I`m surprised by your changed attitude towards Mars. It's also a joy to witness your evolution and shifting perspectives in life, Cody, as it demonstrates your humanity. Machines have already shown they can accomplish the same tasks on Mars. It is important to focus on fixing Earth's issues before causing harm to another planet, as you mentioned.
Robert Zubrin proposed three alternatives for life on Mars (separate from the contaminated meteorite argument) 1: There is no life on Mars -> Earth life contamination poses minimal problems. 2: There is life on Mars that is based on a different chemistry -> Mars life is easily distinguishable from Earth life and can readily be studied without being confused with Earth life. 3: There is life on Mars that shares the same chemistry as Earth life -> Earth life contamination is problematic. Two points on this and then a question. Most people would agree that if there is life on Mars, there would be fossils of said life. As such even in the worst case, where Mars is contaminated and Earth life eradicates local life, there would still be fossils to study, i.e. there is no case where all the information is lost. Secondly, I find the argument that Earth life could readily out-compete Mars life to be tenuous. Assuming the same life chemistry, Mars life would be far better adapted to the Martian environment than Earth life. This is not a case analogous to the introduction of cats to an isolated island full of mice, but rather more analogous to the introduction of cats to the north pole. Lastly, my question is: Where would the human race be if the Americas had been found 100 years later?
But gosh wouldn't it be nice to know which one it was before we took the risk? Everyone is acting like there is an impending disaster that mars will somehow help save us from. if that was the case then yeah go fast but really we have time. Why isn't musk trying for an asteroid? serves the same goal, easier, and has the potential for a return. It's a no brainer!
"It's fine, there will be fossils" is a very strange counterpoint. Not all life can fossilize, not all environments are capable of fossilization.. And far more important than any of that.. Fossils aren't a viable substitute for living organisms! It's like hearing "We want to know what kind of music this culture listened to" and responding "It's fine, even if we do wipe them out there will still be middens" "All information being lost" is not the pass/fail metric for discovering and studying life on Mars. As for earth life out-competing mars life - There are more issues than whether or not we render Mars life extinct. Contamination of simple life forms can (and almost certainly WILL) result in evolutionary changes to said mars life. The moment that something as simple as a virus exchanges dna we''ve just thrown the history of mars's life's development into a blender. As for your cat analogy - I think you're dramatically underestimating the virulence of extremophile life on earth. Mars is not inhospitable to *all* life, it's just inhospitable large scale, complex life. The reality is that what we'd be doing is taking a grab-bag of random bacteria, protists, viruses ect and dumping them in the north pole. And guess what? The north pole is covered in those exact things. Most of it will die, but not all of it, something will survive and in doing so massively complicate the already arduous work of studying mars life. There's no reason to assume that Mars bacteria will magically eliminate all earth life it's exposed to immediately. That's just not how evolution works. Even just two dissimilar organisms living in the same environment with no direct points of conflict will impact said environment. On the most basic level an earth lifeform living in a mars environment could do something as simple as raise or lower the PH of their environment over time. Is the mars life going to survive that? How is it going to adapt to that? What are those adaptations going to be? Will we be able to tell what changes were made over time? Will we be able to infer the starting conditions? If you want to engage in unknowable hypotheticals about alternate histories, then apply that same thinking to basic biology.
Wise @@theCodyReeder might lament poor decisions made by those with power, but the insightful Douglas Adams teaches us that fate will inevitably build a new bypass or a golf course nobody visits, or both.
It's fine that Cody says he wants to know, and even to know better than we would find if we had to be more careful about analysis, or dig deeper, or preserve some region of the surface from the elements. I think it's fine he wants this more than for humans to reach out across the stars. But I want humans to reach out across the stars, more than I want a slightly easier time detecting trace markers for life that almost surely doesn't exist, and I find it sad that Cody would advocate nuking the efforts of those he disagrees with. I also find it uncomfortable that Cody uses curing cancer and such vague sciencisms advocate this view. You simply don't cure cancer by nuking explorers. You don't cure it by finding a miracle mars drug. Cancer will be cured because people went out to do something hard, and few enough people go in their way.
@@veedracI agree, reaching further across the universe means more to me as a human then your hope for studying a potential genisis being disrupted. Cody's whole point predicated on non facts makes me really feel sad that he's willing to put what was a exciting ambitious dream of adventure into a category where it's now evil and deserves the nuclear punishment.
Firstly, great point about how earth is always better suited for humans. It's baffling how many people get sucked into the idea that abandoning here is somehow more favourable. It's not even close out there. And now, just wanted to make a comment purely on the nature of finding cures for cancer and the such kind of behaviour. If you want to look for gold you could potentially find it in a sand pit but really you should visit a gold mine. If someone said they were sending robots to Mars in search of hypothetical life with an even more hypothetical cure from a species that if it exist, probably isn't particularly related to us, then I would ask why they simply don't study things more greatly on earth.
precisely why we should start by creating an independent colony on another planet. Safe from humanity's ability to destroy. Lets learn from the previous extinction events.
Love your content, Cody! I've been a fan for many years, and I appreciate the depth of thought you bring to these topics. Over those same years, I've experienced significant personal growth in areas like my time in Utah, my religious beliefs, and beyond. While I understand and respect your concerns about contaminating Mars and potentially losing invaluable scientific knowledge, I'd like to offer a counterargument. We're living in a time where existential threats to humanity are becoming increasingly real. Beyond nuclear war and political instability, advances in technology could lead to scenarios where a single bioweapon or mismanaged artificial intelligence could threaten the survival of our entire species. The rapid development in biotechnology, for example, raises the possibility that a devastating bioweapon could be engineered and unleashed, either intentionally or accidentally. In this context, establishing a human presence on Mars as soon as possible isn't just about exploration; it's about creating a buffer to protect humanity from potential extinction events on Earth. Mars could serve as a lifeboat for our species, preserving human life and culture in the event of a global catastrophe. As Stephen Hawking and other thinkers have suggested, becoming a multi-planetary species is a crucial step for our long-term survival. I agree that the potential contamination of Mars is a significant concern, and we should take precautions to minimize it. However, I believe that the survival of humanity takes precedence. If we delay sending humans to Mars until we've thoroughly studied it robotically, we risk losing our window of opportunity to establish that crucial safeguard. Once we've secured a sustainable human presence off Earth, we can focus on more responsible exploration and preservation of other worlds. Until then, I'm not willing to risk the existence of humanity, even if it means sacrificing some scientific opportunities on Mars. It might sound extreme, but given the accelerating pace of technological threats, it's a very real concern. Thanks for starting up the discussion though! I'm open to other ideas.
While spreading out should be our long term goal, there’s next to nothing that can happen to Earth that will make it as bad as Mars is already. Bioweapon? Much, much, much easier to sustain human life in a biosafe bunker on Earth than on Mars. You name the threat, it’s almost surely easier to survive on Earth. Gamma ray burst? Chicxulub? Supervolcano? Lava plain flooding? Earth still has tons of resources on surface and a favorable geology (gravity plus active core).
I kind of disagree a little bit. Your reasons for delaying a mars base are valid. The search for life is a very important one. My train of thought however is that if there (active) life is on Mars, it ought to be obvious. You can hardly take a grain of sand in the most barren environment on earth without finding a sign of life (sure, death valley would be a hard spot to find any, but there are definitely traces). If mars used to be more like us and had a lush history we should be able to find it. If you take 10 surface levels samples from earth, it would be impossible not to find life. Imagine if we start looking for it (eg: a geologic formation that was raised, might contain old seabed life, such as mount everest. Or we find the saline pockets of water under mars and pull up a core from there, or we throw a rover into a lava tube to have a closer look). If life isn't in the obvious places, then I posit that we might assume there isn't any (anymore). Life as we know it has a powerful focus on surviving and spreading out, so if it exists, it should turn up rather sooner than later. The alternative is that we assume there is life and the search for it is infinite. We are better off giving it our best shot, and then moving on to the next likely candidate (Europa, Titan, or beyond)
Not only that. In the context of the threat of nuclear war, it is vitally important that humanity escapes from Earth permanently. Mars is the fastest way to do this (besides the moon which is not safe from Earth). To Cody, I propose this question: Which disaster is worse? Potential contamination (and possibly extinction) of a planet with no proof of active life as far as we can tell with our rovers, or potential permanent loss of humanity's ability to escape Earth? I also have a hard time believing our bacteria would out compete martian bacteria. They evolved for their conditions, not ours. With columbus, it did make sense because the environment for the bacteria was common, a human body. I believe that what we bring in contamination will most likely be overshadowed by our ability to explore and perform experiments. Also, when would be enough time before we can confidently say we CAN go to mars?
@@boggless2771we are so, so, so far away from being able to even consider a self-sustaining Martian colony. If we're screwed without it, then we're just straight up screwed. We are simply not capable of it. Mars doesn't have a magnetosphere so is constantly bombarded with radiation. The dirt is not soil (meaning it lacks organic matter and microorganisms, both necessary for plant growth) AND is contaminated with toxic perchlorates. There's very little atmosphere so everything would need to be pressurised. Surface temps aren't survivable for earth life. Not enough moisture is available. Gravity is too low for humans to live there long term due to the (serious!) health impacts of inadequate gravity. Solar radiation is lower due to distance and there is no geothermal activity, so energy is a huge issue too. It is simply not possible to colonise mars and won't be any time soon. And I do mean not possible - not very difficult or very expensive, we do not have the ability to do it and it's entirely possible we never will.
