Hey Bill Nye, 'Let's Save Planet Earth before We Move to Mars' #TuesdaysWithBill
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Why can't we marshall the enthusiasm we have for exploring Mars to solve problems on planet Earth? Bill Nye says we're natural explorers and that potential discoveries on Mars have captured our imagination. Do you want to ask Bill a question for a future "Tuesdays with Bill?" Click here to learn how to submit: (http://goo.gl/Joiqzo). Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/bill-nye-on-putting-focus-on-earth-over-mars Follow Big Think here: YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink Transcript - Sam: Hi Bill. My name is Sam. My question for you is why are we trying to live on Mars and re-create Earth there by making an atmosphere and soil and water we can drink and such? Why can't we take those ideas, that motivation and direct it at our own planet that we clearly need the help with? Why is it easier to start fresh on another planet than to get people talking about our own? Bill Nye: Sam. Sam, you are my man. Sam, you're thinking as I do. I meet a lot of people. I am the CEO of The Planetary Society. We advanced space science and exploration. I encourage you to join. And as I say about The Planetary Society, we are not crazy. You meet a lot of people. I meet a lot of people who want to go to Mars and make it like Earth, just as the very idea that you're questioning. And I think people, first of all, just don't grasp the scale of it. It's a planet. It's a whole planet. It's not a wetland that you can reclaim and build a parking garage on top of, it's a whole planet. Furthermore, this planet where you and I are from is perfectly suited to us. We, our ancestors and their ancestors and so on grew up here tuned to these environments, to these climates that we have here on earth. And so people want to go to Mars in the spirit of adventure. Now, as you may infer from my accent I'm from the United States and a lot of my ancestors came here from Denmark and Europe and they set up shop in what the colony of Massachusetts and then they went all the way across North America through Wyoming, the state of Wyoming and now to the West Coast to Washington state and California. And they did that in this great tradition of a pioneering spirit is keep going, keep expanding, keep spreading out and humankind has done that. Everybody is from Africa. Our ancestors are all from the continent of Africa and we spread all over the world. Spread to Australia across an open ocean. The Polynesians in canoes were like we're spreading out man. We're going. So people think well let's spread out and go to Mars. Read Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/jrNJJx.
Comments
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Why are people so obsessed with starting over? Because we have a drastic underappreciation of the importance and effectiveness of Maintenance in our society.
Obviously, yes, innovate. But come on, take care of what you have in the meantime. -
where all Human
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planet not a science experiment may have worked better there :)
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Creating a colony on Mars should NEVER be placed in competition with/or blamed for the lack of investment in making Earth better.
There are thousands of reasons why, but I will mention some of the most obvious ones.
1) Earth has 7.5 billion people; with a great number that just can't get along very well. On Mars, people WILL get along, or die due to lack of cooperation.
2) Unlike on Earth, there are no borders on Mars. There are no states, nor continents. On Mars, there is no such thing as "Americans, Russians, Chinese or Australians. People will be all seen as equal humans from the same home: Earth.
3) Dozens of billions of $ get poured into helping developing nations and our world is better off than ever before. People live better, are better educated, live longer, have more rights, and kill each other less today than at any point in history. Unfortunately, war, poverty and corruption will always happen , it's in our very DNA to fight sometimes, but the scopes, ways and durations in which we fight are more limited than ever.
Thanks to technology, poverty is on the decline and with the rise in education, so is corruption as people begin to fight for more fairness and transparency from both government and corporations.
4) changing a planet's climate is hard. Very hard. That is especially true when you are trying to reverse greenhouse gas emissions while the Earth's population keeps growing and doing so requires us to impose severe restrictions and changes in the very way we live.
On Mars, the inverse needs to happen. We would need to pump as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as possible so that we could warm up the planet, and producing greenhouse gases is something much easier to do than producing one at all!
5) expanding human presence throughout the universe is something that will inevitably have to happen if humans hope to preserve their mere existence from man a made and natural disasters. Mars is just one stepping stone in that direction, but it is a crucial stepping stone that should not be skipped. -
With the current trend in advancement of robotics and A.I. by 2030 a robot will be able to do 80% or more of what a man can do at which point would the cost and risk of putting a man on Mars be worth it. I would say no
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Should we study Mars - absolutely. In order to understand the universe around us and how planets form and die................we must then study planets!! Mars represents the closest planet to Earth than we can do this. As to colonizing Mars - Pfffffffft! Science fiction spilling over into reality as noted. There are sooooooo many issues which would be involved in trying to terraform Mars so as to make it impractical - better to simply look for more habitable planets. So in the end it's called MULTITASKING. Our study of Mars etc. may yield information about planets which we can use towards understanding patterns on Earth as far as environmental issues etc.. Should we one day develop the technology to travel beyond our solar system - then studying Mars can also help us there. So yes - we need to study Mars.
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ok so is bill Nye going to let all the ppl ho agree to the idea work at his job??... Mr bill I have asked the same question since I was in hi school, (I am older now...)... will you hire me regardless of skill set ?? I am the one ho provided the free tilting trike design for all... (my forte is in 3d design, yet I also do some great apple pie!!)
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Little water? No air? Excuse me but isn't H2O (hydrogen and Oxygen)? Oh but you keep blinking your eyes thinking of your lies, while our children suffer. The earth is indeed round AND FLAT, just not spherical. Space is a hoax by the California folks, wake up!
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we need population control I don't know how but if we don't do it this world is done for
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Dispite scince fiction. This is the only planet we get.
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If we want to fix Earth, we have to find the problem first.
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Whaaa... He has danish ancestors? No wonder he is so smart. ~Find the paradox in the statement ^^
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maybe the mars project is the earth project. near term antarctica.
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You could really be a great Doctor.
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If humanity were to invade other planets with life already existing there, I will gladly give up my humanity and ally myself with the Alien Alliance to ward off the human invaders. People must solve their problems on their own planet and not ignore them by going to other planets and screwing it up there as well. The plague of humanity's problem will spread if it is not dealt with it.
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Space exploration and improving environmental conditions on Earth are not mutually exclusive. Many people think this, and it's these ideas that stunt growth and development. Scaled down, it fosters xenophobia, promotes discrimination and science illiteracy.
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why is technology still evolving if we haven't master it, i mean bombs, guns, tanks, viruses etc etc
well we need to work on everything and the amount of effort that is being put into going to Mars is so small compare to other stuff, so little money, but because it matters you hear about it! simple as that! as long as humanity exist there will always exist differences among ourselves. living or establishing a settlement in Mars challenges our human intellect like nothing will, we are not fit for such a hostile environment we basically need to simulate earth conditions there, that alone is developing new technologies which will benefit life on earth. -
Learning how to survive on other planet could help us survive on a devasted earth.
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This is a good one, it takes agreement and teamwork to meet any goal like that (stationing a group on any other planet).
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The situation on Earth considering all ecological problems is very severe, and, unlike unmanned missions, manned missions to Mars would be very risky and costly and developing new technologies to make it less risky is also expensive. Plus no Mars colony in this century will be able to support more people than an average Antarctic science station, and any Mars colony will probably also serve only as science station. After all Antarctic was discovered 200 years ago and it is much closer and has better conditions, but still not colonised, so why do you think that plans of colonising Mars quickly will work any better? Exploring for science - that is ok, for sure, but for that unmanned missions are enough for now
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