November 18, 2024 • 38 mins
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/EntropyRising?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink
In this episode of Entropy Rising, we explore two of the most ambitious ideas in humanity’s journey beyond Earth: asteroid mining and terraforming Mars. Could we truly mine asteroids to fuel technological advancements, free from Earth's environmental constraints? And if so, could these resources help us turn Mars into a habitable world? Join us as we dive into the potential methods, benefits, and mind-bending challenges of mining the stars and reshaping the Red Planet. From capturing asteroids in Earth's orbit to introducing atmospheres on Mars, we break down the science, ethics, and economics behind these futuristic visions. Tune in to imagine what life beyond Earth could look like—and whether we’re ready to make these big ideas a reality.
Catch new episodes of Entropy Rising every other week and join the conversation as we chart humanity’s path toward the final frontier!
Website: https://www.entropy-rising.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jacob (00:00):
I think let's go all out instead of taking
(00:02):
lasers and shining them onthe surface to release the
oxygen that way, let's grabsomething like Ganymede or
one of the Jovian moons andjust throw them into Mars.
I like the way you thinkHello and welcome to Entropy
(00:25):
Rising, where we talkabout science and futurism.
I am your host, Jacob, and Iam here with my co host, Lucas.
Lucas, how are you doing today?
I'm doing great, Jake.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing great.
I'm really interested to jumpinto all these topics we've
got picked out for today.
So what do you saywe hop right into it?
Yeah, let's get into it.
I know you were excitedto talk about asteroid mining
Lucas (00:46):
yes.
So asteroid mining, , super coolconcepts because on earth we are
limited by our landscape, right?
We're limited by the amount ofpollution that we create and
how much our world can handle.
We're limited by, the peoplethat are willing to work there.
And do those jobs and then justthe raw resources that we have.
Some of the upsides of,,asteroid mining is that we're
(01:09):
able to remove all the issuesof pollution, , that are
affecting our planet, right?
We don't have to dump any ofthe dangerous chemicals or
any of the oils, , residualsor anything like that
into our environment.
We can fly up and toasteroids, if we can stop
them from spinning and pullthem into our earth's orbit.
We can mine thempretty efficiently.
Jacob (01:29):
You want to pull them into Earth's orbit to mine them?
Yes.
That's interesting.
That's not how I envisioned it.
Really?
Yeah.
Lucas (01:34):
How did you envision
Jacob (01:35):
it?
I figured you would set up asystem where you send probes out
to these asteroids, somewhereout in the asteroid belt,
where they can mine and processthem down to a reasonable extent
and then send the raw materialsback toward Earth through maybe
a gravity assisted trajectory.
So you just got thisconstant supply of raw
materials being sentthroughout the solar system.
Lucas (01:54):
That would be excellent.
And that could be achievable.
I was thinking more like Let'ssay in 30 years, we decided to
mine our first asteroid, right?
How would we do itfor the first time?
So I feel like pulling itsomewhere where we can get it to
stop spinning and start rotatingour planet over, a launch pad
(02:15):
or somewhere so that we can getthe most efficiency, because
it's not going to be cheap.
It's going to beincredibly expensive.
To send our ships up there tosend all the materials up there.
But I think that,, if companieswere to finally set course
for asteroid mining, thatwould better advance our
in orbit infrastructure.
Jacob (02:33):
Absolutely.
And I do think a lot of theseresources would be used in
orbit more than on earth becauseit's still quite expensive
to get these materialsdown a gravity well safely.
It's cheaper than gettingthem up the gravity well,
there are costs thattakes to deorbit stuff.
Lucas (02:49):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
you either have to, usethrusters to push it in or you
can, Remove mass or add massto get it to steady itself.
Jacob (02:58):
My kind of idea would be maybe design some type
of rail gun system that canfire retrograde to Earth's
orbit to really kill a lotof that velocity and then
use some sort of disposableone time use capsule.
there's a lot of, carbonasteroids out there, so you
could potentially make a,an ablative heat shield with
that carbonous material.
Fire it, retrogradeto Earth's orbit.
(03:20):
It's to kill a lot of itsvelocity and just have
that heat shield protectedas it falls to earth and,
maybe some parachutes.
Lucas (03:28):
that is a cool concept.
it's we're, you're, we'retalking about small asteroids
at that point, becausetrying to pull something out
of orbit and pull it into.
So our atmosphere is, thatwould be incredibly dangerous.
Yeah.
for
Jacob (03:41):
clarity, I don't think you'd be doing this asteroids.
I think you would do as muchprocessing of that material
as possible in space.
You would want it to be as pureas possible because you don't
want to pay that much money.
to send rocks down.
You want to send rare materials,platinum, gold, iridium, you're
not wanting to send rocks.
So you're going to want to doas much processing as possible.
(04:01):
Absolutely.
And for that, I think wecould capture a lot of these
asteroids in either the L2 orL3 Lagrange point between the
moon and earth, which for thosewho don't know Lagrange point
is essentially a point in anorbit where the gravitational
pull of two bodies cancel out.
So it's a stable.
point in an orbit where thingsaren't moving around a lot.
So every two bodies willhave Lagrange points there's
(04:22):
some between earth andmoon and earth and sun.
So the earth moon Lagrangepoints make ideal places to
collect resources like thisfor processing and then maybe
rail gun them toward the earth.
Lucas (04:32):
Yeah.
I mean that, that wouldbe definitely, awesome.
really the reason why I wasfocusing on just getting
essentially just one asteroidat first to pull into our
orbit though, to be ableto mine at the level that
we're at is because, Readingabout it and doing a little
bit of research into them.
(04:53):
There are multiple asteroidsin our asteroid belt
that have enough iron.
They're like 98 percent ironto sustain us at our current
use of that material fora million years or more.
Jacob (05:04):
It's true.
I don't know if it wouldbe economically viable
to fund a mission likethat for iron though.
I think more likely you're goingto see a mission like that.
A mission get funded tocapture rare materials like
platinum group elements.
But as a side effect of that,especially if you capture an
asteroid, especially in yourearth asteroid, and you bring
it into a stable orbit around,earth, maybe you'll do that.
(05:28):
You'll extract all the preciousminerals to ship back to
earth, but then you'll justleave this huge iron asteroid
around, maybe in one of thoseLagrange points, and that'll
be really helpful for building,orbital infrastructure.
Yeah.
Lucas (05:41):
That's a great point, actually.
yeah.
And I definitely agree withyou on the point that you
made before as well, where,we probably wouldn't do it for
iron, but we would probablydo it for, the rare materials
that we use for creatingbatteries, for example,
Jacob (05:54):
cobalt, for example, is very rare on earth.
Lucas (05:56):
Yes.
Yeah.
so doing stuff like that,but the thing is with
what, astronomers have beenidentifying on asteroids out
there is that there are certainasteroids that have, more than
we could ever use of gold, ofcobalt, of platinum, right?
We just have to be able to getto them and bring them back
Jacob (06:16):
more than we can ever use.
Sounds like a challenge.
I've got some ideas.
Dyson swarm.
Here we come.
at our current
Lucas (06:29):
At the current way that we are functioning.
Jacob (06:31):
So there is also something you have to be really
careful about when you'rethinking about gathering these
types of resources though,because you talk about there
being more than we could everuse at our current scale.
But you also have to fundthe mission to go and get
these materials, right?
So whenever you are in thefunding phase of this mission,
you have to think, are wegoing to bring back so much
material that we crash theeconomy on this material and
(06:54):
therefore the, this wholemission is not worth it because
you don't want to go and get,billions and billions of tons
of platinum, even if you could,which I don't think you could.
but let's say you magicallycould get all the platinum
you want in space.
You really wouldn't wantto do that because then
it would be worthless.
So it's actually inyour best interest to
grab a limited amount.
And bring it in.
So I think there isgoing to be a natural
(07:14):
equilibrium that we reach of.
We can only import so much ofthese materials from space to
earth until the price of thesematerials are dropping too much
to be worth getting anymore.
Lucas (07:27):
So now I understand that affects both, if the
government were to do it orif a private company were to
do it, either way, that's bad.
but let's say that we'reworking towards a goal.
And we need those raw materialsand we have a plan for
those raw materials, right?
But we need a stockpile of themnow For a private company at
(07:47):
this point asteroid mining wouldnot make sense with the current
technology that we have it wouldbe Way more expensive going
up there getting the materialsand bringing them back than
you would make from doing that
Jacob (07:57):
Yeah, it'd be cheaper to mine them on earth right?
Lucas (07:59):
Yes but let's say that We needed those materials
for a larger project.
Like we were preparing tocreate a Dyson swarm and
we needed the batteries.
We needed the cobaltto be able to do that.
Do you think that itwould be worth it right
for our government toessentially Pull funding
(08:22):
to go and do such a thing.
leaving out private companiesand things like that.
Jacob (08:27):
I think building a Dyson swarm or something like that is
such a huge undertaking that noone entity is going to take it.
I,
Lucas (08:34):
this would be assuming, I'm sorry, I should clarify.
Cause if we're at the point towhere we've already maximized
our power consumption on earth,and we are a United government
body, do you think that itwould be more feasible then
still assuming that we onlyhave basic rocket thruster
propulsion to get off of earth?
Do you think that itwould still be a feasible
(08:55):
idea to essentially noteven allocate money?
Because if we're onegovernment allocate manpower
to do what doing to buildingthe infrastructure to mine?
Asteroids like cobalt andbringing in those large amounts,
and not introducing it into theeconomy, but into a stockpile.
Jacob (09:13):
if you want to build anything in space,
it makes sense to grabthose materials in space.