@@veronicavaes4581 if it's not possible to prove a negative, then it should also be impossible to prove that it's not possible to prove a negative. But that would be... that would be that would be that would be that would be Critical error; process terminated, log recorded 5:33 pm
the problem is if they dont find fosilized bacteria or creatures they will dig, and dig, here, there, what if, perhaps this or that the search has no end in my opinion knowing how long has been on the conditions it is now the planet, if nothing is found frozen in ice or in caves, we will not find it
@@christophersavignon4191I don’t see how “surpasses achievability” isn’t a negative. It seems like you are just using “surpasses” to hide a “not”. Let []A denote “it is provable that A”. If “for all A, not([]not(A))”… Hmm… well, “for all A, not(P(A))” is equivalent to “not(exists A, P(A))” (assuming the law of the excluded middle), So, “for all A, not([]not(A))” is equivalent to “not(exists A, []not(A))” which seems like a “negative statement” to me? Well, sorta - see, I’ve come to doubt that there is really a good uniform way to partition the collection of all possible meaningful statements into two classes of “positive statements” and “negative statements”. For one thing, is the conjunction of a positive statement with a negative statement, itself a positive statement or a negative statement? What about the disjunction? No, I don’t think it is really a distinction that makes that much sense. I think a better distinction is between Pi_1 statements, Sigma_1 statements, etc. “All butterflies have Ringo as their favorite member of the Beatles” and “All butterflies do not have Ringo as their favorite member of the Beatles” are both Pi_1 statements. On the other hand, “There exists a butterfly such that Ringo is its favorite member of The Beatles” and “There exists a butterfly such that it isn’t true that Ringo is its favorite member of the Beatles” are both Sigma_1 statements. For such sentences, one need only exhibit a single butterfly and demonstrate that that butterfly is/isn’t (respectively) such that Ringo is its favorite member of the Beatles, to demonstrate the truth of the sentence. Where as for the Pi_1 statements, you would have to demonstrate that there is no butterfly which would serve as a counterexample to the claim. I think this is what “you can’t prove a negative” is trying to get at? But, it mistakenly attributes it to the presence of negation, when the real difference is due to the different quantifiers! It is an understandable mistake: the negation of a Sigma_1 statement is a Pi_1 statement, and visa versa. But, some statements are neither in Pi_1 or Sigma_1 , and some statements are in both! In general, the conjunction of a Sigma_1 statement and a Pi_1 statement, needn’t be in either. (It will be in both Pi_2 and Sigma_2 though.)
The idea of Mars as a backup was never about some slow man-made degradation of Earth making Mars a better alternative. It is an approach to safeguard against a calamity that would wipe out all life on the planet and/or make it completely uninhabitable. It is an extremely unlikely scenario but that doesn't mean we should ignore it. It's just one small reason to go to Mars. Locking the planet away for an arbitrarily long seeming period of a hundred years would deprive generations of people of their opportunity to study, explore and build up a new world while there is zero evidence that microbes from Earth could just spread around Mars and out-compete potential life that has adapted to the planet for eons. That isn't to say that we shouldn't send robots first. That is to say that proponents of planetary protection should actually get moving and design those robots and experiments instead of making everyone else wait for more than a lifetime. The first Starships to fly to Mars will definitely not have people aboard. High time to come up with actual hardware to find life on Mars. Before people follow.
If you want backup populations, artificial habitats built around the entire solar system made to be habitable from the start is a much better bet and far easier to accomplish than colonizing any planet except the Earth, which we assume is getting annihilated somehow in this thought experiment. "That is to say that proponents of planetary protection should actually get moving..." We'd love to! If you have a spare few billion lying around it would be mighty helpful, believe it or not the missions are going about as fast as they can with current funding. MSR for example has run into trouble not because people want to drag their feet but because they physically do not have the funding to pursue the original mission architecture.
@@xiphosura413 @xiphosura413 it's not about what I want. I neither want to go to Mars nor think it's the best destination for the moment. I'm saying that if you intend to deprive the entire species of the option to go there you need a much stronger argument than 'there could be some microbes, but we're not sure'. The burden of proof is on you (PP proponents), 'we'd love to but don't have the money' isn't a particularly convincing argument when essentially no effort was made towards putting a mission together and every single Mars rover intentionally avoided places that might be relevant to finding an answer.
@@xiphosura413 we will land on Mars. These arguments are pointless, earth life is superior to any martian life and so earth life shall have the right to expand.
This is an absoluely amazing argument on why going to Mars is dumb. Why people are so interested in sending maned missions to Mars has alwaysed confused me. It's so far away, going there is basically a one way trip and it's not the place we should be going to first or like you said, at all. The Moon first then the astroid belt. The Moon is close enough to get help if things go wrong, and gravity is low enough that it could be used as a stageing ground for future deepspace missions. Its low gravity also allows for things like centripetal stations to be built to approximate Earth gravity (using currently available materials like steel). Mars is just a wasteland with nothing to offer beyond scientific study. Its got basically no atmosphere to protect us, its gravity is low enough that it would cause health problems but too heigh for easy surface to space launches. Honestly the only reason why I believe someone like Elon Musk wants to go there is for the publicity, just so he can say "look what I did, I have the best space company".
You got it. Imagine actually living in a pressurised module, made by the lowest bidder and in 40 years it has to never string a leak or catastrophically fail. Same with the suits. Stuck in a cramped space with people who are strangers. It's just a radiation bathed, body rotting low-G prison colony nothing more. Say goodbye to fresh air, freedom to move carelessly, walking in the park or along a beach. No seasons, no change ever, just everyday the same. No spontaneity, no love affairs, no water skiing or whatever. God, that would be depressing, the Earth is made for us and once people get past the "futurism", the scales will fall from their eyes and Musk's ridiculous idea will bomb along with his shares. Earth is home, we need to take care of it. Don't get me started on the stupidity of travelling to the stars, it's even worse. Science fiction has rotted people's brains, created a new secular religion for them called Futurism. Musk has in effect given up on Earth. Likely he wants to create a new humans 2.0 of very wealthy people, the best of us according to him and including him. He's just another megalomaniac. In the process it will also make him the richest person by far. Until everyone realises they were duped anyway.
Is there anywhere on Mars where earth life could survive though? There are no hydrothermal vents, there are no volcanoes anymore, no liquid water. Mars life if it exists is kilometers underground, and we need people with heavy equipment to dig them out. No rover could drill an oil well. If Mars was even 0.1% as inhabitable as Earth I would totally agree, but it isn't.
Earth bacteria was found surviving on Surveyor hardware on the Moon years after it landed there. If it can live with the vacuum, temperatures, UV and radiation conditions on the Moon, it can easily survive on Mars.
I guess this means we're absolutely sure all of the craft sent to Mars from Earth were sterile? Cody hadn't even realized that protein bad wrapper had gotten away from him until he hiked to confirm the "glint" was waste.
Even if they weren't absolutely 100% sterile, they would be several orders of magnitude cleaner than any manned mission. The more initial bacteria, the greater the odds they take hold.
Exactly! The “preventing contamination from earth” went out the window with the first lander. If earth bacteria being introduced to mars could cause a “planetary genocide” that’s already well underway. I do believe in holding off on colonization but not for any mistaken idea of protecting mars life. Rather I think that colonization of mars needs to wait until we have mars-earth cyclers in place to help keep colonists safe from radiation and help them gradually adapt to lower gravity levels.
@@johnqpublic2718 A few potential bacteria contaminating a rover are nearly insignificant compared to what would be released in a manned mission. That's like the difference between shooting an arrow into a city verses nuking a city.
@@F0XD1E a few potential bacteria are all that’s needed to compromise the whole planet. They do sterilize everything beforehand though, but who knows if there were any mistakes…
Finally someone sane in the comments. I feel everyone else here is high, and/or brainwashed by Star Trek/NASA promises. We can't even finish exploring Earth yet. Someone else in these comments earlier rebutted me on these grounds, saying our own Oceans are too deep to explore, and that Mars would be easier to explore. Just wow.
@@derrickmcadoo3804 Exactly, it is some kind of atheistic religion where people think they will dominate space and habit planets without any evidences of this being possible yet.
Absolutely. Mars First! Humans have clearly demonstrated that as a species we are a biosphere-destroying temporary infestation. We really aren't responsible enough to be allowed off our starting space rock.
I ve been fighting to understand how gold appears in meteorits because of the fact its so dificult for a rock to be hurled into space. And because the gold is not held in a matrix when found in meteorites. Dosent that mean they must have come from another oxigen rich environment. Being there has to be fresh water to nutralize the hydrothurmal fluids to make the gold cristalize on its own.
Nothing is going to be the same as putting humans on Mars. The idea that there might be some bacteria that might serve some useful purpose at some future time needs to be proven to prevent humans from exploring Mars. Not the other way around.
Exactly. The probability of finding a useful bacteria * the usefulness of that bacteria < the utility of safeguarding humanity. We should go to mars, to the asteroid belt, to the moons, and all while we safeguard Earth. I believe its our duty to make sure life endures.
Given the human condition, whats the point of contaminating a place for sure, when humanity as a species is so volatile it could self terminate in the next 10 years, taking most higher life forms with it.
@@juslitor why would you call spreading life to Mars "contamination". The universe doesn't assign value to anything... Humans do. We should spread to Mars Because we are so vulnerable here on earth. We should also improve the situation on earth. These are not mutually exclusive tasks and avoiding one will not allow us to do the other better.
That seems unreasonably cautious and a touch defeatist. As for the matter on the Columbian exchange, we ought to look at it less as that was lost and more about what was preserved.
Thanks for sharing your well-reasoned opinions, Cody. I love charcoal as much as the next guy, but please don’t shy away from more ‘pure thought pieces’, like this one.
I'm definitely reading too much into it but the seemingly unintentional metaphor of Cody talking about not contaminating a habitat while walking to a piece of debris he himself created only to pick it up is kind of beautiful.
I'm glad someone picked up on that.
@@theCodyReeder Since you had brought up Musk somewhat early on in the video I was half expecting you to say you had some SpaceX debris land near your house hehe.
Also note the date, it is Indigenous peoples' day (aka Columbus Day) in the USA. Beautiful.
It is columbus day.
