Why a Mars Colony is a Dangerous and Stupid Idea 

The idea of uber-rich people trying to escape a problem they created, only to find themselves in an unimaginable hell, kind of makes me smile. Not gonna lie.

Giving the billionaires a one-way ticket to Mars doesn't sound like such a bad idea tbh.

Elon said something that’s make this MUCH worse “if you can’t afford the trip you can just take our a loan and work it off there” he literally said he wants indentured servants to work in his mars colony.

Gotta love how Elon literally said he would be the man who makes the mars laws. No earth laws. What could go wrong

Pollution on Earth as an argument for space colonies have always baffled me. If you can make something like Mars habitable, you can unfuck whatever pollution you have on Earth.

"Travelling to Mars would be miserable, expensive, and life-threatening for anybody involved" I am no longer in favor of space travel to mars "Only billionaires would be able to go anyway" I am once again in favor of space travel to mars

I’m just trying to imagine a world where climate change is so bad that fixing it is harder than terraforming Mars, and I can’t.

the idea of a bunch of people on a reality tv show on mars having to entertain people to fund their own survival seems like a pretty good premise for a show or movie actually

"Following 5 years of work the project is already in the CGI stage" Lmfao literally every "futuristic" project

"only the top 1% will be able to go" "someone will go crazy within a month, and 1 fire/depressurization/etc would kill everyone" yknow this sounds like a great idea for the 1% to pursue!

Just recently spoke with a manager at JPL - NASA. He ranted briefly about how stupid it was that they’re being forced to spend money on the Mars colony project for this exact same reason. Our elected representatives are also easily bamboozled by the likes of Elon Musk. After all, they weren’t immune to Elizabeth Holmes either.

I had been wondering about humanity on Mars for a long time, but it never donned on me that the Martian surface would be incredibly depressing to live on after the initial hype. Imagine waking up to orange dust under your feet, orange rocks on the horizon, and an orange sky above you. Every day for the rest of your life. You'd never realize what you left behind until it was too late.

"And a remote-controlled self-destruct mechanism if colonists ever try to unionize" Damn, he really planned this one out. I'm convinced.

As Neil DeGrasse Tyson said: *"If we could terraform Mars, why wouldn't we just do the same thing to Earth?"*

Why people think rich people are smart is beyond me

As many others have said. I’m actually happy that all of these billionaires are going to go to mars. They can live in hell and when they realize how stupid they were and there’s no way to get back. We can all laugh at how their entire life being driven by arrogance resulted in such a perfect result for them

Seeing as how Mars is such a nice environment, it's a refreshing idea to send all Earth's billionaires to live there.

Every time I hear about a colony on Mars, I remember the story of the early Jamestown colonists. 1. 80% of them died. 2. The survivors wrote passages in their diaries saying things like, "I'd give up my legs to go back. Better to be a crippled beggar on the streets if London." Virginia was far more accessible and habitable to 17th century Englishmen than Mars is to us.

The worst part is the cloud cities on Venus works out to be smarter than a Mars Base. To be honest, though, I think it's probably just easier to save what we currently have.

There's something you missed Adam, there's actually ONE reason for a tiny mars colony built with our current level of technology, populated by billionaires and financed with a reality show: Seeing said billionaires suffer in a literal dead world for our amusement after all, Mars/Ares was named after the god of war due to its blood-like color, and after a few thousand years, I feel like it could use a fresh coat of paint...

Anyone who accuses Elon's projects of being a "train wreck" clearly doesn't understand even the basic principles behind his plans. It's a POD wreck. Get it right.

The moon is a way better target. We will develop lots of technologies from a permanent moon colony.

Anyone remember "Biosphere II", and how well that worked? 😄 All the scientists started to turn on each other (they called it: "Irrational Adversarial Syndrome"), and they sabotaged each other's projects, until they could no longer support themselves without outside intervention. And that was without the stress of a seven month space flight, or living with the looming threat of certain death right outside your door every day.

A thriller movie about a Mars colony where everything slowly starts going wrong and everyone goes crazy with loneliness actually sounds like a pretty great blockbuster

Terraforming the Sahara: "No, that's too hard" Terraforming space Sahara: "Sign me up!"

"Following 5 years of feverish work the project is already at the CGI rendering stage" actually has me in stitches. Thank you Adam.

Excellent debunking. It's nutty to call it "colonizing" since there can never be any actual interaction with the planet; living inside space pods that will need continuous repair is really just being buried alive.

One major reason to build on the moon is that the lunar surface is rich in Helium 3. This isotope is rare on earth because our magnetic field deflects the solar wind (which is full of the stuff) but in places with no such protection (the moon) that are also close to the sun (not mars) it is everywhere. The kick is that Helium 3 is a perfect fuel for nuclear fusion. If fusion is to dominate the grid a moon colony may be our best bet.

