He should have left Maynards name out if it. Simon always ruining shit by referencing the thing(how long did he ruin inside jokes by always saying as much), he could leave it so if you, then you know.
Seriously, though, how much history and sci-fi do we have telling us the same message: that even if we succeed, what we will get for our troubles is an interplanetary war as the organizations that funded the effort want a return on their massive investment and the colonists resent that their entire life is spent paying back endless interest (to people born into more affluent lives than them) on a loan they inherited from birth and never signed up for? Just because there isn't anyone living there right now doesn't mean colonialism is a good idea (especially with those absurd shipping costs). If anyone should know how doomed to failure the venture is, it should be the UK and USA.
Everytime you started talking about the need for CO2, I just kept thinking "Good thing we're really good at making that!" lol, you didn't say it, but I was expecting those words haha
How about trying to change the CO2 concentration on Earth first from 0.04% to 0.03% as a test of our skills? Being about 1/10,000 the change needed on Mars, how hard can it be?
@@nerfherder4284 And what would constitute a "completely successful endeavor" at this point? If you cannot see the extent to which SpaceX has transformed the launch industry for the better, than you're a fool. Admittedly that delusion seems like it's pretty common, but it's just that, a delusion. I guess you could say that Musk had nothing to do with SpaceX's success, but then again, quite a lot of folks in the Soviet Union insisted that Sergei Korolev was nothing more than just a glorified and irritating manager who took credit for other's achievements (and if that perspective seems stupid in retrospect it's because it is). Incidentally, I also regard that perspective as delusional for another reason, if throwing at money at space was all it took, than Blue Origin wouldn't be the joke that it currently is.
@@alexanderstone9463 except we already know how to reduce CO2. We just need to figure out how to convince people that a 2000 year old zombie demigod isn't coming back to fix everything and we need to do it ourselves.
Very true. And we still don't have life support systems that can go, without replacing, for an entire round trip to Mars. People fantasizing about Mars need a reality check every now and then. Space exploration is interesting, but it's not going to be like a sci-fi movie.
Just getting to Mars will be an endeavor in itself. The vessel will be spending months in open space, which means the crew will need to be shielded from solar and cosmic radiation. More shielding means more mass, which means a bigger vessel, which means even more mass, and so on. And that's just one of the many issues that need a solution if we want a crew to make the trip and return alive.
Simon died thirteen years ago, but not before he loaded his image and personality into an AI construct. Simon is now the RU-vid version of Skynet. That's why he runs every channel. All content creators are actually Simon with different skins and voices.
This just in, I have decided to spend $5 trillion dollars on a new city at the bottom of the Marians Trench! 100sq foot apartments start at $200,000 a month, you cannot go outside (hint, squish!), and sunlight, wind, and fluffy animals are all explicitly prohibited. On good days, you may be able to see your neighbor through a 3-foot thick window, the size of a coffee cup. Any takers?
Of course there is another channel I've never seen from Simon and his team. You guys have an absurd work ethic, no idea how this many videos are even possible.
He had to use a whole day for the gacey story. I guess I'd need at least 5 of those videos here to recuperate from that Trainwreck off a person to talk about
I love how I just randomly stumble upon more of your channels. I'll think I've found them all but then there's suddenly more like Hydra heads or Spirit Halloween stores.
This is the best absolutely perfect channel for me love all of your stuff with science fiction has a special place in my heart thank you for the video I enjoyed it immensely please keep them coming
Elon: I will buy twatter......Simon Whistler...I will just have all the channels on RU-vid and gain ownership by volume of content. Good on ya mate....Keep it up.
.........ANOTHER channel , Simon?!?!? I'm already several hours behind on viewing the others right now. I'm going to have to quit my job if you keep this up. =)
The best hard-scifi series I've read on terraforming Mars is the "Red Mars" series by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's a couple decades old, but the science is spot on for the time, and largely still accurate. He knew what he was talking about. I recommend it highly if you're into that sort of thing.