@@ryangunnison38 I consider everything related to musk to be debris and since we are always technically in space, it's also always space debris.
The thought of arriving, taking pictures, leaving and detonating a nuke sounds like an interesting idea for a book where aliens do that on earth and humans misunderstand that for an act of war.
Aliens cleaning up after themselves, seeing humanity as some lower life form. Interesting concept.
Now you know how the bacteria feel when you break out the can of lysol.
Roadside Picnic but the aliens actually dispose of their trash properly.
Are you saying aliens should be able to come here, take selfies, nuke us as they leave, and we should be okay with that?
@@existenceisillusion6528 I think the concept is we would not be able to come to terms with it, it would be out of our control.
I agree to some level. Honestly we should colonize our own moon before we try to go anywhere else. It’s closer and would be a good place to start and learn/test things.
Pretty much my thoughts..space stations first, then lunar colonies..maybe the asteroid belt next.
Gain experience relatively close to home before heading out.
Until we've developed our space program enough that the ISS doesn't smell like a sweat lodge built on top of a cesspool, we should keep our astronauts close to home, if only so they can take a real shower once in a while.
Horrible idea, low gravity, no workable atmosphere, zero way to terraform.
@@newax_productions2069 Who needs to terraform? Terraforming is a science fiction novel video game fantasy. Human existence on other worlds does not have to look like - and in all certainty would never look like - human existence on this world. Human habitation of another planet should start with the one that is literally on our doorstep, where rescue or resupply is only days away rather than months or years.
Also, terraforming is exactly the problem Cody is talking about here. Europeans arrived in the Americas and "Euroformed" these two continents, erasing entire cultures and their languages and their histories from existence in the process. Terraforming is a thing that should be avoided.
I agree. We should go back to the plans we had for the moon in the 1960s, and implement the moon colonies we would have had in the 1980s, if the Apollo program had run its full planned course.
I like how you subtlety prove your point by retrieving trash that got away from you unknowingly.
I missed that..
It does not prove the point. The trash did not kill all life on Earth. Same for Earth microbes - they are good at multiplying when warm or even hot, but not when below the freezing point. It would take 100s or 1000s of years for the microbes to wipe out all life on Mars, if they even could, which is very doubtful.
I just noticed that now man I've always been this numb
@@SanjanaRanasingha Nah, you're not numb, you just take things at face value, which is not a bad thing. I missed it too.
@Just_Sara I think what you said is correct. I have noticed this about myself for a few years now. Other people have been able to notice certain things, especially in my workplace or about people, that I have not been able to.
Still my favorite youtube channel. It has that old school yt vibe and is yer always entertaining and fresh. Fly high our glorious mine loving, desert dwelling, space man.
Yes
Hands down
same
Mine too, that is what I like about it. Pure curiosity, and more crude videos just Like the good old time of UA-cam.
Those were the best days of youtube. Now its to commercial and to much popular fake science bs.
I recall a short story from a few decades ago about explorers on Mars. The one guy is out in his survey vehicle and picks up lifeform readings, he's excited and it gets closer. Once he's able to get a sample he finds it's contamination from one of our probes decades earlier, he ends up just getting drunk because his job doesn't matter anymore. It was titled something like "All the Beer on Mars". Most likely from Asimov Magazine of Fantast and Science Fiction magazine.
Reminder: the results of the Viking life detection experiments were positive. That doesn't prove that life is there, partly because NASA only sent half the experiment, but it is a strong indication for life. And somehow there hasn't been a follow up in 50 years.
Because NASA is afraid of answers they do not ask those questions. It's easier to write 1000 papers on water on Mars
@@LA-MJ Tell us again how you hate NASA without telling us you hate NASA.
@@LA-MJ or maybe, they just have to keep making budgetary compromises. wild concept i know.
@@LA-MJno it’s because people don’t want to spend money on space anymore which is sad.
The best point is that there is nothing much to gain from colonizing Mars beyond scientific research. The totally unknown factors are the most valuable resources on Mars. Passage is tremendously risky and costly, and there is no short term material or financial incentives. As far as I can tell it is all no more than a futurological sales pitch meant to increase sales and investment in a particular space company, and one that is drawn from scifi that is popular, but outdated by a century. We're long past the time when inhabitable Mars was plausible.
What you said about the Columbian exchange is a good comparison, but the differences are maybe just as useful to look at. The Americas were rich in resources. Mars is as you've noted, somewhat lacking in oxygen. The cost of passage to the Americas was high, and I'd actually like to see the real breakdown. How much did it cost to send a kilogram across the Atlantic and back, vs what does it cost to send the same kilogram to Mars and back? It is just logistically materially inconceivable that Mars colonization will happen so soon
Imagine seeing some litter in the distance and taking a 12 minute walk to go and pick it up. I need to get out of the city
our cities used to have people like that too - before diversity took over
If everyone in the city picked up one piece of trash you wouldn't have a problem.
@@c6q3a24i do this, if im walking somewhere, i pick up a bottle or something to easily carry in one hand... It's not hard, people are just uncaring.
Reminded me of this Google Maps -game where you win if you drop a Street View somewhere in India and see not a single trash on the ground.
To this date I have not yet won in that game.
For what it's worth you'd, unfortunately, be hard-pressed to find someone doing that in my rural area too.
People here seem to struggle with even just getting their beer cans home with them.
No matter the logic we will go there for one simple reason. Its there and we cant help ourselfes to not go there. Just like we have been to every nook and cranny on earth.
We haven't been to every nook and cranny on earth though. We haven't even explored all the landmass
The American empire will fall before any man ever reaches on mars or even moon, thats a fact
@@Trenz0 have you visually observed every nook and cranny of your home? like under the floors and behind the walls? no you don't need to, you know it's there, you know it's not interesting, you know how it works, it'd be a waste of time. we've explored everything we want/need to on earth. we know how things work here, but we don't know how things work on mars. there could be a completely different type of organism that work like anything on Earth. that's important to know, just for the sheer pursuit of human knowledge.
@@keyboard-commentator On almost every deep sea dive mission there is a new species discovered... also there were scientists in Queensland who during the pandemic documented over 1,000 species in their backyard, 3 of which weren't yet recorded in Australia's biodiversity database.
@@MrAlziepen that's great! i'm certainly not arguing against scientific exploration anywhere. i think we should collectively be spending way more money and time exploring oceans, AND space.
Cody proposing a Martian Fractional Orbital Bombardment System was not on my 2024 bingo card.
why "Fractional"?
nuke mars
that's what happens when you huff too many chemicals
@@bilalbaig8586 "Fractional Orbital Bombardment System" uses partial (fractional) orbits to travel to target rather than the hyperbolic arcs of ICBMs. You can read the wikipedia article for FOBS.
mars is DOA. its too small to hold an atmosphere or magnetosphere. You would need to bombard it with asteroids to increase its mass and life materials while keeping it in the green zone. maybe hit mars with ceres.
Proper space agencies spend a huge amount of time and money to sterilize their landers/rovers -there are entire career profession/education paths at NASA/ESA/JAXA/etc. based around it....I'm not sure non gov entities would be willing to "waste" millions of dollars to do same.
trying to play god?
In what way? @@morowenidi4621
@@morowenidi4621 I believe, what you see is what you get. We should not be too overconfident, but to our knowledge, we are the most intelligent and wise (although not very wise lol) beings we know of, thereby meaning, if anyone is going to call the shots of what little can be done to affect the universe it should be us. basically, we are the closest to god you are gonna get. I don't see any logical reason to say that humans affecting the universe is some kind of taboo.
@@jamessever8936 i was just pointing to the inevitability of us spreading life around one way or another if we want to leave this god forsaken rock. Isnt that the whole point anyway?
It is a waste. Tired of crab bucketeers. No one will ever be allowed to get the f off this planet.
The fact that a devout Mars colonist changed his mind about going is the real worry about such one way mission. Imagine if he was already there.
Take only photos.
Leave only nukes.
@codyslab I'd buy a shirt with this... Even though I disagree
This idea at the end about putting an orbital nuclear system around Mars is _really_ bad.
1) If the resources required to erect such a contingency were instead used to send dozens of probes to Mars to rapidly answer the question of Mars Life, it would be a moot point.
2) If we put nukes into space around Mars, we'd be opening the Pandora's Box that is *"developing the technology required to put nukes into space anywhere,"* including around Earth, bringing us that much closer to potentially ending, rather than ensuring the survival of, our species.
3) If such a contingency ever had to be employed, it might precipitate a nuclear war on Earth.
Also, and this is hardly important when weighed against the three points above, such a system would probably be trivial to disarm (if you're sending humans to Mars, their ability to conduct a counteroffensive against drone satellites would simply be too good, they could just shoot those things down before landing) which might result in tons of radioactive debris orbiting Mars. Great.
@@migarsormrapophis2755 point 1: fair
point 2: we already can do this
point 3: see point 2
i agree it's not really a good idea, but humanity certainly has the capability to pull it off.
@@Wulthrin Point 3 was _"If such a contingency ever had to be employed, it might precipitate a nuclear war on Earth."_ Why does your assertion that we could easily set up such a system address this concern?
I could easily cut off my arm (I have the technology).
One of the concerns, if I were to do that, is that I might suffer from massive shock and die.
_Well, it's trivially easy for me to do it, so the fact that it might cause me to die isn't really a concern._ Wait, what?
Take lonely photos. Leave only nudes.
What I find most admirable is the ability to change when it involves a significant sacrifice: giving up a lucrative idea on which our dreams, faith, and social status are based, simply to care about something other than oneself, is an exceptional quality.
It's just depression.
@@bergonius Nah, depression leads to apathy, notfor consideration for bigger things.
@@Bramble20322 it's extremely individual
@@bergoniusThis being the case, how could you possibly qualify it as depression then? Are you close with Cody personally?