Space physicist here, technically the launch windows you talked about at the start of the video aren't for the *fastest* trips, but for the most fuel efficient trips (which is not the same thing, because orbital mechanics can be unintuitive). So if you were able to bring and burn *a lot* more fuel, you could go in a more or less straight line and it would be much faster. But there's a good reason why we never do that. Also yes, the moon is obviously a much better candidate. While all this is going on, ESA are currently developing plans for a lunar colony in the next few decades, with actual scientific goals and achievable deadlines. So that's the space colony news I'd recommend you follow, if any.

The scariest thing I heard was when Musk said he wouldn’t recognize any of Earths laws on Mars because “it’s out of Earth’s jurisdiction”. Could you imagine being basically owned by a company that also gets to decide your basic human rights? If you think Twitter’s employees are being treated badly right now (or any employee of any of Musk’s company for that matter), imagine how they would be treated if no regulator was pushing back against Musk.

Rich people ultimate plan 1. Pollute Earth for your own gain 2. Move to new planet while keeping the poor behind 3. Pollute that planet for your own gain again 4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 indefinitely

You forgot to mention that all airlocks in areas the workers occupy and their space suits will simultaneously open up when the word "union" is said.

I always loved the fact that the "we can terraform Mars" argument completely undermines the "we need to escape climate change" argument. Like, dude, if you have the technology required to make Mars somewhat livable for humans, then don't worry about climate change, cooling the Earth by a few degrees isn't even a challenge if you can terraform Mars...

I remember Neil de Grasse Tyson & Bill Nye basically explaining to folks that the technology and effort required to terraform Mars would be far better spent mitigating climate disaster on Earth....and much more realizable as a goal.

The idea of escaping a climate catastrophe by colonizing Mars is so bizarre. It's like you encounter a dangerous animals while stranded on an island in the middle of an ocean and you decide to row out into the ocean on a wood plank.

I’d rather live in a nuclear wasteland with fallout winter than on Mars… Fleeing to Mars because of climate change, is like resettling from a house filled with smoke to a dynamite factory on fire…

In short: the idea is great, because we send the 1% away on a one-way-trip to certain psychological horror and irradiated death.

I'm honestly shocked that the time that (I think) Elon proposed a deal to send people to Mars for cheap on the condition that they pay off their debt once they get colonyside, basically turning a Mars colony into debtor's prison, wasn't mentioned at all here

If the 1% wishes to move to Mars, I’m all for empowering them to do so.

"Its day 80 of the LiF/Ve On Mars reality show!" "James is black out drunk for the 76th consecutive day!" MF kept his cool for 4 fucking days

When you said that the "powerful elite" will go to Mars I changed my mind and now support the project. We can just send them ASAP just in case.

Elon: "We've got to escape to mars to escape overpopulation and pollution" Also Elon: "We need to have more babies and environmental standards are bullshit"

A better thing about the Moon Colony, is that the launch window is much more forgiving, a rescue mission leaving from Earth would prob need only a day at max to line up a trajectory, instead of two years

It’s so satisfying to come across a safe haven on RU-vid where everybody agrees how stupid an idea space colonization is. I really felt like I was the only one.

The fact that people cannot live in Antartica for long periods of times due to declining mental health just speaks volumes on how ridiculous it would be for regular human civilians mental health living on an entirely different planet millions of miles away from your planet of origin

"A self destruct button in case colonists unionize", you say it as a joke, but I feel it could be less of a joke than you think it is given this dystopia always seems to bear the worst outcomes

First you have to make a "launch platform" that can be used more than once. And not have it damage the rocket when it takes off as it explodes in a shower of concrete chunks.

Terraforming the Sahara would be unironically an ecological disaster

Even if humanity does absolutely nothing about climate change, the Earth of the future would still be infinitely more habitable than Mars.

Kinda surprised Adam would use "trainwreck" to describe something made by a guy who hates trains More of a Tesla pileup IMO

The National Geographic's docudrama series Mars, as pointed out by Murlidhar Aher, is a way to see this whole hypothesis. Furthermore, as pointed by ninjaswordtothehead, the idea of uber-rich people trying to escape a problem they created, journeing through space to a red, dusty, radioactive, harsh rock only to find themselves in an unimaginable hell where they would be eaten away by cancer in a utterly miserable death, die of miscelaneous and trivial accidents or phenomena, or outright kill eachother is indeed greatly endeering. You go there, Felon Musk!

I remember learning about the Mars One project in elementary school, we had questions like: Would you consider living on Mars without the possibility of coming back to Earth? I just thought it was crazy that people were willing to throw their life away for some crazy, destined-to-fail, Mars project It makes me a little happy that they went bankrupt

“If we did send humans to mars, it would be the top 1%” “Living on mars would be awful” SOUNDS WONDERFUL, LET’S DO IT! :D

Even after a climate disaster, Earth would still be a better place to live in than Mars.