So if you're doing some largeorbital project or solar
project, then, always, it'sgoing to make sense to go and
mine those materials, in outerspace, because trying to get
any raw materials up a gravitywell, it's just not economical
in any way, shape, or form.
So it makes sense to getthem from an asteroid, which
doesn't have very much gravity.
(09:34):
The real question is, doesit make sense to bring
them down to gravity well?
and I think it can, in a way.
So if we had some large projecton Earth, for example, and we
needed a ton of rare materials,like maybe, for example,
potentially, something we'refacing right now is trying to
build gridscale energy storage.
So would it make senseAssuming we have some orbital
(09:58):
infrastructure in place tomine those materials in outer
space and bring them to Earth.
I think it could.
I think it could make sense.
I think the economics couldalign for that under very
specific circumstances.
but I do think that ingeneral,, it's going to
be cheaper to source thosematerials from earth.
But that could change becauseI could also, especially
(10:19):
with the climate crisis we'refacing, I could see mining
practices becoming more and morestrictly regulated, which makes
them more and more expensiveto do and space travel is
getting cheaper and cheaper.
So we might eventually hita tipping point where it's
feasible to get materialfrom space to bring it back
to earth to do building
Lucas (10:37):
right now but space travel can only get so cheap
right at the point that weare now like the way for us
to get up into space it westill Like we can't do much
more to reduce the amount offuel that we're not really
using to get into space so Ijust, I find it hard to believe
that a singular company woulddo the first bit of asteroid
(11:00):
mining and, instead of itbeing like a government entity.
Now talking about the metal thatwe would have in the building
of large infrastructure and our.
Orbital areas.
if we were to bring those metalsto, build the infrastructure
in our orbit, do you thinkthat would affect earth's
economy at that point?
Ooh, that's a good one.
Jacob (11:21):
potentially no, I don't think so.
I think the orbital economy andthe earth's economy would be.
Two separate entities?
I think they'd be related andconnected in some ways, but
for the most part I think theywould be two separate entities.
I believe so as well.
So yeah, you might end up witha situation where, materials
that are very expensive onearth are very cheap in space.
(11:42):
And I think only the mostexpensive materials would be
transferred between those two,whether that's highly processed
raw materials, stuff likepure platinum, gold, platinum
group elements like that, or,potentially also technology,
I could see being somethingthat's worth going up and
down a gravity well for, and,organics too, Earth is the only
(12:02):
place you can get, Organics.
Yeah.
So if you want to grow plantsin space and you need live
soil, because soil is not a deadthing, like some people think
it is, you're going to have tobring that up from earth, which
is funny, one of the few thingsthat might be worth bringing
up a gravity well is dirt.
Lucas (12:21):
Yeah.
Of course, there are waysthat you can revitalize soil,
but like you were saying,once those cultures are used
up, the organisms that makethat living, once they're
used up, then you will haveto get more soil up there.
Jacob (12:37):
Yeah, or at least you'll have to get a starter
set of soil up there tokick start up your culture.
biospheres, assuming youwant to grow food and space
while you're there too.
But trade you three barsof gold for a bag of dirt.
Yeah.
Well, especially if you haveto ship it up at gravity.
Well, , it might be afair exchange rate because
getting three bars of golddown a gravity well versus.
Um,
Lucas (12:59):
really another interesting topic that I
feel like Asteroid Miningwould tie in to would be
allowing for us to transportresources from the asteroid
to a planet that is not Earth.
Jacob (13:16):
Okay.
Lucas (13:16):
So I'm talking about like reforming atmospheres,
terraforming different planets.
Okay.
Jacob (13:22):
So you want to talk about terraforming Mars now?
Lucas (13:24):
yeah, Mars, or any other planet really that we
would decide to do so on.
Yeah,
Jacob (13:28):
absolutely.
Cause you would need toget a lot of material
to those planets.
or strip away materialdepending on the planet.
But focusing on Mars, youwould need to get a lot of
material to that planet.
Yeah,
Lucas (13:37):
absolutely.
first talking about Just theamount of gas that we would
need, there's a lot of frozennitrogen on, comets and,
asteroids, we could use thatessentially, we could pull it
from asteroids, or we couldpull it from moons, right?
And send that to create thatnitrogen rich, atmosphere
that we need as a baseto then start introducing
(13:58):
oxygen to make it breathable.
Jacob (13:59):
Absolutely.
if you're talking about Marsspecifically, if I wanted to
build an atmosphere on Mars,the first thing I would do.
Is if you can heat up theplanet and melt all of the
ice caps, you'll get a lotof carbon dioxide and water
vapor in the atmosphere,and you'll get an atmosphere
that's about 7 percent asthick as Earth's atmosphere.
So not incredible, but it'sthicker than it is now.
(14:21):
You could do this withoutmelting the ice, but melting the
ice makes this more efficient.
Once you have a thickeratmosphere on Mars, take some
comets, put them in orbitaround Mars, where they dip
into the atmosphere on thelower part of their orbit.
And each time they dip intothe atmosphere, they're
going to boil off moreof that frozen nitrogen,
carbon dioxide, and water.
And as they keep going throughthe atmosphere, they'll
(14:43):
keep boiling off more andmore of these gases, and
losing them to the planet.
Do that with enough asteroids,and you can build yourself
a nice little atmosphere.
Lucas (14:50):
Yeah, absolutely.
with the assumption that youalready have some kind of
either, man made force fieldor we are able to somehow
reignite the core of Marsto give us a magnetic field.
there's two, there's acouple ways to do that.
Yes, but, before wetouch on that, you said
something interestingabout melting the ice caps.
Of course, that would besomething that we would want to
do because we want liquid water.
(15:11):
Yeah.
But why not just melt theentire surface of Mars?
Yes.
Like the regolith?
Yes.
because it's mostly madeup of iron oxides, right?
So if we melt it, we releaseoxygen into the atmosphere.
Jacob (15:22):
That is absolutely one way we could go about
getting oxygen onto Mars.
And that's also goingto be really nice.
Cause it gets rid of a lot ofthe iron oxides in the regolith
that we don't want to deal with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We could absolutely do that.
Lucas (15:32):
So if we could, just touching back on, using some
of the solar lasers that we'reusing to power our ships.
Just face them towards Marsand just start burning up
the entirety of the surface.
Jacob (15:45):
Yeah, you can do that.
my, my main concern wouldbe doing it like that
is when do you want tocolonize this planet?
Because you're going to bewaiting for a while for it
to cool down if you do that.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Non discriminatory,glassing the surface.
An alternative.
Would be if you're alreadygoing to be building a society
on Mars, potentially you couldjust set up an industry that
(16:06):
gathers up regolith Melts itdown takes the iron uses that
iron for construction andjust releases all the gaseous
products into the atmospherebasically you can be the
dirtiest most polluting companyon Mars and we welcome that
release all of your gases to theatmosphere, that's what we want.
Okay, and in that way becausewith your method You can't
(16:28):
have people living on theplanet while that's happening.
Lucas (16:31):
No, this would be strictly terraforming, right?
Because colonizing forme is, you're going
down onto the planet.
you're building a smallsettlement with, special
infrastructure, eitherunderground or above ground,
with, special like domebuildings and granaries.
And then that, that,that's how you're living.
as far as terraforming aftercolonizing, of course your
(16:53):
method would be better.
Yeah.
Jacob (16:54):
But If you want to get your method, I think let's
go all out instead of takinglasers and shining them on
the surface to release theoxygen that way, let's grab
something like Ganymede orone of the Jovian moons and
just throw them into Mars.
I like the way you think.
So if you do this, not only areyou introducing all the water
gases and all that, I mean, Uh,Europa alone has more, I think,
(17:17):
it's predicted it might havemore volume water than Earth.
Lucas (17:19):
Yeah.
Jacob (17:20):
So if you throw that into Mars, you're going to
get a lot of water onto Mars.
But in addition, the energyof that impact is going to
liquefy the whole planet.
Lucas (17:28):
Yeah, it'll reignite the core.
Jacob (17:29):
You're adding mass to the planet.
So you're adding, getting more
Lucas (17:31):
gravity.
Jacob (17:32):
And, if you angle it just right, Because a lot of
theories behind our own moonis that it was created when
a planet collided with Earth.
So you could potentiallyangle it just right and
capture some of thatmaterial in orbit of Mars
and make an artificial moon.
Or, I guess it's not reallyartificial at that point.
Lucas (17:49):
Yeah, no, that's, it's man made, but
it's not artificial.
Because there's a lot of
Jacob (17:53):
benefits to having a moon.
Lucas (17:55):
That, that, that would be, a best case and
worst case in a lot of,in a lot of situations.
You're not
Jacob (17:59):
colonizing that planet for a while after that.
no,
Lucas (18:01):
like we're talking 40, 50 generations.
You start thinkingabout it, you know?
Yeah, it's not longer, yeah.
But that of course would bebest case as far as creating
a larger planet for us thatwe have higher gravity because
realistically going and livingon Mars, we could terraform
it all we want, but if thegravity is the way that it
is, then we're not going to beable to live there full time.
Jacob (18:21):
we don't know that really yet, but that's the issue.
We don't know.
We don't know how much gravitywe need to be healthy, right?
It could be thatMars was fine, but.
It could be that it'snot, we just don't know.
Okay.
Lucas (18:33):
that's fair.
We
Jacob (18:34):
know no gravity isn't doable.
We need some gravity,but we don't have any
experiments showing peopleliving in low gravity.
Lucas (18:41):
Okay.
That's a, that's interesting.
Actually, I guess it allhas just been speculation
that I've read into, Aboutwhat will happen because
in no gravity, You get thelower bone density and.
the issues with your heightand then when you come
back, your spine compressesand yeah, no, it's bad.
Jacob (18:57):
And it's likely low gravity.