@@PaxHeadroom no, but his circumstances are suitable and the change in content style are inline with it. Not only on yt, but x as well
I’ve honestly never really thought about it from that aspect and have to say this video changed my mind on the subject unless I could hear a better argument against it. I’ve not put enough thought into this to consider it a strong opinion, but as someone who previously had the default position of going with humans, this will be my new default position until I hear something better. As Cody said in the video, the “eggs in multiple baskets” argument isn’t it. It’s never made sense at the level of technology we currently have.
We are humans. We should be allowed to do whatever we want with inferior planets.
So true. Humans on Mars is fantasy.
@@Wiibiplaythe only thing we can do in the foreseeable future is study it. Sending people (for all the reasons discussed in the video) is counterproductive and would likely make studying mars harder due to contamination. So it's not a matter of what we should be "allowed" to do. It's about the best way to achieve what we want to do, which is very likely to keep exploring without humans visiting mars.
Bro, have you not seen Mars? There are rocks there.we have to go
Of course we do. We need those rocks 😌
I volunteer as Earth's ambassador and rock collector
Jesus Christ Marie, they're not rocks, theY'RE MINERALS
Drill for oil, if found. We'd be there in a week.
@@BackupSix76066I will take a secondary position and conduct some spectroscopy and mount thin sections on slides for you.
I think a Phobos base would be Doomed
👀
I knew that sounded familiar...
yeah they war will have crash into the planet
Beware of inter-dimensional demons.
Just a silly little teleportation experiment, what could go wrong?
There are 24 landers, probes, or rovers littered across the surface of Mars from 15 separate missions dating back to the 70s. These probes, even the most modern ones, were not decontaminated to the extent that would be desirable for a probe designed to look for extraterrestrial life. (That's actually part of the reason NASA didn't sent the any of its most recent probes to the areas of Mars that would be most likely to host post or present life.)
If contamination from a manned flight is a really threat to the entire potential global ecosystem of Mars, then unfortunately that threat was likely introduced 53 years ago and has had all that time to reproduce and spread. The benefit of having humans on the surface to look for like and try to rapidly identify it far outweighs the risk if additional contamination as we're already far more likely to find earth based life on Mars than true extraterrestrial life.
The difference here is that the things had to enter an atmosphere... That's a bit of a sterilisation step in and of itself.
Us, on the other hand. We will arrive with a container specifically designed to sustain life through the landing.
There's a chance life has not contaminated mars - that chance drops to zero when we arrive with our airlocks.
Hmm I'm not sure I agree, yes we certainly already brought life there but the quantity matters, more bacteria are more likely to survive and proliferate. And yes we might be 100 times better at finding life there in person but if we bring 10000 the amount of life stuff there with us it will might not be worth the tradeoff.
The threat goes from a possibility to a certainty. Humans are a vessel to protect Bacteria from space that wouldn't exist on a probe with no life support attached. Besides, is it wise to increase the potential for a threat to pre-existing life in the assumption that the threat is already there?
@@BruceNJeffAreMyFlies Really depends on what you are doing once you arrive - you could keep the people and their pet bugs and microbes contained relatively easily. Which means putting a lab on Mars in which nothing living can get out but all the Martian samples can be brought in for rapid study is perhaps the right move. And it doesn't matter which decision is made there really it could look to be the wrong one in hindsight - if you stick with long range robot probes and eventual sample return missions it takes so much longer, with so many landing sites with so may individual contamination risks we are not able to monitor it could prove the wrong move as it takes so long all you get is the spread contaminations from previous landings and you don't have enough data to track that, or send the lab and potentially have a greater single contamination point but so much more rapid processing of the samples you hope to find the evidence of native life first. (edited for clarity - and I think could use some more help there...)
@@foldionepapyrus3441 Your argument seems to sum up as: Theres a risk either way, so we might as well ignore the possibility of mitigating that risk.
That’s a massive shift in perspective. Nothing wrong with changing your mind after reflection or in the light of new evidence.
he isn't allowed to like elon musk in his cult, so mars is out until bezos (a progressive approved billionaire) tries it.
Was the reflection and light a pun.
Personally for me I don't think it is massive - the goal is the same, it is just the technological landscape has changed. Some shifting yes but not on the actually important part of the goal, just the methodology. You wouldn't get folks in the 70's really wanting to go back to or invest in steam powered railway for practical reasons (outside of perhaps the odd edge case - for instance where the combustion or sparks off an electric motor is a bad idea so your 'steam' engine is a boiler less design with a pressured tank of steam made a safe distance away), as the diesel and electric are just so much easier to operate and efficient.
@stevexracer4309 prove it lol
Classic recklessness of youth IMO. Caution with age is just part of life. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. In this case, probably sensible
I love your concern and how you present your argument.
Mars: Do not come.
Humans: I'm gonna come.
I read this in Brian and Peter's voice...I am broken..
F you seth rogan
Imabatukaaaaaaam
Underrated comment.
Mars did not consent
Mars: Use protection.
honestly the setting up on the moons of mars thing is quite a good idea. we could have humans using haptic suits to control humanoid robots on the surface if we really wanted to. phobos' orbit has a semi-major axis of only 9376km or 0.03 light seconds (way lower than the 384748km or 1.28 light distance of earth's moon) meaning light delay is near instantaneous and might not even induce motion sickness in some robot operators (emphasis on might).
a phobos base could also benefit from options such as aerobraking using mars' atmosphere and landing/taking off from the much lower gravity of phobos
the only thing it really doesnt have is the option to use ultra-lightweight aircraft
Settlers on Phobos would have better ping to mars than I do to US servers. nice.
Until anyone else gets there the Moon is still a quarter of a million MILES away!
My only argument is this: there are more planets like Mars out there, and arguably the hardest part of human space exploration is not finding more planets to study, its ever reaching them. In my view, Mars MUST be our target to sufficiently move along our space travel technology such that we even have a chance to reach them. Humans will only get excited by mars, not its moons or our moon.
If life could be common enough to have x 2 Genesis in our own solar system, i don't think us contaminating or even out competing mars life would be that bad.
Whereas If life is so rare that our planet is a damn near one off in our galaxy / universe. Well damn let's spread this stuff out, I'm in favour of spreading extremophiles far and wide, so millennia from now, the diversity complexity amazement of life gets to keep being the most interesting thing in the universe.
I don't know if humanity have a few hundred or thousands of year's left around on earth, but it took billions of years for life to evolve to a point where spreading across the planets / cosmos is even a capability.... Let's not squander this maybe one shot of powerful intelligence we currently have, and not share life... This beautiful complex entropy fighting system that comes to make the universe know itself.
I love your channel your projects your smarts, I understand your reasoning, but I just disagree with this opinion.
That's fair. I just think it would be a good idea to be a little more cautious. We only get to do this once.
@@theCodyReeder To Mars? Sure. There's countless other viable planets and planetoids that have a much greater chance of actually sustaining life. Delaying research and progress for no demonstrable gain is completely illogical and rooted in nothing more than emotion and anti-humanist philosophy.
Maybe you'll see from the comments you're receiving on this video. Your intentions may be "good", but those who tout the "anti-exploration" position want nothing more than the complete regression and dismantling of civilization and the human spirit.
self-terminating thoughts. those that wait cease to exist
The risk isn't wiping out mars life in itself, as if the life has value per se. It's the threat of losing the scientific understanding we'd gain from examining Mars life before it gets wiped out.
I guess the fear is that life is rare enough to show up in our solar system only twice :D
I never thought about it like that. Very interesting point
Yeah, at first I thought it was just an uncommon bad take by Cody, but he backed up his argument pretty good. I'm still sad that we won't be seeing any Cody's Lab videos from Mars within my lifetime. Oh well 🤷🏼♂. If you won't go and make videos on Mars, someone else will!
@@Splendisimo That live stream wouldn't be too live though. It takes light a minimum of 4 minutes and a maximum of around 24 minutes to reach Earth. That's a 480000ms to 1440000ms Ping, at LEAST 😅
We never think about that because it makes little sense. I imagine whatever contaminant human cosmonauts can bring with them, could just as well get there with the robots. Especially if we are to send enough of them to study the planet to an implied degree. Say if life was found on mars now, how are we sure _that_ didn't get there with the vessel? It can only remain uncontaminated if we don't touch it at all, and then what is the point.
@@adamrichardson2227 Welp, I guess I'll just have to go to Mars myself for the true live experience!
I like how Cody always gives off this friend vibe.
I love the non scripted pieces.
I do agree with what you say, and I think the asteroid belt is a far more valuable target for humanity to explore and set up camp in, and far less resource demanding. Keep up the excellent work, always a pleasure when theres a new video out 🥳
I have a feeling that K S Robinson has it right when he writes about the future of Martian politics to be red versus green at least in part.
I was thinking the same thing having read the books a while back and watching this video now ^^
Define "thorough".
Even if humans bring Earth life, and even if that life is able to survive and spread on the surface, it seems unlikely that it will be able to outcompete Mars life (if any) on its own turf.
I do not understand why the presence of perchlorate dust detected on Mars surface rarely enters disconsions of humans on Mars. As I understand it, this highly reactive toxic dust, that can not be easily cleaned or filtered from the air. It, along with the radiation risk, makes Mars a very hazardous place to set up an environment.
Yeah, that dust is extremely problematic. It's so microscopicly tiny and magnetic, breaks down machinery and is extremely toxic. It would require space suits that have to be kept ouside and being entered from the habitat wall to minimize potential contamination of habitat.
Uh, no, it's not "highly toxic" it's a bit more toxic then table salt, which, I'm sure you're aware from the phrase "salting the earth" also prevents you from growing crops. The Atacama desert also has perchlorates in the soil, and hardly anything lives there, but people are able to walk around, take samples, etc in regular clothes. It's also very high in altitude so there are a lot of telescopes there (probably less atmosphere to block solar rays = perchlorates form, but also great for telescopes). But anyway you can easily wash it off with water. It's a problem for *settling* mars but not for walking around. We also don't know how deep it goes, could be you just need to scrape off the topsoil and you'll be fine.