The man couldn't handle twitter and blew it up trying to take it "premium" And we expect him to actually provide anything of value to a mars mission?

_"the project is already in the CGI rendering stage."_ 🤣😆😂

Looks at Earth: "Why would anyone live in the sahara desert? its only sand, rocks and death. " Looks at mars: "OMG it would be so cool to live in a planet where there is space desert, space rocks and space death!"

It baffles me that elonbros expect it to be easier to make an uninhabitable planet inhabitable than maintain an already inhabitable planet.

It seems to me it is a great idea to send all the rich to Mars. Whoever is left on earth would just make earth better without those greedy rich idiots in the way to screw everything up.

1:38 lmao if we can't even figure out climate change, how could we possibly expect to terraform a planet?

The idea that Mars could be used to save humanity is stupid as shit. Imagine earth but every square inch is nuked and the earth is stuck in a deep nuclear winter. Make that about 5 times as worse and then have 0 chance of recovery, and that's Mars.

I saw this one A.I. generated quote that said,"They can force you to exercise regularly, but they can't force you to travel to Mars", and honestly, exercising regularly sounds better to me than traveling to Mars.

Next time somebody shows enthusiasm over a Mars colony, ask them: “If you were a fish, would you rather live in the ocean or a fishbowl in someone’s living room?”

Thats always been my issue with terraforming. We cant even MANAGE one planets ecosystem, let alone create a brand new one that works just as well. Its pure sci fi. Even if Mars is colonized, terraforming would have to come much much much later.

"And a remote control self-destruct mechanism in case colonist try to unionize" I laughed so hard then I started to doubt if it was actually true

"If you had the power of geoengineering to terraform Mars into Earth, then you have the power of geoengineering to turn Earth back into Earth. So the argument that if we trash Earth we need another planet doesn’t work. I am not convinced that escaping Earth and leaving others behind to die is the most sensible solution out there" ~ The Neil DeGrasse Tyson

You know what’s even stupider is that Elon thinks he can skip colonizing the moon before he colonizes mars.

The colony is already in the CGI rendering stage, LOL! Well done.

You're an optimist Adam. I think these folks are going to die long before they get anywhere close to Mars.

one of my first thoughts when seeing the Shield Helicarrier was actually "that's cool as hell but it would never fly."

A bunch of billionaires who need a servant to tie their shoe laces, sitting around on Mars waiting for each other to do something. Yeah, that's gonna work 😂

Sending the top 1% including Musk to mars seems like a worthwhile project. ;)

fun fact: I actually got fairly far into the process with Mars One back in 2012, and you're correct - I was not emotionally balanced at the time 😅

As someone who played Outpost 2, I'm 100% sure that a Mars colony or any space colony is a terrible idea.

I sure do love going to a toxic, irrradiated, burning, freezing, death pit!

I would like to add to the hazards of a mars colony with this: mars frequently suffers major dust storms which can obscure the already faint sunlight for long periods of time; and since our first mission there we have already seen planet spanning dust storms six times, often blackening the sky for 9 months or longer. Beyond the obvious danger to permanent structures on the surface, this will also put a major strain on every colonist's psyche and make solar power an unreliable source of energy.

Really glad you brought up "the Moon is better" as a point. Especially if we're going to eventually colonize Mars or do anything in the solar system, a moon facility to launch from would be incredibly useful.

We shouldnt carelessly terraform the sahara desert. Deserts are their own ecosystem with life. They play vital roles in the global ecosystem, like the deliverery of nutritious dust across the globe.

Fun fact: The Marvel effect and Elon Musk has closer ties than you think. For instance, when Robert Downey Jr. was interviewed about his research on Tony Stark, he said that he based the character on Elon Musk.

Ok, one difference between colonizing Mars vs. colonizing Antarctica. My experience reference is I've been to South Pole station 3 times, but never as a winter-over. I.E. I had the sun (both the poles only have one solar day per year) and daily flights (weather permitting) available in case of emergency. The South Pole is at a high altitude (2,835 m (9,301 ft) according to WikiPedia), but because of atmospheric dynamics and weather effects I experienced pressure altitudes in the range between 10kft and 12kft. Yes, that is livable, but a the edge of livable. One of the (many) things that visitors are briefed on for safety is monitoring oneself and others for the signs of altitude sickness. None of the buildings (except for the emergency hyperbaric chamber in the medical facility) are intentionally pressurized. So one is constantly living at the edge of livable atmospheric pressure. This plays havok with mental facilities and is one of the many contributing factors to the "Winter-Over syndrome" and for the non-winter-overs a general mental fog affecting cognition, memory, and critical thinking skills (simple mental math is really hard, for example). On the hypothetical Mars base all the buildings must be pressurized. If pressurized to close to 1 atmosphere then that contributing factor to psychology and physiology effects would be greatly minimized. Though the isolation effects on Mars will be much worse than even winter-overs experience. Winter-overs, at least, know that they will be leaving the pole in less than 1 year even though flights (read this as escape) are impossible through the entire winter... (There is a "joke" among the recurring staff in Antarctica. The first year you go to Antarctica is for the adventure. The second year is for the money. After that you keep going because you don't fit in anywhere else.) While researching this comment (to make sure I remembered the facts correctly), I ran across some interesting articles. Here is a sample: www.livescience.com/antarctic-expedition-changes-the-brain.html It seems that researchers working at Neumayer Station III experienced shrinkage of portions of the brain, with the hippocampus called out in the article. This station is at nearly sea level, so those researchers are probably a closer match to colonists on Mars living in pressurized environments than researchers (and station personnel) living at South Pole station because of the above discussed pressure altitude reasons.