You'll have those issues too,but we just don't know how much
gravity we need to be healthy.
okay.
But if you want to, if youwant to terraform Mars a
little less destructively, Iwas thinking about this too.
You could potentially.
Drill down into thecore of the planet.
And if you have some type ofsolar collecting system on
our sun, like a Dyson swarm,you don't even need a whole
(19:17):
Dyson swarm, you could havethe beginning baby stages
of a Dyson swarm, 1 percentof a Dyson swarm, even with
1 percent of a Dyson swarm.
If you could direct all ofthat energy into Mars's core,
it would only take 18 minutesto reliquify the core of Mars.
Lucas (19:34):
Wow.
Jacob (19:34):
Yeah.
and you don't want to doit in 18 minutes, that'd be
horrible, but realistically,even with 01 percent of a
Dyson swarm, you could extractthe energy to start heating
up the core of the planet andkick off that magnetic field.
Wow.
Which, the magnetic fieldisn't even as important
as you might think it is.
Lucas (19:50):
yeah, you could build artificial, blockers
of solar radiation.
Yeah,
Jacob (19:54):
or you could surround the planet in superconducting coils
and generate your own magneticfield, and as a byproduct, doing
that would heat up the planet,almost like wireless charging.
So you could generatea magnetic field.
And heat up the planetat the same time.
Lucas (20:08):
Now that how much would it heat up the planet?
Because are we talking as it'screating this magnetic field, we
would have to lower the magneticfield at certain points and not
heat the planet up too much.
Jacob (20:18):
eventually you would, but that would be the goal, right?
You've heated up thecore of the planet enough
that it's generatingits own magnetic field.
Of course.
Yeah.
But the magnetic field is notas important as, some people
Would lead you to believe youcould 100 percent colonize
Mars without a magnetic field.
Lucas (20:34):
You can colonize it, right?
But you could terraform it.
You could terraform itwithout a magnetic field.
Jacob (20:39):
So you will lose atmosphere over time due to
the atmosphere leaking awaybecause it's not protected
by the magnetic field.
But we're talking about onthe scale of millennia, if you
were to somehow establish anearthlike atmosphere on Mars,
And just not touch it, noteven replenish it, it could
potentially take over a millionyears for that planet or for
(21:00):
that atmosphere to get to thepoint of being inhabitable.
Really?
Lucas (21:04):
Take a million
Jacob (21:05):
years to strip the atmosphere?
If not longer.
It takes a long time tostrip the atmosphere.
Especially for Mars, it's alittle further away than Earth.
Lucas (21:10):
So why is it always portrayed as such a big
issue when it comes toterraforming that we need
to have a protective barrieragainst the sun's solar wind?
Jacob (21:21):
it is nice, especially because without a
magnetic field, you're moresusceptible to solar storms.
which if you get hit by like acoronal mass ejection without a
magnetic field, you're in a lotmore trouble than like on earth.
So there are definite benefitsand it does reduce the chance
of cancer, but an atmospheredoes a great job of that too.
And if you wanted an earthlike atmosphere on Mars,
(21:42):
you're by definition, goingto need a thicker atmosphere
because of the lower gravity.
So you've got more airanyways, blocking radiation.
So radiation probablywouldn't be an issue.
It's just, you wouldneed to replenish that
atmosphere over time.
Thank you.
Lucas (21:56):
Okay, which I mean, I guess we do a pretty good job
of doing here on earth already.
Jacob (22:00):
Yeah.
and also if you can build theatmosphere in the first place,
you probably have the technologyto top it off from time to time.
Lucas (22:06):
Yeah.
It's just, it's so interestingto think that, that we don't
need that, magnetic blanketessentially protecting us.
Jacob (22:16):
And also if you've gotten this type of technology, it
might just be easier to throw upan artificial magnetic blanket.
blocker and magnetic shieldand, the Lagrange point
between the sun and Mars andjust artificially block it.
Lucas (22:28):
Yeah.
yeah, I don't know.
I, that is that, that,that is crazy to wrap my
head around my entire life.
I've just thought that, assoon as there's no magnetic
field around the planetand the solar winds hit,
it just strips it off.
Like you're blowingsand off of a marble.
Jacob (22:45):
It takes a very long time to strip the
atmosphere off of a planet.
Now, without a magneticfield, you will lose lighter
elements, , faster, whichhappens on Earth, too.
But it'll happen even fasteron Mars without a magnetic
field, especially coupledwith its lower gravity.
So there are huge benefits tohaving one, let's be clear,
we could get by without it.
Lucas (23:03):
Okay.
then, with assuming that, andwe don't have to restore that,
we can leave the core cold.
We can go and we cancolonize and start
terraforming, right now.
What are our first stepswhen we get onto the planet?
So thinking about it, we need toestablish the colonies, right?
We need to make surethat, it's safe.
(23:23):
So we send.
a team of 150, of thebrightest people to go and
start colonizing Mars, right?
And those people needto build infrastructure.
They need to build, the properencampments for themselves.
Do you think it wouldbe better to build above
ground or below ground?
Oh yeah.
Below
Jacob (23:39):
ground.
No question.
with that many people livingon the surface of Mars,
I think you're exposed tosomething like, three or 4%.
or three or four millisieverts,per year or something like that.
I know it's 10 timesthe radiation you're
exposed to on Earth.
And if I'm not mistaken,it increases your chance
of cancer over a 20 yearperiod by almost like 10%.
Which when you have a populationof 150, you're talking about
(24:02):
15 people getting cancerover a 20 year period that
wouldn't have otherwise gottenit for a 20 year mission.
It's a pretty significant risk.
So I think any type ofMars mission is going to
have to live underground.
Lucas (24:14):
then I think that a 20 year mission
would be generous then.
because let's think aboutthe crew of submarines.
Those people, they goout on for sometimes the
longest tour is there'll besix years on a submarine.
They have to be psych evaluatedand usually, they have to spend
a lot of time after those tours.
they can't go back on toduty for a long time if ever.
(24:37):
Let's do a submarine.
Jacob (24:38):
Let me be clear.
They can still go on tothe surface of the planet.
They just don't wantto be on the surface of
the planet at all times.
So it's okay to havesome exposure to that.
It's just, you don't wantto be exposed to that level
of radiation constantly.
Lucas (24:51):
But the thing is, even with that, but the other
harshness that Mars has, likeit's dust storms that can last
weeks or months at a time.
and then they're confinedto these small spaces.
It's really what I'm wonderingis how long realistically do
you think that these peoplecould spend on mission on Mars?
Cause I'm thinking thatit's max eight years.
Jacob (25:12):
Max eight years.
Yeah.
it's going to bepsychologically crazy.
and there's also the wholeidea of just being that
isolated from humanity.
What that does to a person.
We don't know.
no one's been that far before.
assuming we can get themback, then yeah, we might
need to rotate people out.
I could see that being aplausible condition, but if you
want to settle the planet, thenpeople need to be able to live
(25:35):
their whole lives on there.
Lucas (25:35):
Yeah.
So are you thinkingthat we would settle
before we terraformed?
Jacob (25:41):
I think so.
I think we'll try to get sometype of presence on an extra
planet as well before we havethe technology to terraform.
Okay.
Lucas (25:47):
So that's assuming that people are coming to Mars.
To live their lives thereand hopefully raise other
generations on that planet.
Okay.
So now the people of thecolonies, they've flourished
and we've made some kind ofinfrastructure to where these
people can come and theyfeel like they can settle.
You were talking about buildinginfrastructure factories that
(26:09):
pump out, greenhouse gasesto help restore atmosphere or
create an atmosphere in Mars.
What are they producing andwho are they producing it for?
Jacob (26:17):
So you could potentially scoop up that regolith, which
is very rich in iron and use itto manufacture iron, which would
be used to build the colony,any infrastructure you need.
Now, let's be very clear.
That would 100 percentonly be used on Mars.
It's just not cost effectiveto ship that up the gravity.
Well, right.
It just doesn't make sense,especially when we have a ton
of iron in the solar system.
(26:38):
any excuse you can find,you're going to want to pump
gas into that atmosphereon an incredible scale.
to the point you might even,if you have the technology,
try to design, just littleprobes that'll go and self
replicate throughout the planet.
Just scoop up regolith andjust melt it for no reason.
Just literally scoop it up,melt it in iron, release
(26:59):
those gases, and thenmove on to the next one.
because you really, you want topollute that planet as much as
you can, as crazy as it sounds.
Lucas (27:05):
Yeah.
And, but do you feellike that would even come
close to being enough?
Jacob (27:10):
No, that would take, you would need so many
people on the planet toactually make that feasible.
no, I don't thinkthat would happen.
You're talking aboutthousands of years at
that rate, if not longer.
Exactly.
And that's factoring inaccelerating technology.
Lucas (27:24):
So then, the, what you were talking about before where
we would have asteroids passingover, And around the planet,
dropping off their gases andresources, to its atmosphere.
does that seem likesomething that would be
safe while we had peoplealso trying colonize Mars?
Jacob (27:41):
I think so.
I think we can makethat very safe.
you would try to not have thesein an orbit where they directly
pass over a colony or overwhere people are living, but
presumably it'd be reasonablysafe you would probably ship
these asteroids from Theasteroid belt, or really you
would want to do comments.
You would get themfrom the deeper parts
of the solar system.
(28:02):
Chances are when you launchedthem toward the planet for
safety, you would not launchthem on an intercept course.
You would launch themon a course where they
would miss the planet.
That way you could catchthem once they became closer
to Mars and deceleratethem into an orbit.
That way, if you mess up,they don't slam into the
planet and kill everybody.
Lucas (28:18):
Yeah.
It just sounds like a, , riskything for the colonists and,
settlers who would want togo and live on the planet.