Yep, it's pretty great. I'm generally pretty skeptical about humans living on Mars, let alone terraforming the damn thing, but the end state of Mars in those books seems like a somewhat reasonable compromise. Still, I can't help but think that any place with 1/3 gravity is kind of a non-starter.
@@adamlytle2615 it will make great for manufacturing, a world we don't have to care about polluting that is cheaper to escape.... I don't know why people want to terraform it into a new Earth, we should use it to off-site Earth-destroying industry! One doesn't have to terraform for that, just perfect dome city life so it can sustain the engineers who fix the robots.
I made a similar comment, this series is not one I recommend to many people unless they like hard sci-fi, but it is one I've read twice and still think about fairly frequently.
I have read that serie, it was great as "science fiction", but unfortunately there is an annoying word in this : "fiction". What is discribed in those books is maybe as much as wonderfull as a crime against science. There are so many wonderfull ideas and it's very well discribed in a way you start to think it's believavble but here is the crime, by doing this so well many people without a strong science background would start to think it's doable and forget that this is just fiction. When i read comments here on youtube on such subjects, it's making me sad to see so many people completely involved into this and oblivious that some self proclaimed expert are spreading fake science like snake oil scammers. It's so much fun to forge fake science, i did it myself when i was at the university studying physics, i made a very nicely put theory about the science of flying saucers and i just put it in the official university library as an approved paper, i know i should not have done that!!
Another problem with Mars's gravity is that it's just too weak to hold on to O2 in its atmosphere. It would just leak out into space, and so would the co2 and o3
Yeah that is a major problem that Simon missed although Titan is smaller than Earth and has dense atmosphere for its size. I don't why he brought the muscle atrophy they can easily be solved with drugs, considered how long a terraforming project would take all medical issues would be solved long before the project would start.
For a really good look at potential approaches to terraforming (or areoforming, as the case may be) Mars, check out Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars," "Green Mars," and "Blue Mars," AKA the Mars Trilogy. Awesome books, based in hard science.
Simon, I think it's about time. Millions of people want to know how you do this? Your own journey and the journey of your channels deserves its own Megaprojects video! Please!
Actually that would make a really interesting video. Casual viewers (such as myself) only have a vague idea as to what's involved with running successful RU-vid channel(s). I'm sure organizations like Simon's employ writers, producers, video editors, researchers, camera operators, IT personnel, marketers, office managers, and others I'm not even thinking of. It would be interesting to see what's involved with producing a video, start to finish, along with other aspects of running their business.
@@stevenbecker5571 Absolutely, those are always very insightful videos but it depends a lot on who the channel owner is. Simon is awesome, and yes he does have a team. Writing, Editing and Research. One unit of each for each of the channels. I wonder when Simon would make such a video though. However, if you're really keen, you may find it fruitful to check out 'Linus Tech Tips'. I'm not suggesting it for the tech part, just the video making and team, material etc management part. LTT is like an entire organization now. They're very genuine, upfront and take accountability eagerly. There is good content there about how they make their videos and their entire operation around it. You can also check out MKBHD, they too have i think 1 or 2 videos on that. The host of MKBHD has a dedicated tutorial on video making for RU-vid on another platform actually.
Still a lack of magnetosphere..? All the ideas for orbital space stations rely heavily on Terra Firma magnetic shielding... Organisms will need shielding to prevent random solar storms from turning the thing into a misery laden death casket. The bigger, the more shielding... liquid H²O actually is relatively mass effective, but hot/cold cycling and "surrounding" containment (while maintaining liquidity...) is... "challenging"...? 👍👍
If you're going to build something like that, why put it around Mars rather than Earth? The only thing you accomplish putting it there is making your interest connection terrible.
It blows my mind how often (always pretty much) a big issue about Mars when talking about terraforming or colonizing it is completely ignored and not mentioned and at all...and that's GRAVITY, which is only about 0.35 of Earths gravity, and we can't change that, ever, no amount of terraforming will do it. That's a huge difference compared to Earth and would lead to massive changes in our way of life, massive changes to our bodies over time, and many things which are possible here would be very difficult there.