Mars is basically what people fear earth will look like if we don’t fix climate change. Never understood why people want to escape to a desert planet because they fear that earth will turn into a desert planet.

Imagine asking for your first day off from slave labor in 3 months and Elon responds by not sending the food rocket.

Terra forming mars would be a centuries long extremely unpredictable process, which will likely involve crashing giant asteroids from the asteroid belt that contains desired elements into mars. The problem is the technology to haul those asteroids around and the time for mars to settle down afterwards is huge. It might even be impossible. But if it is that would likely be the only way.

Accounts of antarctic winter madness are really interesting to read. An Argentinian medical officer actually set their base on fire so that they were forced to evacuate him. Russians have attacked each other with axes over chess. People go really weird and enter a state of semi-awake hibernation. This mental condition combined with the hazards of Mars would result in multiple deaths in short order.

As for terraforming, since Mars doesn't have a magnetosphere like earth, it seems that it was the main reason that it's atmosphere is so thin, simply because of the solar winds blowing the atmosphere out of mars and into space. So, if someone tries to terraform Mars, first has to address this issue. Otherwise it will be like trying to inflate a tire with a massive hole in it

You forgot about the army of giant cockroach men we'd have to do battle with.

Fun fact: The Netherlands is the second largest exporter of agricultural products (by value), after the US, despite the high population density.

If you really want to feel how Mars feel like, go visit the Gobi Desert. It has everything that mars has except for low gravity and bonus point is that you can breathe there normally without any equipments.

15:56 It hurts to laugh this much! XD

We live surrounded by breathable air, drinkable water, edible food, and friends and family. All we are told today is how much we have fucked the earth up when everything is to our advantage. But yeah we can totally go to a barren desert and build a sustainable future. lol.

Honestly I'm really surprised the Moon-first angle isn't considered nearly as often as it should be. Even if we want to put Mars above all else, having a presence on the lunar surface can allow us to build new spacecraft and base modules so they don't have to be launched from Earth. And even if we hold off on colonizing Mars, the ideas you brought up are honestly reason enough to at least give it a shot. Honestly this was kinda more of a rant from me, Mars is cool but I think more people need to be on #TeamLuna

If you haven't yet "colonized" the high Antarctic, and achieved a sustainable closed arcology (that doesn't even need local air but makes its own from indoor plants) then you are not yet ready to colonize the Moon, much less Mars.

dude im pissing my pants this is the funniest video ive ever watched. 15:00 A SKYPE CALL HOLY SHIT IM DYING

6:20 "...with a wide range of dying opportunities available to you." I almost "died" laughing here...

I think people underestimate how hard making Mars actually self sufficient. You'd need to be able to manufacture every single part used to create the colony in the first place from scratch

“Following 5 years of work the project is still in the CGI stage” - every futuristic project ever

0:43 ok but "lol we're on Mars" IS a very valid reason to go to Mars I mean we should probably deal with the myriad of problems on Earth right now BUT

The idea that completely engineering the atmosphere of Mars is achievable when we haven't figured out how to make a 1% adjustment to earth's atmosphere is so dumb. Even if we could freely transport any equipment that we wanted to Mars it would be it would be crazy.

11:28 Little note for those not in the know: Terraforming the *entire* Sahara is a dangerous idea in itself already. Equatorial winds regularly carry mineral dusts across the ocean from the Sahara to the Amazon; apparently those dusts are crucial for maintaining the ecosystem of South America's famed jungle as they can serve as fertilizer. Terraforming the entire Sahara would surely affect this, potentially even making the situation in the Amazon worse than it already is. Edit: In case it isn't obvious, what I said is of course a simplification. Being accurate such as by referencing numerous scientific articles is going to make my simple *YT comment* look like a bible. That said, just search up related articles by yourselves if you wanna learn more of this system.

Not a fan of the premise of this video. Reminds me of the JFK quote about going to the moon. *bshhhhhhhweeet* Here it is : "We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too."