Jacob (28:24):
how, Incredibly unlucky would it be to manage
to screw up catching anasteroid and have it land
exactly on one of the fewcolonies on the whole planet.
that's fairly unlikelyin and of itself.
Lucas (28:36):
Yeah, but the issue with it hitting let's say that it
didn't hit the colony But ithit the planet it hit Mars.
It would launch tiny meteorsback up into space because
of its lower gravity Butit would still be enough
gravity for it to pull themback in eventually, right?
So now you're talking about ithit on the other side of the
planet but now you have bigand small chunks of regolith
(29:00):
coming back down and To crushyou and your loved ones.
Jacob (29:03):
hopefully you're living underground, right?
yeah, I guess
Lucas (29:05):
but when we get to settling I feel like living
underground like you can hirepeople whose passion it is to
be able to go out there andcolonize a place, but getting
people to come and settleis another option, right?
Jacob (29:18):
Yeah, you're going to need some type of protection
for that radiation regardless,which is most likely going
to be living underground.
If it's not living underground,it's going to be really
thick shielding on whatevermaterial you're using anyways.
unless you're throwingcomets at this planet that
are planet killers, then Idon't think it's a huge risk.
if you have, as long as you'redoing smaller comets and smaller
(29:39):
things, I think you'd be fine.
Lucas (29:43):
have you ever read the, the Red Mars,
Green Mars, Blue Mars?
I have, yeah.
the way that they talk aboutit, with using the huge bubble,
late like civilizations,with the, would you think
that would be a feasible way?
Jacob (29:55):
I don't know off the top of my head that part.
I do know the Red Mars book,which is the one that I read.
A lot of the ideas I'm talkingabout come from that, because
they have to live undergroundwhen they first colonized.
And they do introduce a lotof moisture to the planet via
atmospheric breaking of comets.
Lucas (30:11):
but when they start moving forward into starting
to melt the ice to makeblue Mars, they are able to,
build, those small pockets ofcities that are essentially in
bubbles, but they're massive,but they're small on the
scale of the planet, right?
But they use that.
They never go into detailabout what they're made out
of or how they regulate.
(30:32):
But do you think.
Something like that beingfeasible, I don't think it would
be just because there's nothing,there's no atmosphere still.
So something comes out ofspace, it just kills everybody.
Jacob (30:41):
Absolutely.
That seems like waytoo big of a risk.
That's the same thingwith trying to build
like domes on the moon.
It just, you don't wantone big failure point to
kill that many people.
I think you reallyneed isolated habitats.
Lucas (30:54):
So realistically, it would all have
to be underground.
It would just be, andhow do you attract
people to want to settle?
There's some crazy people outthere who would want to, but
are there enough crazy people?
Jacob (31:04):
Didn't they did a while back, someone put out
an ad asking for people totake a one way trip to Mars,
trying to build a crew.
I think they were trying to findlike a hundred people to do it.
And Tens of thousandssigned up for it.
Lucas (31:16):
But do you think that of those tens of thousands,
there were women and childrenwilling to go as well?
Or was it just people like us?
Jacob (31:24):
It was not people like me, I can promise you that.
I think it was a prettybroad span, a lot of
people wanted to go, yeah.
I don't think it was alljust men, I think plenty of
women signed up for it too.
Okay.
Children.
I don't think they wereaccepting applicants.
Of course, but Like families.
the cool thing is ifyou send men and women,
you can make children.
Self replicating probes.
(31:44):
No,
Lucas (31:46):
that is very interesting.
honestly having the cometcircle the planet, I don't
even remember reading thatin the first book, but my
original thoughts of gettingthose gases to the planet
would be using essentiallyjust, Slingshot systems set
up in low, gravity moons wherewe would mine those resources
or Suck up those resources ifwe're talking about the gases
(32:09):
and then essentially transportthem in capsules That would just
explode onto the surface of the
Jacob (32:15):
no Yeah, a lot of the carbon asteroids, they have
a lot of water and gases on
Lucas (32:18):
them.
But now going back intohaving no magnetic field And
I know that you said thatradiation is a little bit more
violent because I know thatradiation does get through
and it hits on like our inner,magnetosphere on our planet.
And that's what createsour Northern lights.
And it pulls thatinto our poles.
If all of that is stillleeching through, what about
our plant life that we wouldwant to sustain on the planet?
Jacob (32:39):
there would definitely be higher rates of mutation,
but if I'm not mistaken,Earth's atmosphere filters out
93 percent of the radiation.
the magnetosphere is onlyfiltering out the last
seven, so it's not ashuge as you would think.
It's still good that we haveit, but, 7 percent increase
in radiation is a lot.
It's not nothing, but itwould be even better on Mars.
If you wanted one earthatmosphere on Mars, like
(32:59):
atmospheric pressure, youcan need way more gas on Mars
because of the lower gravity.
And in fact, that atmosphere,so Earth's about a hundred
kilometers off the planet.
Whereas Mars isatmosphere to achieve.
The same pressurewould extend about 250,
kilometers off the planet.
So it would be denser, toachieve the same density, right?
Because of the less gravity,you would need way more.
(33:21):
Gas ahead of you.
We need a taller air columnabove you to have enough gas
to press down to give youone atmosphere of pressure.
So it would likely blockeven more radiation
than earth's atmosphere.
If you could get it up toone atmospheric pressure.
Okay.
Lucas (33:36):
the last thing really that I want to touch on
is when do you feel like.
It would be possible for us toactually start putting these
plans into motion because we'vehad talk about going out and
colonizing Mars for a long time.
We've had individuals like ElonMusk who have wanted to do it
on a, a company wide scale.
We've had.
books written about it forover the last 40 years, right?
(33:56):
Colonizing Mars.
so what are your thoughts on usactually being able to go out
there and these, if we do this,
Jacob (34:03):
I guess it depends what you mean by colonize, if you
mean get some people on theplanet that had been there and
maybe stay for, I really juststarting off six month period.
Yeah.
I think we could seethat in the next.
20 years.
I don't think that'sunreasonable to see the first
person on Mars in our lifetimein the next 20 years or so for
(34:23):
permanent habitation of Mars.
If we ever do that, causethere's not really much
on Mars, to be honestwith you, I don't know.
I think we might end up seeinglike a scientific outpost there.
Some similar, like whatwe have in Antarctica,
maybe in a hundred years.
as far as like a city on Mars.
to be honest with you,there's no economical
reason to build one.
(34:44):
So if we do build one,it's probably going to be
in spite of the economics.
Maybe we'll do that,but I don't know.
I would say a hundredyears would be, okay.
I think maybe a conservativeguess on actually having people
live on the planet, not justvisit maybe 20 years for the
first person who actually putstheir feet on the planet though.
Lucas (35:04):
All right.
you say that it has no, realeconomic value or no reason
to want to live on Mars.
But, it could be an optionbecause our planet is becoming
more and more polluted,more and more populated.
And really, if I feel likepeople, if they had an option to
get that chance to essentially.
Break out and create a newfrontier the same way that
(35:27):
they did when we settled thewest in the united states I
feel like that could be reasonenough to have people want to
go out there and start calling
Jacob (35:35):
Maybe but it's just any work you do making mars
habitable You could do onearth and you would be a
lot take a lot less effort.
Lucas (35:44):
Yeah, but Let's say that if you went out there, and you
were one of the first coloniststo start working on the planet,
then you would have claim toland on the planet, for example.
that is something that wehave seen in history people
are willing to die for.
Jacob (36:00):
But, it would be much better to just get
some land handed to youin like the Sierra Desert.
I guess, if you wanted togo colonize the frontier.
Yeah.
Because at least youcan breathe there.
And not to mention justgiving, getting some land
given to you on Mars doesn'tmean much unless you can
build the infrastructure,like you're going to
have to build a habitat.
(36:20):
And then how are you goingto generate any type of,
there's nothing Earthneeds from Mars really.
So unless there's already sometype of presence on Mars, then
that's, there's no economicreason for me to move there.
Even if I am given a hugeamount of land, it's not like
I can do anything with it.
Lucas (36:36):
Yeah, no, that, that is a fair point.
I'm really just trying totheorize like how we would
get people to Mars andwhy they would want to go.
Jacob (36:46):
I think some people will always want to go there
just for the sake of doing it.
And maybe that'll be enough.
Maybe it's just.
This innate drive to moveon to a new frontier, to
move on to a new place.
The question is, howcan we get the money in
place for that to happen?
Maybe it'll have to besponsored by a government.
Yeah.
Maybe there'll be, causethere is this kind of
(37:07):
idea that we should havea backup plan for earth.
We need to make lifemulti planetary or human
civilization multi planetary.
But I think as faras colonization goes.
Mars is like the favoritetopic of it, but the moon
makes way more sense,building colony on the moon.
The only benefit I seeeconomically to Mars.
Would be maybe a refuelingplatform, but you'd probably
(37:29):
build that on like Phobos, no,
Lucas (37:31):
that would make sense.
I don't know.
It's sad to think aboutthat, that there really is
no value in settling Marsother than it being a plan B
to some kind of catastrophicdisaster happening on.
earth.
Jacob (37:44):
Yeah, not yet.
Maybe in the future, if wehave a lot of space based
infrastructure and People livingin the asteroid belt, it could
make more sense to have sometype of colony on a planet.
Because there are certainprotections Mars give over
living on like an asteroid.
It has a weak atmosphere,but it does have one,
especially if we build it up.
but yeah, no, I think if we'regoing to colonize anything,
(38:05):
the moon makes way more sense.
Lucas (38:06):
Yes,
Jacob (38:06):
absolutely.
But that would be adifferent episode.
Thank you so much forlistening to the show.
We both sincerelyhope you enjoyed it.