@@takanara7 If we can't explore the Highest summits, the amazon, Antarctica, or comb the depths of our own deepest oceans here on Earth, you have to be 'High' to think we are capable of settling another planet. I think ya'll have been watching too much Star Trek. This videos' comment section is full of nuts in denial.
If it's magnetic, I see a very easy way to filter it.
@@blueshard4632 I said wrong. It's not exactly magnetic. It's so fine and much smaller than dust on earth so its electro-staticly charged and basicly sticks to everything.
So, it's settled then... We're sending Robo Cody, right?
He has to survive a nuke first
Makes sense, there's no real point to human boots on Mars anyways. Luna and the asteroids are far more valuable prizes economically/resource-wise (you can't really ship anything off a planet economically), and far less sensitive environments. And arguably only slightly greater in difficulty to inhabit (rotating habitats in a vacuum can simulate gravity, if necessary, even spinning bowl habitats on a place like Luna if its gravity proves too low to remain healthy). If your priority is a backup population off Earth, Mars colonization shows nearly no possibility of being self-sustaining at any point in the next few centuries, but a fully-space-faring (asteroid belt, etc.) civilization seems far more likely to be able to recover from anything suddenly happening to Earth than a Mars-bound one would.
0:35 YTP referenced!!!💥💥💥💥💥
My thoughts exactly 😂
I think Cody is running AI voice clean up and it is causing that artifact lol
6:51 Something unforeseen may happen. Something unimaginable. Having 2 baskets sounds like a great idea. The second basket wont be ready for thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years, but redundancies seem like a good idea.
Having said that, i completely agree with ur point that we should not contaminate mars before we get a chance to THOROUGHLY study every aspect of it.
Agree on the basket idea, but maybe not use mars as a basket until its been properly analyzed.
@@juslitor why not? Keeping Mars presence is not an important goal. Advancing science and technology is immensely beneficial for humankind.
Human life means nothing to me.
@@1pcfred but microbial life does?
@@ksp-crafter5907 why would you assume that?
This is the issue with overly intellectual naval gazing about potential problems with doing something. One can always find reasons not to do it, but sometimes people need to do things. If for nothing else than to jolt human out of introspection and to engage with the universe. We are a part of the universe, if we do damage so be it. We should explore and colonize it.
The universe doesnt matter if humans arent there. What good is knowing mars is pristine if no one is around to care about it.
If we have the tech to go to mars, we would have the tech to not contaminate it. Putting a person there is a buff/boon for humanity's spirit, and taking precautions to not contaminate it doesn't have to go away to do this.
your videos are so soothing, man
a salve for anxiety
I've had a very similar thought process for a couple of years. I think it would be a lot more worthwhile to set up a permanent or semi-permanent colony on the moon, both because we know for sure that it is currently sterile, and because we could actually bring any colonists home if something goes wrong.
The moon's gravity is even worse for humans than Mars' is. Man-made outer space habitats are the answer.
It is also very helpful for staging, and doing faster research of other planets before we decide to move to one of them.
it ALSO makes launching future rockets way, way cheaper, so it's easier to get everywhere that's not earth!
Counter arguments:
1.contamination is a human concept. Nature doesn't usually care about it at all, life goes where it can, if there's no competition or weak competition there, then it usually considers that a bonus as much as it can be thought to consider anything.
2.Humans are the only life forms capable of purposefully spreading life off earth to seed other planets, therefore it could be that this is our fundamental function in the scheme of life, the reason our road to this point is so clumsy and rare, almost like earths biospheres shared desire to spread expressed itself by manifesting us, maybe we're earths biospheres fruiting body like a mushroom is to the fungus;
Almost like we have an obligation to the very lifeforms we're worried about contaminating mars with, to do exactly that.
3.Gather samples first sure but we're not going there to set up a safari for microbes, were going there to expand our reach, and we'll go anywhere we can, you can try and police that but for how long will you be able to keep that up with 100% success pro-expansionists just have to get lucky once, you have to get lucky every attempt.
Which makes it a massive waste of energy to bother trying to stop it in the first place as you'll inevitably fail sooner or later and mars will come under invasion from earth's biosphere, as all Luke warm balls of rock us chattering balding apes can figure out how to reach will, it's only a matter of when not if;
So all you're doing is adding nuclear contamination to the mix.
It's good to think about because in the next 15 years this will become less a hypothetical and much closer to a reality.
I think it is good to do as you say and refrain from the human mission for now. However, if we do several mars sample return missions from multiple spots on Mars, recover them remotely, then send them back to Earth, analyze them, and find nothing, then I think you are okay to send humans. We should do a reasonable search for microbial life but not exploring ourselves when we can analyze things quicker, have greater mobility, and the ability to change plans based on data we gather and things observed is still valuable.
If AI and robotics continue to improve to the point where robots could do the same or more than humans in the same time period, then we'll really need to consider if it is worth it at all to send people. At least for several years. As you said, Mars is an extremely harsh environment and going down into the gravity well is going to be very risky. If you could have a human work on the surface 6 hours a day and work twice as fast as a robot but have a robot do half the work for 12 hours, I'd send the robot every time.
One final thing to consider is that we might already have contaminated Mars. A lot of the rovers sent especially in the early days of space exploration were not sterilized. Thus millions of microbes and bacteria from Earth likely survived the journey. It's also possible that Mars microbes are hardier and more resilient than Earth microbes. After all, Mars microbes are in a much harsher environment so could be able to out compete Earth microbes especially having millions of years to adapt to Mars. We'll also need to be careful about bringing Mars microbes back to Earth were they could thrive in the absence of things like heavy radiation and with abundant water/food.
There's lots of important things to consider when talking about potentially visiting Mars. Thanks for the video and discussion Cody!
Cubfan135 jumpscare!
more importantly, good response!
replying to this part here: "We'll also need to be careful about bringing Mars microbes back to Earth were they could thrive in the absence of things like heavy radiation and with abundant water/food. " but there are also radiophilic bacteria and radiotrophic fungi that already exist on earth(see chernobyl mushrooms). those fungi grow worse in non irradiated areas and thrive in the irradiated areas. i really doubt most mars life would thrive on earth.
15 years goes by fast and when it does things won't be much different than they are now. We are very far from being capable of successfully mounting a human mission to Mars. You probably won't live to see it. The challenge is far greater than most realize.
11:01 this is such an American thing to say.
thank you! this is a very important message!
Definitely something to consider!
I'm mixed on the subject, since I feel that a mission to Mars would, in itself, catapult the sciences forward.
However, I do agree that this is a serious issue that needs to be adressed before we go. I've thought about it before, and simply assumed the people running the mission would have this planned out to a degree it wouldn't be an issue (perhaps a long airlock sterilization process?).
A rover comparable in mobility to experimental proficiency to a human would definitely be the safer option.
I do wonder though, if the robotics may harbor any bacteria from their creators.
no the sterilization process we go through before sending anything to mars is insane, you cant sterilize a living being the same way you can metal tho
they can be made sterile robots don't need bacteria to survive
Iirc they do sanitize them to the best of their ability.
Most machines can be sterilized while their creators always carry bacteria.
yep. pee pee poo poo
This is why you've been my favorite youtuber for years now. I'd have never even thought of that cody and I love having new ideas to think about. Thank you sir
Mars is interested not only because of life. If we want to study other stellar systems and look for habitable planets then we need examples of lifeless planets as well and it is good to have one nearby. Remember stories like "scientists found traces of some molecule that is strongly associated with life"? But how do we know that this compound can not be produced on a planet without life? Yes. We need a planet without life as an example.
0:35 YTP moment
Bro I was about to comment this lmao was that on purpose?😂
@@Matthewsmacku I hope so 😁
Cody I was just thinking of your project while visiting Utah desert. I love what you are doing and I love that you are not afraid to arrive at conclusions that don't necessarily agree with the original premise.
I'm thinking of the quote "I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." Only it was about the threat to humanity from the site not the other way around.
I think these are important conversations to have. I find myself in disagreement with Cody. It is true that there are unknown unknowns. However I think the benefit to humanity outweighs the risk of harming Mars. We have already cross contaminated Mars with rovers. What's the statistical probability of Mars life curing cancer. Research would go so much faster with boots on the ground. If we are really so worried about contamination we can find a way of sterilization and filtering. I think it might be short sighted to delay becoming a multi planetary civilization, my hope is that by being in two plants humanity starts looking at a bigger picture. Larger unification politics. I know it's a bit wishful, but there's only one way to know. There's going to be tragedy and setbacks, these things take so long, there's people that will dedicate their entire lives to make it possible for someone else to go. People already have. I feel that outweighs the risk of damaging unknown life in Mars, we have been looking for how many years without any confirmed results. How much longer, how much more research. I think that runs the risk of putting it off indefinitely. We need this, we need to do this while we have a personal that's willing to develop the technology. We have already lost the technology and processes for going to the moon. Best regards a fellow lover of science and I hope you the best Cody!
Even ignoring the issue with bacterial incursion, my argument against going to Mars just yet was that we need to first get experience developing housing and equipment for extra-planetary habitats by building on the moon before we try to go to Mars. Yes, there are plenty of differences between the two bodies, but the cost of error is far, far lower on the Moon which in the event of an emergency would only be a couple of days away, than compared to Mars, which is months away.
the thing that consistently distinguishes your channel from any other ed youtubers is you have such a beautiful soul like deadass what a thoughtful & hopeful video. mars as a nature preserve is so real.
@@Thejosiphas Mars is a dead planet, there is no "nature" there to preserve. It's covered in toxic perchlorates and has been bombarded by solar radiation for billions of years. If any life exists at all, it will be unicellular and exist underground.