I put a comment on this subject. the lower gravity is not simply an issue for our bodies that are used to an acceleration of 9.8 m/s2, but rather the primary concern is that the gravity of mars is far too low to hang onto atmospheric gasses Matter stratifies by density in a gravity well. Dense matter like iron and nickle fall to the deepest part of the well (the planet's core) while lighter elements are startified up through and to the light elemental gasses that would make up an atmosphere. Mars is not a candidate for an atmosphere simply due to its mass. Venus doesnt have a magnetosphere to speak of and yet it still has an atmosphere. This is because it is a more massive body creating a deeper gravity well than mars which allows it to hang onto more atmospheric gasses We'd be better off figuring out how to get venus to rotate and then fixing the atmosphere thats already present than to waste our time on mars
Hopefully this makes people understand how shockingly amazing our planet is hopefully one day (can't see it being any time soon) we will learn to live together and protect it
My worlds just collided. Simon quoted Maynard. I maaayyy have jumped off the couch. I love this channel. I didn't think you could outdo Casual Criminalist. But scifi science? Tool? Hooray to the author of this episode!
I love these videos, but is there any chance the "transition" sound could be made quieter or sound less like my earbuds are experiencing a massive hardware failure? Right fucking startled me the first time
Thanks Kevin for the script, Simon for the hilarious commentary and Aspen for the edit. Dont forget Musk promised us an android and gave us a guy in a lycra fetish suit. Can we cover the Ringworld series sometime? Or the Green Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson would have been good for this episodes topic. Deals with Mars terraforming fairly realistically.
G'day, Actually, nope. Ringworld was written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, the two Fantasists who convinced Ronnie RayGunZAP(!) to throw Taxpayers' money at attempting to build the ENTIRELY FICTITIOUS "Strategic Defence Initiative" which bankrupted the USSR, thus DIRECTLY leading to Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin's Prissyduncie of Russia. Ringworld Engineers was written to correct ALL the Scientific Errors in the original - after FREEMAN DYSON wrote to inform them of their Bullshit Content. Kim Stanley Robinson has NEVER yet written ANY actual Science Fiction regarding Mars. His entire Red/Blue/Green Mars Trilogy was a pure Fantasy-Fiction and Space Cowboy Operetta triptych. As an example, in Red Mars, about 1/5th of the way in, two leading characters are on a Planetary circumnavigation flight, in an "Ultralight" Airship featuring an "Arrowhead-shaped Lifting Body" so it cannot contain sufficient Hydrogen to achieve Negative Buoyancy (because it is flat, not cylindrical)...; so to hover or rise vertically it relies on Thrust/Lift from directionally-adjustable Electric Airscrews to haul it into the Sky, or propel it fast enough to generate sufficient Lift to maintain altitude. Solar Panels covering the top surfaces are relied on to generate twice as much Current as the Motors require - storing half in Onboard Batteries..., to enable flight throughout the full night. OK, so far so stupid..., but hypothetically the Laws of Thermodynamics are yet intact. However..., then a Dust Storm blanks the Panels, a Wind Storm is approaching, the Hero and Heroine need to get back to Basecamp before the Wind shreds their Airship-fantasy... So to recharge the Batteries they mount Wind Turbines spinning DC Generators all over the outside of the Airshit..., using the Windmill filled Batteries to run the Airscrew's Motors, to generate the Airspeed with which to drive the Windmills to charge the Batteries which feed the Motors. So, your "Realistic" KS Robinson is literally relying on PERPETUAL MOTION & FREE-ENERGY to propel his Bullshit Fantasy, before getting 200 pages in. Betz' Law of Wind states that NO Wind Turbine is capable of extracting any more than 0.593 of the Energy in the Air Column going through it's Disc, and converting that Wind into Torque. Very few Generators turn more than 95% of the Torque they use, into Current..., very few Motors turn more than 95% of the Current they are fed into Torque...; and a propulsive Airscrew is a Wind Turbine designed to run backwards, built inside out and running upside-down..., in that Propellers impart Energy into the Airflow whereas Wind Turbines extract Energy from the Wind. And Betz's Law of Wind is an EQUATION. It works BOTH Ways. So if you take 1,000 Watt/Hours from the Battery and put it into the Motor then 950 W/Hr of Torque emerges to turn the Airscrew, producing 563.3 W/Hr of Thrust...; and if one pretends that Induced and Parasite Drag somehow do not enter the equation..., then the Wind Turbine Rotor extracts 344 W/Hr of Torque from the Slipstream passing by the Airship..., which the Generator converts to 317.36 Watt/Hours which goes back into the Flatteriez. And Kim Stanley Robinson is SO unscientific that he thought such Horseshit, fit, for inclusion in an allegedly "Scientifically realistic but Fictionalised Examination of Human Colon-isation of Mars." And, you swallowed THAT...(?) ! Perpetual Motion peddlers are ALL pathetic Bullshit Artists who deserve being pilloried and disparaged, at EVERY possible opportunity. So. Go forth, and talk Bullshit no more. Such is life, Have a good one. ;-p Ciao !