You can keep up on thelatest news over on our
website at entropy rising.
com or join the conversation atour subreddit, Rising Entropy.
We release a new episodeevery other week, so
follow to stay in the loop.
I think let's go all out instead of taking
(00:02):
lasers and shining them onthe surface to release the
oxygen that way, let's grabsomething like Ganymede or
one of the Jovian moons andjust throw them into Mars.
I like the way you thinkHello and welcome to Entropy
(00:25):
Rising, where we talkabout science and futurism.
I am your host, Jacob, and Iam here with my co host, Lucas.
Lucas, how are you doing today?
I'm doing great, Jake.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing great.
I'm really interested to jumpinto all these topics we've
got picked out for today.
So what do you saywe hop right into it?
Yeah, let's get into it.
I know you were excitedto talk about asteroid mining
Lucas (00:46):
yes.
So asteroid mining, , super coolconcepts because on earth we are
limited by our landscape, right?
We're limited by the amount ofpollution that we create and
how much our world can handle.
We're limited by, the peoplethat are willing to work there.
And do those jobs and then justthe raw resources that we have.
Some of the upsides of,,asteroid mining is that we're
(01:09):
able to remove all the issuesof pollution, , that are
affecting our planet, right?
We don't have to dump any ofthe dangerous chemicals or
any of the oils, , residualsor anything like that
into our environment.
We can fly up and toasteroids, if we can stop
them from spinning and pullthem into our earth's orbit.
We can mine thempretty efficiently.
Jacob (01:29):
You want to pull them into Earth's orbit to mine them?
Yes.
That's interesting.
That's not how I envisioned it.
Really?
Yeah.
Lucas (01:34):
How did you envision
Jacob (01:35):
it?
I figured you would set up asystem where you send probes out
to these asteroids, somewhereout in the asteroid belt,
where they can mine and processthem down to a reasonable extent
and then send the raw materialsback toward Earth through maybe
a gravity assisted trajectory.
So you just got thisconstant supply of raw
materials being sentthroughout the solar system.
Lucas (01:54):
That would be excellent.
And that could be achievable.
I was thinking more like Let'ssay in 30 years, we decided to
mine our first asteroid, right?
How would we do itfor the first time?
So I feel like pulling itsomewhere where we can get it to
stop spinning and start rotatingour planet over, a launch pad
(02:15):
or somewhere so that we can getthe most efficiency, because
it's not going to be cheap.
It's going to beincredibly expensive.
To send our ships up there tosend all the materials up there.
But I think that,, if companieswere to finally set course
for asteroid mining, thatwould better advance our
in orbit infrastructure.
Jacob (02:33):
Absolutely.
And I do think a lot of theseresources would be used in
orbit more than on earth becauseit's still quite expensive
to get these materialsdown a gravity well safely.
It's cheaper than gettingthem up the gravity well,
there are costs thattakes to deorbit stuff.
Lucas (02:49):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
you either have to, usethrusters to push it in or you
can, Remove mass or add massto get it to steady itself.
Jacob (02:58):
My kind of idea would be maybe design some type
of rail gun system that canfire retrograde to Earth's
orbit to really kill a lotof that velocity and then
use some sort of disposableone time use capsule.
there's a lot of, carbonasteroids out there, so you
could potentially make a,an ablative heat shield with
that carbonous material.
Fire it, retrogradeto Earth's orbit.
(03:20):
It's to kill a lot of itsvelocity and just have
that heat shield protectedas it falls to earth and,
maybe some parachutes.
Lucas (03:28):
that is a cool concept.
it's we're, you're, we'retalking about small asteroids
at that point, becausetrying to pull something out
of orbit and pull it into.
So our atmosphere is, thatwould be incredibly dangerous.
Yeah.
for
Jacob (03:41):
clarity, I don't think you'd be doing this asteroids.
I think you would do as muchprocessing of that material
as possible in space.
You would want it to be as pureas possible because you don't
want to pay that much money.
to send rocks down.
You want to send rare materials,platinum, gold, iridium, you're
not wanting to send rocks.
So you're going to want to doas much processing as possible.
(04:01):
Absolutely.
And for that, I think wecould capture a lot of these
asteroids in either the L2 orL3 Lagrange point between the
moon and earth, which for thosewho don't know Lagrange point
is essentially a point in anorbit where the gravitational
pull of two bodies cancel out.
So it's a stable.
point in an orbit where thingsaren't moving around a lot.
So every two bodies willhave Lagrange points there's
(04:22):
some between earth andmoon and earth and sun.
So the earth moon Lagrangepoints make ideal places to
collect resources like thisfor processing and then maybe
rail gun them toward the earth.
Lucas (04:32):
Yeah.
I mean that, that wouldbe definitely, awesome.
really the reason why I wasfocusing on just getting
essentially just one asteroidat first to pull into our
orbit though, to be ableto mine at the level that
we're at is because, Readingabout it and doing a little
bit of research into them.
(04:53):
There are multiple asteroidsin our asteroid belt
that have enough iron.
They're like 98 percent ironto sustain us at our current
use of that material fora million years or more.
Jacob (05:04):
It's true.
I don't know if it wouldbe economically viable
to fund a mission likethat for iron though.
I think more likely you're goingto see a mission like that.
A mission get funded tocapture rare materials like
platinum group elements.
But as a side effect of that,especially if you capture an
asteroid, especially in yourearth asteroid, and you bring
it into a stable orbit around,earth, maybe you'll do that.
(05:28):
You'll extract all the preciousminerals to ship back to
earth, but then you'll justleave this huge iron asteroid
around, maybe in one of thoseLagrange points, and that'll
be really helpful for building,orbital infrastructure.
Yeah.
Lucas (05:41):
That's a great point, actually.
yeah.
And I definitely agree withyou on the point that you
made before as well, where,we probably wouldn't do it for
iron, but we would probablydo it for, the rare materials
that we use for creatingbatteries, for example,
Jacob (05:54):
cobalt, for example, is very rare on earth.
Lucas (05:56):
Yes.
Yeah.
so doing stuff like that,but the thing is with
what, astronomers have beenidentifying on asteroids out
there is that there are certainasteroids that have, more than
we could ever use of gold, ofcobalt, of platinum, right?
We just have to be able to getto them and bring them back
Jacob (06:16):
more than we can ever use.
Sounds like a challenge.
I've got some ideas.
Dyson swarm.
Here we come.
at our current
Lucas (06:29):
At the current way that we are functioning.
Jacob (06:31):
So there is also something you have to be really
careful about when you'rethinking about gathering these
types of resources though,because you talk about there
being more than we could everuse at our current scale.
But you also have to fundthe mission to go and get
these materials, right?
So whenever you are in thefunding phase of this mission,
you have to think, are wegoing to bring back so much
material that we crash theeconomy on this material and
(06:54):
therefore the, this wholemission is not worth it because
you don't want to go and get,billions and billions of tons
of platinum, even if you could,which I don't think you could.
but let's say you magicallycould get all the platinum
you want in space.
You really wouldn't wantto do that because then
it would be worthless.
So it's actually inyour best interest to
grab a limited amount.
And bring it in.
So I think there isgoing to be a natural
(07:14):
equilibrium that we reach of.
We can only import so much ofthese materials from space to
earth until the price of thesematerials are dropping too much
to be worth getting anymore.
Lucas (07:27):
So now I understand that affects both, if the
government were to do it orif a private company were to
do it, either way, that's bad.
but let's say that we'reworking towards a goal.
And we need those raw materialsand we have a plan for
those raw materials, right?
But we need a stockpile of themnow For a private company at
(07:47):
this point asteroid mining wouldnot make sense with the current
technology that we have it wouldbe Way more expensive going
up there getting the materialsand bringing them back than
you would make from doing that
Jacob (07:57):
Yeah, it'd be cheaper to mine them on earth right?
Lucas (07:59):
Yes but let's say that We needed those materials
for a larger project.
Like we were preparing tocreate a Dyson swarm and
we needed the batteries.
We needed the cobaltto be able to do that.
Do you think that itwould be worth it right
for our government toessentially Pull funding
(08:22):
to go and do such a thing.
leaving out private companiesand things like that.
Jacob (08:27):
I think building a Dyson swarm or something like that is
such a huge undertaking that noone entity is going to take it.
I,
Lucas (08:34):
this would be assuming, I'm sorry, I should clarify.
Cause if we're at the point towhere we've already maximized
our power consumption on earth,and we are a United government
body, do you think that itwould be more feasible then
still assuming that we onlyhave basic rocket thruster
propulsion to get off of earth?
Do you think that itwould still be a feasible
(08:55):
idea to essentially noteven allocate money?
Because if we're onegovernment allocate manpower
to do what doing to buildingthe infrastructure to mine?
Asteroids like cobalt andbringing in those large amounts,
and not introducing it into theeconomy, but into a stockpile.
Jacob (09:13):
if you want to build anything in space,
it makes sense to grabthose materials in space.
So if you're doing some largeorbital project or solar
project, then, always, it'sgoing to make sense to go and
mine those materials, in outerspace, because trying to get
any raw materials up a gravitywell, it's just not economical
in any way, shape, or form.
So it makes sense to getthem from an asteroid, which
doesn't have very much gravity.
(09:34):
The real question is, doesit make sense to bring
them down to gravity well?
and I think it can, in a way.
So if we had some large projecton Earth, for example, and we
needed a ton of rare materials,like maybe, for example,
potentially, something we'refacing right now is trying to
build gridscale energy storage.
So would it make senseAssuming we have some orbital
(09:58):
infrastructure in place tomine those materials in outer
space and bring them to Earth.
I think it could.
I think it could make sense.