What is the chance that some bacteria can catch a ride on the machines themselves? I think that is much more probable than some rock from earth reaching Mars.
the machines are made sterile in a super sterile environment
Yes totally, but humans would be a guarantee.
The chance is not insignificant, but NASA at least has been mind-bendingly careful about that.
@@chasethevioletsun9996I know a mistake happened with the moon landing but the bacterial exposed didn’t survive luckily. Hopefully they’re more careful now
@@Newt2799 that incident was part of why they have an obsessive protocol now, and why their spacecraft are assembled in Climate-controlled clean rooms, and not the beach in Texas.
Even robotic missions will be hard to completely sterilize, but definitely are easier than containing waste from humans living on Mars. A space station orbiting Mars would be the ideal platform to launch robotic missions from, or next best the station on a moon of Mars as you suggested. It is easier to create an earth-like environment in a space station too, so more pleasant for the humans. Dozens of Starships are definitely capable of carrying the materials to build such a space station.
If we could contaminate Mars we already did. Human presence won't change that, but it will greatly accelerate the search for life and technological progress, inspire the whole humankind. This worth way more that potentially keeping Mars presteene to make someone's job easier.
Wow something I never expected what a well thought out conversation
This is not the latter.
It's a monologue.
“Gravity wells are for suckers” love it. A very simple “if you know, you know” manner of speaking about the rocket problem.
The lower martian gravity makes the rocket problem marginal, even with our current level of technology.
Ludicrous position.
LOL. Let me Know when we get our first Sample return mission from Venus.
There are a few questions arising for me right of the bat:
1) Didn't we accidentaly already contaminated mars with the robotic missions? How can we know all the stuff sent there was perfectly clean?
2) Because Mars lacks a magnetosphere and gets radiation from the sun and space, is it even possible for life to still be there, or get and stay there?
Also as you mentioned a few of the right people could do exploration much faster and I agree that a private company with settlement plans is not the best start. I'm not sure robots and AI, or people driving robots from orbit is feasible anytime soon. But humanity definitely has time, so why rush it.
You could repeat this argument to the end of time though and is an age old scientific problem: you can’t absolutely prove the lack of something with a potentially infinite dataset.
That doesn't mean an intial comprehensive search effort shouldn't take place, and one still hasn't.
@@RichTapestrywe haven’t been able to get a craft back from space without people. That’s only happened since space x. Plus you have to take enough fuel to get there and back which takes more energy to lift off, which takes more fuel which takes more energy etc. etc. it’s expensive and we only just got the technology to do it. The Govt. budget for space expeditions was cut. So many people in the comments saying we need governments to go first. They don’t have the technology or the resources, but Elon musk does so what are we going to do?
@@Tryalittlebit It needn't be governments who go first. If Elon Musk has the technology and the resources then he also has the capacity to do it with some scientific rigor.
2 thoughts, how long do we search mars for life before giving up and colonizing? And is the hope of preserving said unknown life more important than preserving the human species by becoming multi-planetary? Not saying it is wrong or right, Personally i like the idea of colonizing astroids. Seems like more fun
@@Engineer9 Humans suck without gravity.
Colonizing Mars is never going to happen. It is far too expensive, and such a colony could not survive without periodic very expensive supplies from Earth. It'll never be self sufficient.
Just the idea that we could be capable of colonizing mars within a reasonable timespan (or indeed ever) really shows that you don't understand the difficulties involved. Martian earth is toxic to earth life and, more importantly, isn't soil. It has no organic matter or microorganisms. So we can't grow anything in it. We would need to bring all our media from earth - literally tons of soil. There's not enough moisture, so we would need to bring water not just to drink but for food production. Mars is largely unprotected from radiation, lacking a magnetosphere,, so nothing - N O T H I N G - can live outside, including crops. The lack of atmosphere means that everything needs to be pressurised - again, including food production facilities. There's a lot less solar energy, so you'd need to bring a lot of fuel to heat everything up. I'm not an expert on the matter, and I'm sure experts can point out a thousand more things I've missed, but just these issues are insurmountable at the present time. Remember it is currently very hard and expensive to send an extremely small, unmanned mission to Mars. Imagine how much hard it would be with colonists and their supplies, even if it were possible technologically (which it really isn't)
It's a pipe dream.
The most sensible argument to me is that contamination ultimately doesn't matter. It adds an additional level of tedium that really does nothing but stymie human progress. This also doesn't take into account the speed with which we can currently examine new things, develop new methods, restore things from the past, and where those capabilities will be in the near future. The whole notion that we shouldn't occupy the planet if we find a unique bacteria is absurdly defeatist. I think valid reasons to postpone could be 1) We should allow our technology and physics knowledge more time to mature, or, even further out 2) Mars needs more water to ever be a viable habitat, so how do we go about crashing Ceres into it before moving people there (and while we're at it, give it an active moon to increase planetary geological activity).
As for "There is nothing we could to to Earth that would make it as bad as Mars", the assumption that human activity is the biggest threat to Earth is patently ridiculous. This suggestion almost indicates that you don't understand the scale of things. One good Sun anomaly could wipe out the whole planet. The same with a large enough unexpected meteor. The real threats to the planet are cosmic ones.
Cody talking about Mars while gnats orbit his head..
Dude!
Phobos might be a hotbed of life!
Hi Cody, astronomer here. Thank you for so effectively articulating an opinion Ive had since NASA announced their Moon to Mars architecture. Other scientific disciplines take extraordinary care to prevent contamination in their experiments. So should we
Ok Cody, but you're still going forward with the Chicken Hole Base, right?
Wasn't Zubrin's argument that if we find life on an another planet, then it will either be identical to what we have on Earth (and so it had to get there from Earth recently) or significantly different (and so obviously not brought there by us)?
I agree that the idea of a mix-up seems unlikely. How could evolution have stalled entirely for millions of years to the point where life is indistinguishable on earth? Not saying contamination is awesome or anything, but this is a solid point
what if there are earth bacteria or other microorganisms that survived on the devices we've already sent to mars?
I've never heard this point of view expressed about the topic before, and I think you make an excellent point. We absolutely need to collect more data before we rush into manned exploration out of this sense of urgency that our time on this planet is running out. It's an absurdity to suggest that we should abandon our beautiful home planet to live in a radioactive desert with no oxygen just because some of us refuse to stop destroying it. That's like saying you should abandon your house to setup camp in Death Valley because of your neighbors.
There are people who consider this planet awful enough to consider Mars a vastly superior alternative, even empowered with all the facts about Mars. There is nowhere left to go on earth, everything is full, taken and owned. You can't stop the exodus, indeed the basics of geopolitics will ensure that you crab bucketeers are not allowed to stop people leaving.
@@Shrouded_reaper Very true, but it's only idiots who tend to say that.
@@Shrouded_reaperbro just go outside 😂😂😂😂
I don't get this idea of sending people to mars will create a path to save humanity, on today's technology, a base on mars will still be 100% dependent on erath's resources, even more than just keep the humans here. Before anyone claim it's the path, I think it should be demonstrated that we can sustain life there without having to supply everything to them. The travel is the easiest part, though it isn't easy at all.
@@deangordon8993 yeah, but you don't need to send anyone to mars to figure all out, you can figure out here on earth and them send people to mars.
If im not mistaken that is the whole point of Cody's chicken hole base experiments is simulating a potential base on Mars using earth technologies and resources to eventually become self sustaining.
@@deangordon8993 And if those resources were instead spent on self-sustaining bunkers on earth that would provide a much better fail-safe against whatever cataclysm would threaten human extinction. Earth will always be more habitable than Mars - except for the Sun engulfing earth in it's red giant phase but, well, we've a few billion years before that's a concern
@@deangordon8993 and in comparison a gust of wind would wipe out a martian colony
You can't complete any project without beginning work on it.
You're such a gem, Cody.
I'm glad you've come round to the Precautionary Principle.
I'm not, mankind never got ahead by putting off stuff that needed to happen eventually.
All that's gonna happen is NASA is gonna use their tiny budget to dick around for 100 years while the Chinese take ownership of the planet.
We should go to mars, not for researching life, but for the same reason people went west. Yeah, but stuff happened, native stuff died, but overall I'd say it was a net positive for civilization. You could make up a million hypothetical for any tech progress and we would all be sitting on our hands.
I`m surprised by your changed attitude towards Mars. It's also a joy to witness your evolution and shifting perspectives in life, Cody, as it demonstrates your humanity. Machines have already shown they can accomplish the same tasks on Mars. It is important to focus on fixing Earth's issues before causing harm to another planet, as you mentioned.
You always have humbling perspectives and an endearing heart. Glad to have subscribed so many years back.
Spoken like a Vulcan.
Robert Zubrin proposed three alternatives for life on Mars (separate from the contaminated meteorite argument)
1: There is no life on Mars -> Earth life contamination poses minimal problems.
2: There is life on Mars that is based on a different chemistry -> Mars life is easily distinguishable from Earth life and can readily be studied without being confused with Earth life.
3: There is life on Mars that shares the same chemistry as Earth life -> Earth life contamination is problematic.
Two points on this and then a question.
Most people would agree that if there is life on Mars, there would be fossils of said life. As such even in the worst case, where Mars is contaminated and Earth life eradicates local life, there would still be fossils to study, i.e. there is no case where all the information is lost.
Secondly, I find the argument that Earth life could readily out-compete Mars life to be tenuous. Assuming the same life chemistry, Mars life would be far better adapted to the Martian environment than Earth life. This is not a case analogous to the introduction of cats to an isolated island full of mice, but rather more analogous to the introduction of cats to the north pole.
Lastly, my question is: Where would the human race be if the Americas had been found 100 years later?
But gosh wouldn't it be nice to know which one it was before we took the risk?
Everyone is acting like there is an impending disaster that mars will somehow help save us from. if that was the case then yeah go fast but really we have time.
Why isn't musk trying for an asteroid? serves the same goal, easier, and has the potential for a return. It's a no brainer!