Something that always seems to get missed about terraforming Mars as a place to live if we ruin Earth is: if we have the ability to terraform Mars, we would be able to much easier just repair the Earth.
@@WarblesOnALot @WarblesOnALot Damn dude, you got some seriouse hate for a decent writer. Did he kill your dog or piss in your Cheerios or something? As far as the lengthy rant you went on, yay for your opinion I guess? For those of us poor mortals who read sci fi without a PhD in physics, astrophysics and the myriad of degrees needed to terraform another planet (and you seem to have left out YOUR accreditations in those fields), it read as much more practical than many, many similar story lines written over the decades, of which Ive read a lot of. And definitely no more impractical than most. Also, Ringworld is great, sorry you have no taste. The whole point to this channel is to POINT OUT THE FALLACIES in Sci Fi and discuss what may be right or wrong with the science. I mean really, who shit in your shoe this morning or do you just wake up and choose douche canoe as default mode?And warblesalot is a good moniker for you, you seem to spout a lot of crap.
It is not missed it is far easier to live in the artic than mars.....you'd have to really really really fuck up earth to male earth harder to live on than an even partially terraformed mars.
That's not the only thing old muskie promised? Auto taxi's by 2020 Tesla semi Tesla sports car tesla Ute Muskie " forgot " to refund all thoses people's deposits as well Old muskie is nothing but a con man and scam artist , the leader of a cult
I do wonder if this is your Friday, before you're done for the week, video. You know that euphoric feeling when the work week is almost done. Just push on through a little longer, until you're free for 48 hours.
Wouldn't o'Neill cylinders and megastructures make more sense as future homes for humans considering it would be more cost effective and it would use less resources and take way way less time to build one that essentially remaking the earth again
As Isaac Arthur put it, terraforming Mars vs mining resources from asteroids, Mercury, the moon, etc and building space habitats is akin to hollowing out a tree to make a house vs. Cutting down a tree to make lumber to build a house.
Theoretically, these types of space-borne megastructures are easier than terraforming Mars, but by no means easy. However, we can jerry-rig shelters on Mars and live there now for far cheaper than even the cost of the ISS which isn't exactly roomy. So if the goal is somewhere to live, the Moon and Mars are better bets, since even low gravity is easier to work in than no gravity, and we can live there during the course of the project. Also, emergencies on Mars are life-threatening, but would be slightly easier to recover from or stop in their tracks, while an emergency in a space craft goes deadly much quicker. All in all, space projects are easier and faster in the long run than terraforming Mars, but habitability happens faster and easier on Mars than in space
No, Earth makes sense as a home for future people, just like current people. Population is going to stabilise in a century or so. There is enough area on Earth
@@KateeAngel But there are a lot of things that can make Earth uninhabitable; a gamma ray burst, an asteroid, humans doing something stupid, a bad pandemic, etc. There is the old saying about having all of your eggs in one basket. Besides, eventually, humans will have to leave Earth if they intend to keep going as a species. The Earth will not last forever.
