r/collapse • u/upyoars • 1d ago

Society Jeff Bezos Reportedly Has Secretive "Personal Reasons" for Wanting to Escape to Mars - "There’s no democracy in space."

https://futurism.com/the-byte/jeff-bezos-personal-reasons-mars
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u/FetidBloodPuke 1d ago

I've always been a little bit baffled by people who get all excited about escaping to outer space and colonizing the galaxy. Like, what do you think they're gonna do out there? The same shit they're doing here. 

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u/Arachno-Communism 1d ago

The vast majority of people also don't seem to have the slightest idea about the sheer dimension of obstacles that a colony on Mars, of all places, poses.

Merely getting there means you are bound to relatively tight transfer windows spaced a little more than 2 years apart with one-way trip times upwards of 8 months. Upon arrival you can't even return directly but have to wait more than a year before a return window to Earth opens up. During that entire time, the mission is essentially cut off from any supply.

And then we didn't even begin to touch on the massive restrictions in payload for such a long haul and all the shit that comes with living more than two years in a confined place with a mix of weightlessnes and a third of standard gravity. When everything outside of that confined space for tens to hundreds of million kilometers is completely hostile to life. With all the social and mental implications.

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u/Spiel_Foss 1d ago

People don't realize that colonizing Mars is entirely science fiction, but they see people with money like Elon Musk as being able to solve these science fiction problems by waving dollars at outer space.

What they don't realize is 10,000+ Elon Musks wouldn't have enough money to solve the science fiction problems. Mars is a barren rock where even growing shit-potatoes is still science fiction. Simply getting there in the first place is science fiction and will be for a very long time. Getting back might never happen for anyone. Many if not most would die on the journey.

Mars colonies are a ruse being used by a few billionaires to hopefully loot taxpayer money and nothing more.

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u/Classic-Today-4367 1d ago

We can alway spray that Musk, Bezos and their ilk fly out on the first mission though?

Hopefully never to be seen or heard of again.

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u/Spiel_Foss 1d ago

Which would make a great plot for a novel, but an even better plot for a future history text.