"It's fine, there will be fossils" is a very strange counterpoint. Not all life can fossilize, not all environments are capable of fossilization.. And far more important than any of that.. Fossils aren't a viable substitute for living organisms!
It's like hearing "We want to know what kind of music this culture listened to" and responding "It's fine, even if we do wipe them out there will still be middens"
"All information being lost" is not the pass/fail metric for discovering and studying life on Mars.
As for earth life out-competing mars life - There are more issues than whether or not we render Mars life extinct.
Contamination of simple life forms can (and almost certainly WILL) result in evolutionary changes to said mars life.
The moment that something as simple as a virus exchanges dna we''ve just thrown the history of mars's life's development into a blender.
As for your cat analogy - I think you're dramatically underestimating the virulence of extremophile life on earth.
Mars is not inhospitable to *all* life, it's just inhospitable large scale, complex life.
The reality is that what we'd be doing is taking a grab-bag of random bacteria, protists, viruses ect and dumping them in the north pole. And guess what? The north pole is covered in those exact things. Most of it will die, but not all of it, something will survive and in doing so massively complicate the already arduous work of studying mars life.
There's no reason to assume that Mars bacteria will magically eliminate all earth life it's exposed to immediately. That's just not how evolution works.
Even just two dissimilar organisms living in the same environment with no direct points of conflict will impact said environment.
On the most basic level an earth lifeform living in a mars environment could do something as simple as raise or lower the PH of their environment over time. Is the mars life going to survive that?
How is it going to adapt to that? What are those adaptations going to be? Will we be able to tell what changes were made over time? Will we be able to infer the starting conditions?
If you want to engage in unknowable hypotheticals about alternate histories, then apply that same thinking to basic biology.
Wise @@theCodyReeder might lament poor decisions made by those with power, but the insightful Douglas Adams teaches us that fate will inevitably build a new bypass or a golf course nobody visits, or both.
It's fine that Cody says he wants to know, and even to know better than we would find if we had to be more careful about analysis, or dig deeper, or preserve some region of the surface from the elements. I think it's fine he wants this more than for humans to reach out across the stars.
But I want humans to reach out across the stars, more than I want a slightly easier time detecting trace markers for life that almost surely doesn't exist, and I find it sad that Cody would advocate nuking the efforts of those he disagrees with.
I also find it uncomfortable that Cody uses curing cancer and such vague sciencisms advocate this view. You simply don't cure cancer by nuking explorers. You don't cure it by finding a miracle mars drug. Cancer will be cured because people went out to do something hard, and few enough people go in their way.
@@veedracI agree, reaching further across the universe means more to me as a human then your hope for studying a potential genisis being disrupted. Cody's whole point predicated on non facts makes me really feel sad that he's willing to put what was a exciting ambitious dream of adventure into a category where it's now evil and deserves the nuclear punishment.
Firstly, great point about how earth is always better suited for humans. It's baffling how many people get sucked into the idea that abandoning here is somehow more favourable. It's not even close out there. And now, just wanted to make a comment purely on the nature of finding cures for cancer and the such kind of behaviour. If you want to look for gold you could potentially find it in a sand pit but really you should visit a gold mine.
If someone said they were sending robots to Mars in search of hypothetical life with an even more hypothetical cure from a species that if it exist, probably isn't particularly related to us, then I would ask why they simply don't study things more greatly on earth.
If I've learned one thing about humanity, it is that we simply don't learn lessons from our mistakes.
precisely why we should start by creating an independent colony on another planet. Safe from humanity's ability to destroy. Lets learn from the previous extinction events.
Love your content, Cody! I've been a fan for many years, and I appreciate the depth of thought you bring to these topics. Over those same years, I've experienced significant personal growth in areas like my time in Utah, my religious beliefs, and beyond. While I understand and respect your concerns about contaminating Mars and potentially losing invaluable scientific knowledge, I'd like to offer a counterargument.
We're living in a time where existential threats to humanity are becoming increasingly real. Beyond nuclear war and political instability, advances in technology could lead to scenarios where a single bioweapon or mismanaged artificial intelligence could threaten the survival of our entire species. The rapid development in biotechnology, for example, raises the possibility that a devastating bioweapon could be engineered and unleashed, either intentionally or accidentally.
In this context, establishing a human presence on Mars as soon as possible isn't just about exploration; it's about creating a buffer to protect humanity from potential extinction events on Earth. Mars could serve as a lifeboat for our species, preserving human life and culture in the event of a global catastrophe. As Stephen Hawking and other thinkers have suggested, becoming a multi-planetary species is a crucial step for our long-term survival.
I agree that the potential contamination of Mars is a significant concern, and we should take precautions to minimize it. However, I believe that the survival of humanity takes precedence. If we delay sending humans to Mars until we've thoroughly studied it robotically, we risk losing our window of opportunity to establish that crucial safeguard.
Once we've secured a sustainable human presence off Earth, we can focus on more responsible exploration and preservation of other worlds. Until then, I'm not willing to risk the existence of humanity, even if it means sacrificing some scientific opportunities on Mars.
It might sound extreme, but given the accelerating pace of technological threats, it's a very real concern. Thanks for starting up the discussion though! I'm open to other ideas.
While spreading out should be our long term goal, there’s next to nothing that can happen to Earth that will make it as bad as Mars is already. Bioweapon? Much, much, much easier to sustain human life in a biosafe bunker on Earth than on Mars. You name the threat, it’s almost surely easier to survive on Earth. Gamma ray burst? Chicxulub? Supervolcano? Lava plain flooding? Earth still has tons of resources on surface and a favorable geology (gravity plus active core).
Humanity isn’t even going to
be able to travel to Mars and return alive.
I kind of disagree a little bit. Your reasons for delaying a mars base are valid. The search for life is a very important one.
My train of thought however is that if there (active) life is on Mars, it ought to be obvious. You can hardly take a grain of sand in the most barren environment on earth without finding a sign of life (sure, death valley would be a hard spot to find any, but there are definitely traces). If mars used to be more like us and had a lush history we should be able to find it. If you take 10 surface levels samples from earth, it would be impossible not to find life. Imagine if we start looking for it (eg: a geologic formation that was raised, might contain old seabed life, such as mount everest. Or we find the saline pockets of water under mars and pull up a core from there, or we throw a rover into a lava tube to have a closer look). If life isn't in the obvious places, then I posit that we might assume there isn't any (anymore). Life as we know it has a powerful focus on surviving and spreading out, so if it exists, it should turn up rather sooner than later. The alternative is that we assume there is life and the search for it is infinite.
We are better off giving it our best shot, and then moving on to the next likely candidate (Europa, Titan, or beyond)
Not only that. In the context of the threat of nuclear war, it is vitally important that humanity escapes from Earth permanently. Mars is the fastest way to do this (besides the moon which is not safe from Earth).
To Cody, I propose this question: Which disaster is worse? Potential contamination (and possibly extinction) of a planet with no proof of active life as far as we can tell with our rovers, or potential permanent loss of humanity's ability to escape Earth?
I also have a hard time believing our bacteria would out compete martian bacteria. They evolved for their conditions, not ours. With columbus, it did make sense because the environment for the bacteria was common, a human body.
I believe that what we bring in contamination will most likely be overshadowed by our ability to explore and perform experiments.
Also, when would be enough time before we can confidently say we CAN go to mars?
@@boggless2771we are so, so, so far away from being able to even consider a self-sustaining Martian colony. If we're screwed without it, then we're just straight up screwed. We are simply not capable of it. Mars doesn't have a magnetosphere so is constantly bombarded with radiation. The dirt is not soil (meaning it lacks organic matter and microorganisms, both necessary for plant growth) AND is contaminated with toxic perchlorates. There's very little atmosphere so everything would need to be pressurised. Surface temps aren't survivable for earth life. Not enough moisture is available. Gravity is too low for humans to live there long term due to the (serious!) health impacts of inadequate gravity. Solar radiation is lower due to distance and there is no geothermal activity, so energy is a huge issue too. It is simply not possible to colonise mars and won't be any time soon. And I do mean not possible - not very difficult or very expensive, we do not have the ability to do it and it's entirely possible we never will.
A follow up question; *when* and *how* could we ever be certain that mars is totally devoid of life?
Not. It's impossible to prove a negative.
@@veronicavaes4581 if it's not possible to prove a negative, then it should also be impossible to prove that it's not possible to prove a negative. But that would be... that would be that would be that would be that would be
Critical error; process terminated, log recorded 5:33 pm
the problem is if they dont find fosilized bacteria or creatures they will dig, and dig, here, there, what if, perhaps this or that
the search has no end in my opinion
knowing how long has been on the conditions it is now the planet, if nothing is found frozen in ice or in caves, we will not find it
@@RageXBlade
A feat that surpasses achievability is not a negative. If you want to pass as human, you need to improve your context awareness.
@@christophersavignon4191I don’t see how “surpasses achievability” isn’t a negative. It seems like you are just using “surpasses” to hide a “not”.
Let []A denote “it is provable that A”.
If “for all A, not([]not(A))”…
Hmm…
well, “for all A, not(P(A))” is equivalent to “not(exists A, P(A))” (assuming the law of the excluded middle),
So, “for all A, not([]not(A))”
is equivalent to “not(exists A, []not(A))”
which seems like a “negative statement” to me?
Well, sorta - see, I’ve come to doubt that there is really a good uniform way to partition the collection of all possible meaningful statements into two classes of “positive statements” and “negative statements”.
For one thing, is the conjunction of a positive statement with a negative statement, itself a positive statement or a negative statement? What about the disjunction?
No, I don’t think it is really a distinction that makes that much sense.
I think a better distinction is between Pi_1 statements, Sigma_1 statements, etc.
“All butterflies have Ringo as their favorite member of the Beatles” and “All butterflies do not have Ringo as their favorite member of the Beatles” are both Pi_1 statements.