I've watched a bunch of terraforming videos but this is the first one that brought up the problem of the magnetosphere. I always comment something like "your whole plan ignored the fact that Mars has no magnetosphere, go back to the drawing board." I was really happy to see that you included that problem here. I've also postulated the simplest way to restart Mars' core would be to dig out a crater and direct a big, iron heavy asteroid into it. That would create enough heat to at least get started and would also increase the gravity on Mars.
Magnetosphere is definitely my #1 missed topic when it comes to the mars colonization conversation. Nice to see a few other people haven't missed it. Add to that, "Martian soil" is actually a powdered dust ground over a billion years to be so fine that it could slip into the blood stream through your pores. And it is probably more or less impossible to filter out with current air filtration technology. Another issue frequently overlooked in mars terraforming propaganda. I say Mars is a good proving ground, somewhere we can go to form a temporary colony, learn the ins and outs of exocolonization, then we get the ____ out of there and move on to much better targets further out in the solar system.
Um, you missed another important element life depends on and that is, as far as I can tell, nowhere on mars: nitrogen. Most of our atmosphere is nitrogen, and nitrogen is a key component of DNA and protein.
@Cancer McAids I don't know. Which has a smaller delta-v and easier logistics - taking some from Venus's atmosphere, versus bringing it in from the Kuiper belt?
Considering that Mars is prone to meteorite strikes and dust storms with terrifyingly fast wind speeds the only half-way realistic way to found a colony on Mars is to build the colony underground. For that we would have to figure out a way to create an artificial ecosystem strong enough to support whatever crew we might want to station there along with a power source to support the colony with an eye to expansion along with powering whatever terraforming equipment is needed and some facilities to enable resuply. And that's all before any terrafoming effort can even be started. Realistically it makes more sense to build underground cities on Earth (especially in uninhabitable areas such as deserts) and the moon than to do so all the way out on Mars. In fact a moon colony would be a sensible intermediary step before sending further missions to Mars and other outer planets because in theory a moon base could be expanded to become a resupply base.
Actually, the atmosphere being blown away by solar winds would take millions of years. We could, however, be done with generating an atmosphere in a few hundred (We could also do it faster, but the kinetic energy of all that gas would impact Mars with such force that it would turn it into Mustafar if released all at once)
Don't try to do the whole planet at once, just concentrate on building a dome over a small area. It's simply impossible and impractical to try and do terraforming at our current level of technology. We should just build domed over cities, or build underground.
Harder still, you'd need a moon of sufficient size to keep the core going. Part of the theory is gravitational tides help keep a planetary core spinning. Don't worry about nukes, or any of that crap, you just have to put together a moon, toss it into a stable orbit around Mars and get rid of the other two moons to make sure you have a consistent tug going. We are not about tossing about random moons to jumpstart planets.
@@EverHappyDude People are already trying to do that. They just aren't sharing the "how" with the rest of us because they know they will lose their chance if they do, and possibly their lives as well.
I forget where on YT I got this, Answers with Joe, maybe, but apparently a several km square solar “windblock” placed in the Lagrange Point between Mars and the Sun would shield Mars enough to make an internal magnetosphere unnecessary. You could then concentrate on more ‘standard’ terraforming methods. While both a giant solar shield and terraforming an atmosphere deficient planet are beyond massive undertakings, if the shield theory works, I think it’s the only feasible method to colonize Mars within 100 yrs. If it doesn’t work...why the heck aren’t we looking closer at Venus?
@@nathanfausti9213 "why the heck aren’t we looking closer at Venus?" Because most people associate Venus with 900C temperatures, Challenger Deep pressures, and boiling acid rain, and not with a cut-rate Bespin hanging from a fleet of balloons.