I think the economics couldalign for that under very
specific circumstances.
but I do think that ingeneral,, it's going to
be cheaper to source thosematerials from earth.
But that could change becauseI could also, especially
(10:19):
with the climate crisis we'refacing, I could see mining
practices becoming more and morestrictly regulated, which makes
them more and more expensiveto do and space travel is
getting cheaper and cheaper.
So we might eventually hita tipping point where it's
feasible to get materialfrom space to bring it back
to earth to do building
Lucas (10:37):
right now but space travel can only get so cheap
right at the point that weare now like the way for us
to get up into space it westill Like we can't do much
more to reduce the amount offuel that we're not really
using to get into space so Ijust, I find it hard to believe
that a singular company woulddo the first bit of asteroid
(11:00):
mining and, instead of itbeing like a government entity.
Now talking about the metal thatwe would have in the building
of large infrastructure and our.
Orbital areas.
if we were to bring those metalsto, build the infrastructure
in our orbit, do you thinkthat would affect earth's
economy at that point?
Ooh, that's a good one.
Jacob (11:21):
potentially no, I don't think so.
I think the orbital economy andthe earth's economy would be.
Two separate entities?
I think they'd be related andconnected in some ways, but
for the most part I think theywould be two separate entities.
I believe so as well.
So yeah, you might end up witha situation where, materials
that are very expensive onearth are very cheap in space.
(11:42):
And I think only the mostexpensive materials would be
transferred between those two,whether that's highly processed
raw materials, stuff likepure platinum, gold, platinum
group elements like that, or,potentially also technology,
I could see being somethingthat's worth going up and
down a gravity well for, and,organics too, Earth is the only
(12:02):
place you can get, Organics.
Yeah.
So if you want to grow plantsin space and you need live
soil, because soil is not a deadthing, like some people think
it is, you're going to have tobring that up from earth, which
is funny, one of the few thingsthat might be worth bringing
up a gravity well is dirt.
Lucas (12:21):
Yeah.
Of course, there are waysthat you can revitalize soil,
but like you were saying,once those cultures are used
up, the organisms that makethat living, once they're
used up, then you will haveto get more soil up there.
Jacob (12:37):
Yeah, or at least you'll have to get a starter
set of soil up there tokick start up your culture.
biospheres, assuming youwant to grow food and space
while you're there too.
But trade you three barsof gold for a bag of dirt.
Yeah.
Well, especially if you haveto ship it up at gravity.
Well, , it might be afair exchange rate because
getting three bars of golddown a gravity well versus.
Um,
Lucas (12:59):
really another interesting topic that I
feel like Asteroid Miningwould tie in to would be
allowing for us to transportresources from the asteroid
to a planet that is not Earth.
Jacob (13:16):
Okay.
Lucas (13:16):
So I'm talking about like reforming atmospheres,
terraforming different planets.
Okay.
Jacob (13:22):
So you want to talk about terraforming Mars now?
Lucas (13:24):
yeah, Mars, or any other planet really that we
would decide to do so on.
Yeah,
Jacob (13:28):
absolutely.
Cause you would need toget a lot of material
to those planets.
or strip away materialdepending on the planet.
But focusing on Mars, youwould need to get a lot of
material to that planet.
Yeah,
Lucas (13:37):
absolutely.
first talking about Just theamount of gas that we would
need, there's a lot of frozennitrogen on, comets and,
asteroids, we could use thatessentially, we could pull it
from asteroids, or we couldpull it from moons, right?
And send that to create thatnitrogen rich, atmosphere
that we need as a baseto then start introducing
(13:58):
oxygen to make it breathable.
Jacob (13:59):
Absolutely.
if you're talking about Marsspecifically, if I wanted to
build an atmosphere on Mars,the first thing I would do.
Is if you can heat up theplanet and melt all of the
ice caps, you'll get a lotof carbon dioxide and water
vapor in the atmosphere,and you'll get an atmosphere
that's about 7 percent asthick as Earth's atmosphere.
So not incredible, but it'sthicker than it is now.
(14:21):
You could do this withoutmelting the ice, but melting the
ice makes this more efficient.
Once you have a thickeratmosphere on Mars, take some
comets, put them in orbitaround Mars, where they dip
into the atmosphere on thelower part of their orbit.
And each time they dip intothe atmosphere, they're
going to boil off moreof that frozen nitrogen,
carbon dioxide, and water.
And as they keep going throughthe atmosphere, they'll
(14:43):
keep boiling off more andmore of these gases, and
losing them to the planet.
Do that with enough asteroids,and you can build yourself
a nice little atmosphere.
Lucas (14:50):
Yeah, absolutely.
with the assumption that youalready have some kind of
either, man made force fieldor we are able to somehow
reignite the core of Marsto give us a magnetic field.
there's two, there's acouple ways to do that.
Yes, but, before wetouch on that, you said
something interestingabout melting the ice caps.
Of course, that would besomething that we would want to
do because we want liquid water.
(15:11):
Yeah.
But why not just melt theentire surface of Mars?
Yes.
Like the regolith?
Yes.
because it's mostly madeup of iron oxides, right?
So if we melt it, we releaseoxygen into the atmosphere.
Jacob (15:22):
That is absolutely one way we could go about
getting oxygen onto Mars.
And that's also goingto be really nice.
Cause it gets rid of a lot ofthe iron oxides in the regolith
that we don't want to deal with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We could absolutely do that.
Lucas (15:32):
So if we could, just touching back on, using some
of the solar lasers that we'reusing to power our ships.
Just face them towards Marsand just start burning up
the entirety of the surface.
Jacob (15:45):
Yeah, you can do that.
my, my main concern wouldbe doing it like that
is when do you want tocolonize this planet?
Because you're going to bewaiting for a while for it
to cool down if you do that.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Non discriminatory,glassing the surface.
An alternative.
Would be if you're alreadygoing to be building a society
on Mars, potentially you couldjust set up an industry that
(16:06):
gathers up regolith Melts itdown takes the iron uses that
iron for construction andjust releases all the gaseous
products into the atmospherebasically you can be the
dirtiest most polluting companyon Mars and we welcome that
release all of your gases to theatmosphere, that's what we want.
Okay, and in that way becausewith your method You can't
(16:28):
have people living on theplanet while that's happening.
Lucas (16:31):
No, this would be strictly terraforming, right?
Because colonizing forme is, you're going
down onto the planet.
you're building a smallsettlement with, special
infrastructure, eitherunderground or above ground,
with, special like domebuildings and granaries.
And then that, that,that's how you're living.
as far as terraforming aftercolonizing, of course your
(16:53):
method would be better.
Yeah.
Jacob (16:54):
But If you want to get your method, I think let's
go all out instead of takinglasers and shining them on
the surface to release theoxygen that way, let's grab
something like Ganymede orone of the Jovian moons and
just throw them into Mars.
I like the way you think.
So if you do this, not only areyou introducing all the water
gases and all that, I mean, Uh,Europa alone has more, I think,
(17:17):
it's predicted it might havemore volume water than Earth.
Lucas (17:19):
Yeah.
Jacob (17:20):
So if you throw that into Mars, you're going to
get a lot of water onto Mars.
But in addition, the energyof that impact is going to
liquefy the whole planet.
Lucas (17:28):
Yeah, it'll reignite the core.
Jacob (17:29):
You're adding mass to the planet.
So you're adding, getting more
Lucas (17:31):
gravity.
Jacob (17:32):
And, if you angle it just right, Because a lot of
theories behind our own moonis that it was created when
a planet collided with Earth.
So you could potentiallyangle it just right and
capture some of thatmaterial in orbit of Mars
and make an artificial moon.
Or, I guess it's not reallyartificial at that point.
Lucas (17:49):
Yeah, no, that's, it's man made, but
it's not artificial.
Because there's a lot of
Jacob (17:53):
benefits to having a moon.
Lucas (17:55):
That, that, that would be, a best case and
worst case in a lot of,in a lot of situations.
You're not
Jacob (17:59):
colonizing that planet for a while after that.
no,
Lucas (18:01):
like we're talking 40, 50 generations.
You start thinkingabout it, you know?
Yeah, it's not longer, yeah.
But that of course would bebest case as far as creating
a larger planet for us thatwe have higher gravity because
realistically going and livingon Mars, we could terraform
it all we want, but if thegravity is the way that it
is, then we're not going to beable to live there full time.
Jacob (18:21):
we don't know that really yet, but that's the issue.
We don't know.
We don't know how much gravitywe need to be healthy, right?
It could be thatMars was fine, but.
It could be that it'snot, we just don't know.
Okay.
Lucas (18:33):
that's fair.
We
Jacob (18:34):
know no gravity isn't doable.
We need some gravity,but we don't have any
experiments showing peopleliving in low gravity.
Lucas (18:41):
Okay.
That's a, that's interesting.
Actually, I guess it allhas just been speculation
that I've read into, Aboutwhat will happen because
in no gravity, You get thelower bone density and.
the issues with your heightand then when you come
back, your spine compressesand yeah, no, it's bad.
Jacob (18:57):
And it's likely low gravity.
You'll have those issues too,but we just don't know how much
gravity we need to be healthy.
okay.
But if you want to, if youwant to terraform Mars a
little less destructively, Iwas thinking about this too.
You could potentially.
Drill down into thecore of the planet.
And if you have some type ofsolar collecting system on
our sun, like a Dyson swarm,you don't even need a whole
(19:17):
Dyson swarm, you could havethe beginning baby stages
of a Dyson swarm, 1 percentof a Dyson swarm, even with
1 percent of a Dyson swarm.
If you could direct all ofthat energy into Mars's core,
it would only take 18 minutesto reliquify the core of Mars.
Lucas (19:34):
Wow.