On the other hand, “There exists a butterfly such that Ringo is its favorite member of The Beatles” and “There exists a butterfly such that it isn’t true that Ringo is its favorite member of the Beatles” are both Sigma_1 statements.
For such sentences, one need only exhibit a single butterfly and demonstrate that that butterfly is/isn’t (respectively) such that Ringo is its favorite member of the Beatles, to demonstrate the truth of the sentence.
Where as for the Pi_1 statements, you would have to demonstrate that there is no butterfly which would serve as a counterexample to the claim.
I think this is what “you can’t prove a negative” is trying to get at?
But, it mistakenly attributes it to the presence of negation, when the real difference is due to the different quantifiers!
It is an understandable mistake: the negation of a Sigma_1 statement is a Pi_1 statement, and visa versa.
But, some statements are neither in Pi_1 or Sigma_1 , and some statements are in both!
In general, the conjunction of a Sigma_1 statement and a Pi_1 statement, needn’t be in either. (It will be in both Pi_2 and Sigma_2 though.)
imagine the biochemical knowledge we could get from a completely separate tree of life
Happy Columbus Day! 🎉
The idea of Mars as a backup was never about some slow man-made degradation of Earth making Mars a better alternative. It is an approach to safeguard against a calamity that would wipe out all life on the planet and/or make it completely uninhabitable. It is an extremely unlikely scenario but that doesn't mean we should ignore it. It's just one small reason to go to Mars.
Locking the planet away for an arbitrarily long seeming period of a hundred years would deprive generations of people of their opportunity to study, explore and build up a new world while there is zero evidence that microbes from Earth could just spread around Mars and out-compete potential life that has adapted to the planet for eons.
That isn't to say that we shouldn't send robots first. That is to say that proponents of planetary protection should actually get moving and design those robots and experiments instead of making everyone else wait for more than a lifetime. The first Starships to fly to Mars will definitely not have people aboard. High time to come up with actual hardware to find life on Mars. Before people follow.
If you want backup populations, artificial habitats built around the entire solar system made to be habitable from the start is a much better bet and far easier to accomplish than colonizing any planet except the Earth, which we assume is getting annihilated somehow in this thought experiment.
"That is to say that proponents of planetary protection should actually get moving..." We'd love to! If you have a spare few billion lying around it would be mighty helpful, believe it or not the missions are going about as fast as they can with current funding. MSR for example has run into trouble not because people want to drag their feet but because they physically do not have the funding to pursue the original mission architecture.
@@xiphosura413 @xiphosura413 it's not about what I want. I neither want to go to Mars nor think it's the best destination for the moment. I'm saying that if you intend to deprive the entire species of the option to go there you need a much stronger argument than 'there could be some microbes, but we're not sure'. The burden of proof is on you (PP proponents), 'we'd love to but don't have the money' isn't a particularly convincing argument when essentially no effort was made towards putting a mission together and every single Mars rover intentionally avoided places that might be relevant to finding an answer.
@@xiphosura413 we will land on Mars. These arguments are pointless, earth life is superior to any martian life and so earth life shall have the right to expand.
This is an absoluely amazing argument on why going to Mars is dumb. Why people are so interested in sending maned missions to Mars has alwaysed confused me. It's so far away, going there is basically a one way trip and it's not the place we should be going to first or like you said, at all. The Moon first then the astroid belt. The Moon is close enough to get help if things go wrong, and gravity is low enough that it could be used as a stageing ground for future deepspace missions. Its low gravity also allows for things like centripetal stations to be built to approximate Earth gravity (using currently available materials like steel). Mars is just a wasteland with nothing to offer beyond scientific study. Its got basically no atmosphere to protect us, its gravity is low enough that it would cause health problems but too heigh for easy surface to space launches. Honestly the only reason why I believe someone like Elon Musk wants to go there is for the publicity, just so he can say "look what I did, I have the best space company".
You got it. Imagine actually living in a pressurised module, made by the lowest bidder and in 40 years it has to never string a leak or catastrophically fail. Same with the suits.
Stuck in a cramped space with people who are strangers. It's just a radiation bathed, body rotting low-G prison colony nothing more.
Say goodbye to fresh air, freedom to move carelessly, walking in the park or along a beach. No seasons, no change ever, just everyday the same. No spontaneity, no love affairs, no water skiing or whatever.
God, that would be depressing, the Earth is made for us and once people get past the "futurism", the scales will fall from their eyes and Musk's ridiculous idea will bomb along with his shares.
Earth is home, we need to take care of it. Don't get me started on the stupidity of travelling to the stars, it's even worse. Science fiction has rotted people's brains, created a new secular religion for them called Futurism.
Musk has in effect given up on Earth. Likely he wants to create a new humans 2.0 of very wealthy people, the best of us according to him and including him. He's just another megalomaniac. In the process it will also make him the richest person by far. Until everyone realises they were duped anyway.
Is there anywhere on Mars where earth life could survive though? There are no hydrothermal vents, there are no volcanoes anymore, no liquid water. Mars life if it exists is kilometers underground, and we need people with heavy equipment to dig them out. No rover could drill an oil well. If Mars was even 0.1% as inhabitable as Earth I would totally agree, but it isn't.
My thoughts as well
While I don't think we should wait.
I believe we will have humanoid robots capable of digging a well in much less than 100 years.
Earth bacteria was found surviving on Surveyor hardware on the Moon years after it landed there. If it can live with the vacuum, temperatures, UV and radiation conditions on the Moon, it can easily survive on Mars.
I guess this means we're absolutely sure all of the craft sent to Mars from Earth were sterile? Cody hadn't even realized that protein bad wrapper had gotten away from him until he hiked to confirm the "glint" was waste.
Even if they weren't absolutely 100% sterile, they would be several orders of magnitude cleaner than any manned mission. The more initial bacteria, the greater the odds they take hold.
Exactly! The “preventing contamination from earth” went out the window with the first lander. If earth bacteria being introduced to mars could cause a “planetary genocide” that’s already well underway.
I do believe in holding off on colonization but not for any mistaken idea of protecting mars life. Rather I think that colonization of mars needs to wait until we have mars-earth cyclers in place to help keep colonists safe from radiation and help them gradually adapt to lower gravity levels.
we did the best we could
@@johnqpublic2718 A few potential bacteria contaminating a rover are nearly insignificant compared to what would be released in a manned mission. That's like the difference between shooting an arrow into a city verses nuking a city.
@@F0XD1E a few potential bacteria are all that’s needed to compromise the whole planet. They do sterilize everything beforehand though, but who knows if there were any mistakes…
The sun would be a pretty safe bet, right? We could still send select groups of people to 'colonise' the sun with minimum risk of contamination. 😉
Mars will never be as good as Earth, that is something many enthusiasts ignore. And it will always be easier to fix Earth than turn Mars habitable.
What's an "intusiast"?
@@dionh70 its kind of like an enthusiast, but written incorrectly.
Finally someone sane in the comments. I feel everyone else here is high, and/or brainwashed by Star Trek/NASA promises. We can't even finish exploring Earth yet. Someone else in these comments earlier rebutted me on these grounds, saying our own Oceans are too deep to explore, and that Mars would be easier to explore. Just wow.
@@derrickmcadoo3804 Exactly, it is some kind of atheistic religion where people think they will dominate space and habit planets without any evidences of this being possible yet.
you fail to take into consideration that elon barely supports his own children. if there's life there he'll have no issues wiping it out
'PayPal man bad' Sorry your unqualified brown woman lost bro. Enjoy the next 4 years.
I appreciate your perspective on this, it was a new line of thought for me.
0:35 there raear
Such a ytp moment.
This is just couched Elon Musk hate. See right through it, Cody.
How do we know some of the older landers didn't bring something with them? not trying to poke holes in what you are saying just wondering.
It would be so awesome to get Cody onto an episode of StarTalk. Let’s start petitioning for that!
👇
This reminds me of when Prax came over to Anne Clayborns opinion of keeping mars pristine in Robbinson’s Mars Trilogy
Absolutely. Mars First!
Humans have clearly demonstrated that as a species we are a biosphere-destroying temporary infestation. We really aren't responsible enough to be allowed off our starting space rock.
went looking for this in the comments. Glad to see someone else thinking of that parallel
Immediately what I thought of too.
I ve been fighting to understand how gold appears in meteorits because of the fact its so dificult for a rock to be hurled into space. And because the gold is not held in a matrix when found in meteorites. Dosent that mean they must have come from another oxigen rich environment. Being there has to be fresh water to nutralize the hydrothurmal fluids to make the gold cristalize on its own.
Nothing is going to be the same as putting humans on Mars. The idea that there might be some bacteria that might serve some useful purpose at some future time needs to be proven to prevent humans from exploring Mars. Not the other way around.
Exactly. The probability of finding a useful bacteria * the usefulness of that bacteria < the utility of safeguarding humanity. We should go to mars, to the asteroid belt, to the moons, and all while we safeguard Earth. I believe its our duty to make sure life endures.
Given the human condition, whats the point of contaminating a place for sure, when humanity as a species is so volatile it could self terminate in the next 10 years, taking most higher life forms with it.
@@juslitor why would you call spreading life to Mars "contamination". The universe doesn't assign value to anything... Humans do. We should spread to Mars Because we are so vulnerable here on earth. We should also improve the situation on earth. These are not mutually exclusive tasks and avoiding one will not allow us to do the other better.
Why does it have to he useful? Cody did not mention usefulness in this video
He did, he said it could be used to further human science and may have medical applications.
That seems unreasonably cautious and a touch defeatist. As for the matter on the Columbian exchange, we ought to look at it less as that was lost and more about what was preserved.
Thanks for sharing your well-reasoned opinions, Cody. I love charcoal as much as the next guy, but please don’t shy away from more ‘pure thought pieces’, like this one.
I think y ou're just saying that just because Elon wants to.