CDfM Episode #4 Reasons for Going to Mars: an introduction

Welcome to Civilisation Design for Mars.

This time we look critically at reasons for going to mars.

I’m designing a legal and ethical framework for a civilisation on our alternate planet as we become multi-planetary. This channel documents controversial and notable topics encountered along the way. All policies discussed are intended for Mars, not earth.

Today: Looking critically at reasons for going to mars.

Do the reasons for going to mars matter? Do Elon Musk’s reasons matter? Do we know what they are? Who else’s reasons matter? Let’s begin.

Understanding reasons

The reasons that we do things have an impact on how we go about doing them. Our reasons for doing things are also how we measure the success of those things. For example, if you’re planning a trip to Paris, your reasons for going there will impact the way you plan and value the trip. It is possible, if we don’t know your reasons for going to Paris, that we could assume you are going to Paris to see famous landmarks, visit art galleries and stay in a nice hotel. However, if your reason for going to Paris is to see friends there, you may well plan a trip with very few landmarks and no hotel at all. If we don’t know this reason, we may view your trip to be a failure. 

For someone else to understand the kind of trip you’re planning, its successes and failures, they would need to understand your reasons for going. In the case of Paris: if you’re going to see friends, it wouldn’t be that bad if you didn’t see the Eiffel Tower. However, it would be a failure for you to visit Paris if your friends are not in the city when you are there.

The same can be said of Mars. Understanding the reasons for going to Mars matters, because the reasons for going there shape the plan, timing, design, resource distribution and ultimately whether the mission is deemed to be a success by those planning to go there.

Planners and the onlookers

You can see already that there are at least two groups in these scenarios. There are those planning to go somewhere and a second group of onlookers. There is an information disparity between these two groups. The planners have some kind of agreed reasons for going somewhere. The onlookers, however, if they have an interest in the trip, make their own understanding of the trip. They can make a guess or an assumption about the reasons for going. However, the act of assuming, without knowing, will likely lead to incorrect guesses and misunderstandings relating to the entire trip and how its success or failure can be judged.

There’s also a size disparity between planners and onlookers. The planners - those people going on the trip who know their own reasons for going - are almost always a smaller group than the onlookers - the people who do not directly know the reasons for going. The onlookers could be a group made up of all other people in existence if they happen to know and care about the trip.

In the case of the SpaceX mission to start human life on mars, due to the successful marketing of SpaceX’s work, there is a large group of onlookers and a relatively small group of planners. This opens up the potential for a large number of assumptions about the planners’ reasons for going to Mars, some of which may be untrue.

Elon Musk’s reasons

If we are interested in the SpaceX mission to Mars, Elon Musk’s reasons for going to mars are important to understand because it is his privately funded project. For more on this, go to CDfM episode 2. His reasons will shape many or all decisions made in this first phase of work of getting a team of human astronauts to arrive and survive on mars.

How do we know what Elon Musk’s reasons are? Well, we don’t. It’s even possible that his reasons can change over time as work continues or that he cannot, or will not, fully express all his reasons for going. All we, the onlookers, can do is go by the publicly stated reasons, ideally those stated directly by him most recently. If his actions and the actions of SpaceX and the mars mission appear congruent with those publicly stated reasons, we can take it these reasons are the likely reasons for the mission. If the mission actions appear inconsistent with the publicly stated reasons, it is possible that there are other reasons motivating the move to mars that we are unaware of. However, all the reasons held by the planners - stated and unstated - will shape the mission.

Projecting external, unstated reasons on to the mission - such us our own other interests in Mars - which are not based on the planners’ stated reasons, will lead to confusion, disappointment and perhaps outrage on the part of the onlooker as the mission develops. In our earth society currently, there is a large onlooker group who compare and clarify their different stances on social media like Twitter. Whilst much debate about Mars will take place there, it is the stated reasons of SpaceX and Elon Musk - and demonstration of their mission in line with these reasons - that are the most important reasons to understand.

Does it matter why we’re going to mars?

The reasons for going to mars are important. The hostility of Mars to human health means no human can arrive and survive on Mars on their own steam. In comparison to the arrival of Europeans in America, whilst they arrived on a ship together, once they were there they could spread out and start doing their own thing in their own way.

In comparison to those who started the European colonisation of modern America, Elon Musk and SpaceX’s reasons for going to Mars will be relatively more important to the civilisation which results. This is due to our inability to survive on Mars without a designed protective environment. The nature of multiplanetary existence by humans who can currently only survive on earth without technological life-support, means the reasons for the project will shape every aspect of this designed world. It is the necessity of prior design of the infrastructure of this society that makes the reasons for going there in the first place so important to understand.

Your personal reasons for going to Mars

As an eventual immigrant from earth going to Mars, you will have your own reasons for leaving earth and going to Mars. Whilst there will be a plurality of these kinds of reasons for going to Mars - as many reasons as there are humans who leave earth and go - this is a different level of reason to those creating the civilisation itself. For example, I decide to build a supermarket. My reasons for building the supermarket are to feed people and earn a living by selling a selection of foods. That level of reasoning is prior to the reason “I will go to the supermarket and buy food”. They differ, because your choices are limited by my thinking and reasons for creating the supermarket.

The foundations of the civilisation on Mars, much like this supermarket, will be actively designed for us, based on the reasons, thinking and decisions of those who first get there first and build it.

Next time we look at how law will develop on Mars. That’s all for this episode. Please subscribe, share your thoughts in the comments and thanks for listening to Civilisation Design for Mars.

Copyright 2022 S J A Giblin