Jacob (19:34):
Yeah.
and you don't want to doit in 18 minutes, that'd be
horrible, but realistically,even with 01 percent of a
Dyson swarm, you could extractthe energy to start heating
up the core of the planet andkick off that magnetic field.
Wow.
Which, the magnetic fieldisn't even as important
as you might think it is.
Lucas (19:50):
yeah, you could build artificial, blockers
of solar radiation.
Yeah,
Jacob (19:54):
or you could surround the planet in superconducting coils
and generate your own magneticfield, and as a byproduct, doing
that would heat up the planet,almost like wireless charging.
So you could generatea magnetic field.
And heat up the planetat the same time.
Lucas (20:08):
Now that how much would it heat up the planet?
Because are we talking as it'screating this magnetic field, we
would have to lower the magneticfield at certain points and not
heat the planet up too much.
Jacob (20:18):
eventually you would, but that would be the goal, right?
You've heated up thecore of the planet enough
that it's generatingits own magnetic field.
Of course.
Yeah.
But the magnetic field is notas important as, some people
Would lead you to believe youcould 100 percent colonize
Mars without a magnetic field.
Lucas (20:34):
You can colonize it, right?
But you could terraform it.
You could terraform itwithout a magnetic field.
Jacob (20:39):
So you will lose atmosphere over time due to
the atmosphere leaking awaybecause it's not protected
by the magnetic field.
But we're talking about onthe scale of millennia, if you
were to somehow establish anearthlike atmosphere on Mars,
And just not touch it, noteven replenish it, it could
potentially take over a millionyears for that planet or for
(21:00):
that atmosphere to get to thepoint of being inhabitable.
Really?
Lucas (21:04):
Take a million
Jacob (21:05):
years to strip the atmosphere?
If not longer.
It takes a long time tostrip the atmosphere.
Especially for Mars, it's alittle further away than Earth.
Lucas (21:10):
So why is it always portrayed as such a big
issue when it comes toterraforming that we need
to have a protective barrieragainst the sun's solar wind?
Jacob (21:21):
it is nice, especially because without a
magnetic field, you're moresusceptible to solar storms.
which if you get hit by like acoronal mass ejection without a
magnetic field, you're in a lotmore trouble than like on earth.
So there are definite benefitsand it does reduce the chance
of cancer, but an atmospheredoes a great job of that too.
And if you wanted an earthlike atmosphere on Mars,
(21:42):
you're by definition, goingto need a thicker atmosphere
because of the lower gravity.
So you've got more airanyways, blocking radiation.
So radiation probablywouldn't be an issue.
It's just, you wouldneed to replenish that
atmosphere over time.
Thank you.
Lucas (21:56):
Okay, which I mean, I guess we do a pretty good job
of doing here on earth already.
Jacob (22:00):
Yeah.
and also if you can build theatmosphere in the first place,
you probably have the technologyto top it off from time to time.
Lucas (22:06):
Yeah.
It's just, it's so interestingto think that, that we don't
need that, magnetic blanketessentially protecting us.
Jacob (22:16):
And also if you've gotten this type of technology, it
might just be easier to throw upan artificial magnetic blanket.
blocker and magnetic shieldand, the Lagrange point
between the sun and Mars andjust artificially block it.
Lucas (22:28):
Yeah.
yeah, I don't know.
I, that is that, that,that is crazy to wrap my
head around my entire life.
I've just thought that, assoon as there's no magnetic
field around the planetand the solar winds hit,
it just strips it off.
Like you're blowingsand off of a marble.
Jacob (22:45):
It takes a very long time to strip the
atmosphere off of a planet.
Now, without a magneticfield, you will lose lighter
elements, , faster, whichhappens on Earth, too.
But it'll happen even fasteron Mars without a magnetic
field, especially coupledwith its lower gravity.
So there are huge benefits tohaving one, let's be clear,
we could get by without it.
Lucas (23:03):
Okay.
then, with assuming that, andwe don't have to restore that,
we can leave the core cold.
We can go and we cancolonize and start
terraforming, right now.
What are our first stepswhen we get onto the planet?
So thinking about it, we need toestablish the colonies, right?
We need to make surethat, it's safe.
(23:23):
So we send.
a team of 150, of thebrightest people to go and
start colonizing Mars, right?
And those people needto build infrastructure.
They need to build, the properencampments for themselves.
Do you think it wouldbe better to build above
ground or below ground?
Oh yeah.
Below
Jacob (23:39):
ground.
No question.
with that many people livingon the surface of Mars,
I think you're exposed tosomething like, three or 4%.
or three or four millisieverts,per year or something like that.
I know it's 10 timesthe radiation you're
exposed to on Earth.
And if I'm not mistaken,it increases your chance
of cancer over a 20 yearperiod by almost like 10%.
Which when you have a populationof 150, you're talking about
(24:02):
15 people getting cancerover a 20 year period that
wouldn't have otherwise gottenit for a 20 year mission.
It's a pretty significant risk.
So I think any type ofMars mission is going to
have to live underground.
Lucas (24:14):
then I think that a 20 year mission
would be generous then.
because let's think aboutthe crew of submarines.
Those people, they goout on for sometimes the
longest tour is there'll besix years on a submarine.
They have to be psych evaluatedand usually, they have to spend
a lot of time after those tours.
they can't go back on toduty for a long time if ever.
(24:37):
Let's do a submarine.
Jacob (24:38):
Let me be clear.
They can still go on tothe surface of the planet.
They just don't wantto be on the surface of
the planet at all times.
So it's okay to havesome exposure to that.
It's just, you don't wantto be exposed to that level
of radiation constantly.
Lucas (24:51):
But the thing is, even with that, but the other
harshness that Mars has, likeit's dust storms that can last
weeks or months at a time.
and then they're confinedto these small spaces.
It's really what I'm wonderingis how long realistically do
you think that these peoplecould spend on mission on Mars?
Cause I'm thinking thatit's max eight years.
Jacob (25:12):
Max eight years.
Yeah.
it's going to bepsychologically crazy.
and there's also the wholeidea of just being that
isolated from humanity.
What that does to a person.
We don't know.
no one's been that far before.
assuming we can get themback, then yeah, we might
need to rotate people out.
I could see that being aplausible condition, but if you
want to settle the planet, thenpeople need to be able to live
(25:35):
their whole lives on there.
Lucas (25:35):
Yeah.
So are you thinkingthat we would settle
before we terraformed?
Jacob (25:41):
I think so.
I think we'll try to get sometype of presence on an extra
planet as well before we havethe technology to terraform.
Okay.
Lucas (25:47):
So that's assuming that people are coming to Mars.
To live their lives thereand hopefully raise other
generations on that planet.
Okay.
So now the people of thecolonies, they've flourished
and we've made some kind ofinfrastructure to where these
people can come and theyfeel like they can settle.
You were talking about buildinginfrastructure factories that
(26:09):
pump out, greenhouse gasesto help restore atmosphere or
create an atmosphere in Mars.
What are they producing andwho are they producing it for?
Jacob (26:17):
So you could potentially scoop up that regolith, which
is very rich in iron and use itto manufacture iron, which would
be used to build the colony,any infrastructure you need.
Now, let's be very clear.
That would 100 percentonly be used on Mars.
It's just not cost effectiveto ship that up the gravity.
Well, right.
It just doesn't make sense,especially when we have a ton
of iron in the solar system.
(26:38):
any excuse you can find,you're going to want to pump
gas into that atmosphereon an incredible scale.
to the point you might even,if you have the technology,
try to design, just littleprobes that'll go and self
replicate throughout the planet.
Just scoop up regolith andjust melt it for no reason.
Just literally scoop it up,melt it in iron, release
(26:59):
those gases, and thenmove on to the next one.
because you really, you want topollute that planet as much as
you can, as crazy as it sounds.
Lucas (27:05):
Yeah.
And, but do you feellike that would even come
close to being enough?
Jacob (27:10):
No, that would take, you would need so many
people on the planet toactually make that feasible.
no, I don't thinkthat would happen.
You're talking aboutthousands of years at
that rate, if not longer.
Exactly.
And that's factoring inaccelerating technology.
Lucas (27:24):
So then, the, what you were talking about before where
we would have asteroids passingover, And around the planet,
dropping off their gases andresources, to its atmosphere.
does that seem likesomething that would be
safe while we had peoplealso trying colonize Mars?
Jacob (27:41):
I think so.
I think we can makethat very safe.
you would try to not have thesein an orbit where they directly
pass over a colony or overwhere people are living, but
presumably it'd be reasonablysafe you would probably ship
these asteroids from Theasteroid belt, or really you
would want to do comments.
You would get themfrom the deeper parts
of the solar system.
(28:02):
Chances are when you launchedthem toward the planet for
safety, you would not launchthem on an intercept course.
You would launch themon a course where they
would miss the planet.
That way you could catchthem once they became closer
to Mars and deceleratethem into an orbit.
That way, if you mess up,they don't slam into the
planet and kill everybody.
Lucas (28:18):
Yeah.
It just sounds like a, , riskything for the colonists and,
settlers who would want togo and live on the planet.
Jacob (28:24):
how, Incredibly unlucky would it be to manage
to screw up catching anasteroid and have it land
exactly on one of the fewcolonies on the whole planet.
that's fairly unlikelyin and of itself.
Lucas (28:36):
Yeah, but the issue with it hitting let's say that it
didn't hit the colony But ithit the planet it hit Mars.
It would launch tiny meteorsback up into space because
of its lower gravity Butit would still be enough
gravity for it to pull themback in eventually, right?
So now you're talking about ithit on the other side of the
planet but now you have bigand small chunks of regolith
(29:00):
coming back down and To crushyou and your loved ones.
