You can't start from "scratch" on Mars with respect to mining or industry. Cavemen wearing mammoth pelts won't work on Mars. In order to simply survive people would need high levels of technology. Even the most basic living on Mars would need steel and glass and equipment to machine both.
Making a steel or glass plate requires a lot of industrial capability and a capable supply chain to say nothing of raw materials. Both are cheap on Earth because we've built that infrastructure over the past two hundred years. That infrastructure was relatively easy to construct because the workers could wear overalls and hard hats rather than space suits. Taking a lunch break doesn't mean disrobing and piling into a pressure vessel.
Go camping for a weekend in the desert or in the snow sometime. Consider all the crap you need to take with you to not die of exposure or thirst. In those environments where you've got air for free and usually water if you know where to look, you've still got a fair bit of equipment. If you forget anything or lose it you could end up seriously injured or even dead. That's somewhere that's lousy with breathable atmosphere, protection from most ionizing solar radiation, and an average temperature high enough your lungs won't freeze.
Surviving inhospitable environments on Earth requires effort and technology. Surviving outside of Earth is several orders of magnitude more difficult. Thriving outside of Earth is more orders of magnitude beyond mere survival.
Colonization efforts off Earth can't be gradual. There is a baseline infrastructure necessary for people to live. There are no readily available resources on Mars that exist like they do on Earth. There's no safe places for people on the planet.
Everything people need to survive needs to be brought from Earth. Every aspect of life on Mars needs to be bootstrapped from absolutely nothing. There's no working models for any of that on Earth. That means it all needs to be designed, built, tested, and iterated upon before a single person boards a SpaceX Starship.
Even with Elon Musk's billions that is a vast expense. Even if it was all built, it's billions spent to send people to Mars to simply not die in case a nuclear war wiped out Earth.
It's not pessimistic to point this out, it's realistic. Dreaming about colonizing Mars and hand waving away every practical consideration is just fruitless fantasizing. It's not a plan. It doesn't actually move towards a colony anywhere.
The opportunity cost is billions of dollars and a lot of engineering effort not spent on solutions to more immediate problems that might benefit more people.
Musk talking about colonizing Mars is 90% PR for SpaceX and 10% ego stroking. If SpaceX could build a Starship a week to send people to Mars it would be Musk's friends and billionaires and millionaires. I doubt there's more than a car load of people that work at SpaceX that would be able to afford a Mars ticket. I can't fawn breathlessly over a billionaire describing his fantasy of leaving all us poors to rot on a planet his fellow billionaires ruined.
I am not pessimistic, I am a scientist that just read the literature. We have now extinction levels 1000-10000 higher than background, this more than previous mass extinctions and expected to go 10 fold worst in the next decades. Moreover we are just a few years to enter a truly non linear regime in the Earth climate dynamics. These are our life support systems on earth and they are about to fall. Swift global action on these points is therefore required for our short term survival.
These people propose solutions for the wealthy. They are BTW ruining my dream of seeing more stars than satellites in the sky. (I’m a material scientist, coatings won’t work)
Therefore I heavily disagree with you: short term survival requires protecting our life support systems here on earth, namely climate and biodiversity (the Earth-System).
I am also very disappointed that people use the word “colonisation” so often, a brief look at history support my doubts.
I don’t mind exploring the solar system when the above issues are fixed, but this has to be done in a scientific way, I.e. exploration, not for a blind colonialist purpose.
I see. Alright, I'll let you continue whatever it is you think you're doing. A lot of what you said is opinion and a lot of scientists would disagree with your assertions (which are in my eyes pessimistic)
I do believe in this goal though as do others, you should respect other people's dreams, especially when it doesn't detract from yours.
I didn't say this was for short-term survival. This is for long-term survival, we still need to and we are tackling our own planet. Elon himself has disrupted many industries that were contributing to the destruction of this planet (auto, oil & gas)
If you want to help the planet, go help it, don't neg others.
> The Starlink constellation, so far, is not respectful to people who want a clear sky for instance.
How do the feelings of a few astronomers trump connecting the rest of the world to the internet?
You're blowing things way out of proportion as well. You fell for all the aggressive attack campaigns. I've seen all the articles you've read, it's not a real issue.
> I just think it has to be framed in a more global and long term context.
What message from SpaceX did you take issue with exactly? I don't think anyone is suggesting we'll all be living on Mars in a few years.
Making a steel or glass plate requires a lot of industrial capability and a capable supply chain to say nothing of raw materials. Both are cheap on Earth because we've built that infrastructure over the past two hundred years. That infrastructure was relatively easy to construct because the workers could wear overalls and hard hats rather than space suits. Taking a lunch break doesn't mean disrobing and piling into a pressure vessel.
Go camping for a weekend in the desert or in the snow sometime. Consider all the crap you need to take with you to not die of exposure or thirst. In those environments where you've got air for free and usually water if you know where to look, you've still got a fair bit of equipment. If you forget anything or lose it you could end up seriously injured or even dead. That's somewhere that's lousy with breathable atmosphere, protection from most ionizing solar radiation, and an average temperature high enough your lungs won't freeze.
Surviving inhospitable environments on Earth requires effort and technology. Surviving outside of Earth is several orders of magnitude more difficult. Thriving outside of Earth is more orders of magnitude beyond mere survival.