I always find these types of comments funny. I cannot think of any other reason on why a person would think that going to mars is a better option than lack of research on the planet and its habitability.
On top of that, going to Mars isn't going to magically solve the problems. As I've said earlier in some past comment, going to Mars is just as good as moving the goalpost. What we have to do is change what we're currently doing to planet Earth rather that going someplace else and thinking that we've passed all the problems that are in our thinking.
I'm all for space exploration, but saying "I'm going to Mars to run from any problems" is just laughable in my opinion.
If you had to terraform a planet, which one would you choose?
Option 1: a bombed-out Earth with runaway global warming, acidic oceans, the end result of mass extinctions where there's dramatically less species diversity and some planet-wide ecologies have utterly collapsed.
Option 2: Mars.
I would at least hope the answer is obvious. No matter how much we trash Earth, it's still vastly more habitable than Mars or any other planet or moon in this solar system. The human species might not survive what we do to it, but parking a small repository of humans in orbit or on the Moon that would be capable of repopulation is still easily the winning species-survival strategy over terraforming Mars. (Though I suspect it's probably even better to keep that repository someplace on Earth.)
Yes, that's what I meant when I said I'm all for space exploration. But, most of the reasons to leave the planet Earth from us general public have been in the line of "I'm fed up with all this and that's why I have to go to the Mars to start anew" i.e. mostly running away from the problems or fed up of the system etc.
That being said, in my opinion, we should definitely pay more attention to saving this planet rather than finding new ones and doing the same thing all over again.
I sincerely think we do pay more attention to this planet than Mars, e.g. many people advocating mars are also involved in electric cars and solar energy.
Yeah, I agree. Mars is so utterly inhospitable that even the worst apocalypses the earth has ever seen (since it has cooled anyway) leave it orders of magnitude more hospitable. Going to mars and learning how to live there is certainly valuable, but it is definitely not a solution to earth's environmental problems.
It's not about what's better for me. It's about avoiding global extinction events and not keeping all our eggs in one basket. it's also about sacrifice in order to push the envelope and to rekindle The drive for exploration and discovery. it's about escaping before it is made impossible by people in this thread arguing that we should be punished for even trying.
> It's about avoiding global extinction events and not keeping all our eggs in one basket.
That's what I meant when I said "I'm all for space exploration".
> it's also about sacrifice in order to push the envelope and to rekindle The drive for exploration and discovery which made Western civilization great.
That "I'm all for space exploration" also covers this point as well. I'm not against space exploration and habitation. What I'm saying is we should definitely pay more attention to this planet because it is still possible to save this planet. Mars has so many obstacles that as one other comment said, Antarctic is more habitable than Mars. What I'm against is people who say "I'm off to Mars the first time tickets get available" to avoid current Earth problems (may it be their personal lives or the whole system). Expecting different things in context of these problems is just naive at best as these are human thinking problems which cannot be solved with reaching different planet i.e moving the goalpost.
Your first comment came off like that. If my interpretation was wrong then I'm sorry.