You forgot to mention that even if you could overcome all the hurdles and terraform mars, growing food might be a real big problem. Martian soil is toxic, due to relatively high concentrations of perchlorate compounds containing chlorine. 😀
Whats with this obsession of rich people with other planets. How about fixing all the problems here on earth, Elon can throw a couple of billion at resolving the homelessness epidemic in North America but no, instead let's blow up spaceships
Great idea: NBA all-star game takes place on Mars. Who wouldn't want to watch players who can't breathe dunking on 25 foot tall hoops? Well, they'd try before death.
Lol I didn't know that Simon had new channel... I randomly stumbled upon this one.. And about Science and Sci-fi my 2 great loves.. This was hilarious and informative , also interesting learning new things and terms that I didn't know about...
There is no oil on Mars. There is no coal on Mars. There is no free oxygen on Mars. There will be no manufacturing processes, on Mars, that will generate CO2.
@@o0alessandro0o there are quite a few metallurgical processes that create Co2. Co2 is not only made by burning fossil fuels. It’s just the easiest way to do it. As a side note of course oil doesn’t exist on Mars. That’s a strange thing to say.
@@Forsworcen So there are, but I'm fairly sure that most if not all of those processes require some form of pure(ish) carbon, such as coke (eg, steel) or graphite (eg, aluminium), and produce CO2 by reducing the metal oxides in the ore. The alternative is processing ores that come in the form of carbonates, which aren't nearly as common as oxydes and hydroxydes.
@@o0alessandro0o I was actually thinking of aluminium specifically when I made the initial comment interestingly enough since it’s ridiculously common in other materials and the process to remove it does exactly what we want to do on mars
@@Forsworcen I have no idea where you expect the carbon to come from, though. Bauxite, the primary source of Al on Earth, contains no carbon, just oxides and hydroxides of varous metals. We throw stupid amounts of electricity and graphite at it, and get CO2 and metallic Al out of the deal... But that carbon in the CO2 comes from the graphite electrodes. In fact, there is a very good chance that, if and when we start producing Al on Mars, we'll want to recapture that CO2 and convert it back to graphite, because we cant' just go out and dig up some more of it.
I would love to know why Venus has an atmosphere with no magnetic field due to its stopped core, while Mars, which is farther, doesn't have an atmosphere.
There’s a huge mass difference, so gravity is about a 6th of that on Earth, which is only slightly more than Venus. That’s the main factor involved, regardless of the magnetic field.
@@TheCiroth he may have covered it on a geographic video but the tldr is that venus is roughly earth size and density, so by sheer gravitational force it holds onto the heavier gasses whereas lighter gasses escape.
Y'all know I love everything Simon puts out. I would totally listen to him read a telephone book. ... So, can I ask a favor? Please remember that some of us listen to the videos while wearing earphones. The "glass breaking" sound between segments is horrible to listen to through earphones. --- Would it be horrible of me to ask not to use that sound anymore?
Terraforming a planet like mars is litterally harder than strip mining it and using the materials to make a similar liveable area worth of space habitats. Artificial space habitats (think O'Neil cylinders) could also more closely replicate earths conditions including temperature, gravity, atmospheric pressure, and atmospheric composition. Terraforming Mars could potentially give us billions of people, but strip mining it could give us trillions of people.
to surrect planets is how to live in a universe - melt large amounts of ice with reflectors, water absorbs dust and radiation as heat, boil off be greenhouse insulation and atmospheric pressure (once it rains fish can survive mars nature)
The reality is that space Habitats is 100% how we will eventually move into space. There is no reason once outside of a gravity well that we will enter another one. In the short term (next 100 years) we will have some sort of moon base, but I don't expect anyone alive right now will see any permeant residents on Mars.
@@replica1052 But with a lack of intrinsic magnetosphere most of the gas from melting ice (CO2 mostly) experiences ion escape and you just have the same old Mars but with less ice. Also increasing the temperature, in this case through reflectors to melt the "water" ice, wouldn't work as Mars' atmospheric pressure isn't high enough on average to have H2O in a liquid phase.