Jacob (29:03):
hopefully you're living underground, right?
yeah, I guess
Lucas (29:05):
but when we get to settling I feel like living
underground like you can hirepeople whose passion it is to
be able to go out there andcolonize a place, but getting
people to come and settleis another option, right?
Jacob (29:18):
Yeah, you're going to need some type of protection
for that radiation regardless,which is most likely going
to be living underground.
If it's not living underground,it's going to be really
thick shielding on whatevermaterial you're using anyways.
unless you're throwingcomets at this planet that
are planet killers, then Idon't think it's a huge risk.
if you have, as long as you'redoing smaller comets and smaller
(29:39):
things, I think you'd be fine.
Lucas (29:43):
have you ever read the, the Red Mars,
Green Mars, Blue Mars?
I have, yeah.
the way that they talk aboutit, with using the huge bubble,
late like civilizations,with the, would you think
that would be a feasible way?
Jacob (29:55):
I don't know off the top of my head that part.
I do know the Red Mars book,which is the one that I read.
A lot of the ideas I'm talkingabout come from that, because
they have to live undergroundwhen they first colonized.
And they do introduce a lotof moisture to the planet via
atmospheric breaking of comets.
Lucas (30:11):
but when they start moving forward into starting
to melt the ice to makeblue Mars, they are able to,
build, those small pockets ofcities that are essentially in
bubbles, but they're massive,but they're small on the
scale of the planet, right?
But they use that.
They never go into detailabout what they're made out
of or how they regulate.
(30:32):
But do you think.
Something like that beingfeasible, I don't think it would
be just because there's nothing,there's no atmosphere still.
So something comes out ofspace, it just kills everybody.
Jacob (30:41):
Absolutely.
That seems like waytoo big of a risk.
That's the same thingwith trying to build
like domes on the moon.
It just, you don't wantone big failure point to
kill that many people.
I think you reallyneed isolated habitats.
Lucas (30:54):
So realistically, it would all have
to be underground.
It would just be, andhow do you attract
people to want to settle?
There's some crazy people outthere who would want to, but
are there enough crazy people?
Jacob (31:04):
Didn't they did a while back, someone put out
an ad asking for people totake a one way trip to Mars,
trying to build a crew.
I think they were trying to findlike a hundred people to do it.
And Tens of thousandssigned up for it.
Lucas (31:16):
But do you think that of those tens of thousands,
there were women and childrenwilling to go as well?
Or was it just people like us?
Jacob (31:24):
It was not people like me, I can promise you that.
I think it was a prettybroad span, a lot of
people wanted to go, yeah.
I don't think it was alljust men, I think plenty of
women signed up for it too.
Okay.
Children.
I don't think they wereaccepting applicants.
Of course, but Like families.
the cool thing is ifyou send men and women,
you can make children.
Self replicating probes.
(31:44):
No,
Lucas (31:46):
that is very interesting.
honestly having the cometcircle the planet, I don't
even remember reading thatin the first book, but my
original thoughts of gettingthose gases to the planet
would be using essentiallyjust, Slingshot systems set
up in low, gravity moons wherewe would mine those resources
or Suck up those resources ifwe're talking about the gases
(32:09):
and then essentially transportthem in capsules That would just
explode onto the surface of the
Jacob (32:15):
no Yeah, a lot of the carbon asteroids, they have
a lot of water and gases on
Lucas (32:18):
them.
But now going back intohaving no magnetic field And
I know that you said thatradiation is a little bit more
violent because I know thatradiation does get through
and it hits on like our inner,magnetosphere on our planet.
And that's what createsour Northern lights.
And it pulls thatinto our poles.
If all of that is stillleeching through, what about
our plant life that we wouldwant to sustain on the planet?
Jacob (32:39):
there would definitely be higher rates of mutation,
but if I'm not mistaken,Earth's atmosphere filters out
93 percent of the radiation.
the magnetosphere is onlyfiltering out the last
seven, so it's not ashuge as you would think.
It's still good that we haveit, but, 7 percent increase
in radiation is a lot.
It's not nothing, but itwould be even better on Mars.
If you wanted one earthatmosphere on Mars, like
(32:59):
atmospheric pressure, youcan need way more gas on Mars
because of the lower gravity.
And in fact, that atmosphere,so Earth's about a hundred
kilometers off the planet.
Whereas Mars isatmosphere to achieve.
The same pressurewould extend about 250,
kilometers off the planet.
So it would be denser, toachieve the same density, right?
Because of the less gravity,you would need way more.
(33:21):
Gas ahead of you.
We need a taller air columnabove you to have enough gas
to press down to give youone atmosphere of pressure.
So it would likely blockeven more radiation
than earth's atmosphere.
If you could get it up toone atmospheric pressure.
Okay.
Lucas (33:36):
the last thing really that I want to touch on
is when do you feel like.
It would be possible for us toactually start putting these
plans into motion because we'vehad talk about going out and
colonizing Mars for a long time.
We've had individuals like ElonMusk who have wanted to do it
on a, a company wide scale.
We've had.
books written about it forover the last 40 years, right?
(33:56):
Colonizing Mars.
so what are your thoughts on usactually being able to go out
there and these, if we do this,
Jacob (34:03):
I guess it depends what you mean by colonize, if you
mean get some people on theplanet that had been there and
maybe stay for, I really juststarting off six month period.
Yeah.
I think we could seethat in the next.
20 years.
I don't think that'sunreasonable to see the first
person on Mars in our lifetimein the next 20 years or so for
(34:23):
permanent habitation of Mars.
If we ever do that, causethere's not really much
on Mars, to be honestwith you, I don't know.
I think we might end up seeinglike a scientific outpost there.
Some similar, like whatwe have in Antarctica,
maybe in a hundred years.
as far as like a city on Mars.
to be honest with you,there's no economical
reason to build one.
(34:44):
So if we do build one,it's probably going to be
in spite of the economics.
Maybe we'll do that,but I don't know.
I would say a hundredyears would be, okay.
I think maybe a conservativeguess on actually having people
live on the planet, not justvisit maybe 20 years for the
first person who actually putstheir feet on the planet though.
Lucas (35:04):
All right.
you say that it has no, realeconomic value or no reason
to want to live on Mars.
But, it could be an optionbecause our planet is becoming
more and more polluted,more and more populated.
And really, if I feel likepeople, if they had an option to
get that chance to essentially.
Break out and create a newfrontier the same way that
(35:27):
they did when we settled thewest in the united states I
feel like that could be reasonenough to have people want to
go out there and start calling
Jacob (35:35):
Maybe but it's just any work you do making mars
habitable You could do onearth and you would be a
lot take a lot less effort.
Lucas (35:44):
Yeah, but Let's say that if you went out there, and you
were one of the first coloniststo start working on the planet,
then you would have claim toland on the planet, for example.
that is something that wehave seen in history people
are willing to die for.
Jacob (36:00):
But, it would be much better to just get
some land handed to youin like the Sierra Desert.
I guess, if you wanted togo colonize the frontier.
Yeah.
Because at least youcan breathe there.
And not to mention justgiving, getting some land
given to you on Mars doesn'tmean much unless you can
build the infrastructure,like you're going to
have to build a habitat.
(36:20):
And then how are you goingto generate any type of,
there's nothing Earthneeds from Mars really.
So unless there's already sometype of presence on Mars, then
that's, there's no economicreason for me to move there.
Even if I am given a hugeamount of land, it's not like
I can do anything with it.
Lucas (36:36):
Yeah, no, that, that is a fair point.
I'm really just trying totheorize like how we would
get people to Mars andwhy they would want to go.
Jacob (36:46):
I think some people will always want to go there
just for the sake of doing it.
And maybe that'll be enough.
Maybe it's just.
This innate drive to moveon to a new frontier, to
move on to a new place.
The question is, howcan we get the money in
place for that to happen?
Maybe it'll have to besponsored by a government.
Yeah.
Maybe there'll be, causethere is this kind of
(37:07):
idea that we should havea backup plan for earth.
We need to make lifemulti planetary or human
civilization multi planetary.
But I think as faras colonization goes.
Mars is like the favoritetopic of it, but the moon
makes way more sense,building colony on the moon.
The only benefit I seeeconomically to Mars.
Would be maybe a refuelingplatform, but you'd probably
(37:29):
build that on like Phobos, no,
Lucas (37:31):
that would make sense.
I don't know.
It's sad to think aboutthat, that there really is
no value in settling Marsother than it being a plan B
to some kind of catastrophicdisaster happening on.
earth.
Jacob (37:44):
Yeah, not yet.
Maybe in the future, if wehave a lot of space based
infrastructure and People livingin the asteroid belt, it could
make more sense to have sometype of colony on a planet.
Because there are certainprotections Mars give over
living on like an asteroid.
It has a weak atmosphere,but it does have one,
especially if we build it up.
but yeah, no, I think if we'regoing to colonize anything,
(38:05):
the moon makes way more sense.
Lucas (38:06):
Yes,
Jacob (38:06):
absolutely.
But that would be adifferent episode.
Thank you so much forlistening to the show.
We both sincerelyhope you enjoyed it.
You can keep up on thelatest news over on our
website at entropy rising.
com or join the conversation atour subreddit, Rising Entropy.
We release a new episodeevery other week, so
follow to stay in the loop.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Intentionally Disturbing
Join me on this podcast as I navigate the murky waters of human behavior, current events, and personal anecdotes through in-depth interviews with incredible people—all served with a generous helping of sarcasm and satire. After years as a forensic and clinical psychologist, I offer a unique interview style and a low tolerance for bullshit, quickly steering conversations toward depth and darkness. I honor the seriousness while also appreciating wit. I’m your guide through the twisted labyrinth of the human psyche, armed with dark humor and biting wit.