Abundant Mars Episode 2: Why go to Mars and How to live there – Jane’s Story

Welcome to the 2nd episode of the Abundant Mars Podcast.

In this episode I explain Why we should go to Mars in the first place. Hint: To make life multi-planetary.

But also How to live on Mars and provide at least the necessities of life.

I explain Jane’s stories. 

A story of Jane the Moxie robot repairwoman living in Capitalism versus an Abundance Centered Society.

Main website: https://www.abundantmars.com/

Episode Link: https://www.abundantmars.com/podcast/abundant-mars-episode-2-why-go-to-mars-and-how-to-live-there-janes-story/

YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/nSrqM8asSYo

Summary

• The main reason to go to Mars is to make human life multi-planetary. This protects humanity from various existential risks on Earth like asteroids, solar flares, viruses, nuclear war, etc.
• Living on Mars is extremely challenging due to the harsh conditions – freezing temperatures, thin CO2 atmosphere, high radiation, low gravity, toxic dust, and isolation. But these challenges can be overcome.
• Key necessities for survival on Mars include reliable systems for oxygen, water, food, shelter, electricity, health, internet, transport, education and entertainment. Most of these need to be engineered as closed-loop systems.
• Selecting the right people is critical – They need to be physically and mentally fit, have useful skills, and be psychologically stable. No extreme sociopaths nor psychotics allowed. Training will need to be rigorous.
• The story contrasts two scenarios for the character Jane working on Mars – one within a capitalist system and one in an “Abundance Centered Society” (ACeS).
• In the capitalist scenario, conditions are difficult, systems are proprietary, and there is little room for innovation nor quality of life. In the ACeS scenario, open collaboration and a systems perspective allow Jane to thrive and innovate, such as creating a rainforest dome.
• The episode discusses the benefits of modeling Martian habitats and societies in detailed VR simulations to iterate and test out ideas. A game contrasting capitalist and ACeS scenarios on Mars could be illuminating.

The key takeaways are that becoming multi-planetary is crucial for humanity’s long term survival, it is immensely challenging but achievable, and doing so via an Abundance Centered Society model may lead to far better outcomes than via default capitalist approaches.

Books mentioned:

• Taming Toxic People: The Science of Identifying and Dealing with Psychopaths by David Gillespie
• Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal
• Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things that Seem Impossible Today 

Recommendations:

• You Are Not So Smart Podcast episode 197 – Conspiratorial Thinking
• Revolution Now podcast by Peter Joseph or on YouTube
• Zeitgeist Addendum  by Peter Joseph – This is the movie that started the Zeitgeist Movement and sent me down the journey towards an Abundance Centered Society / RBE
• Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell “Building a Marsbase is a Horrible Idea: Let’s do it!“
• Scott Manley – How Do You Make Rocket Fuels?

Some References:

• Disaster Scenarios excerpt from The New Human Rights Movement  
• Info about MOXIE on Mars (the Experimental equipment)
• Doomsday clock now set to 90s  
• Carrington Event  
• Concentrating Solar Thermal explanation or the science  or for the engineering of Renewables in Australia

I think I’ll nickname this the “Chicken” episode.

You can Listen on SoundCloud:

Watch on YouTube

You might also want to watch Zeitgeist Addendum

Or watch Building a Marsbase is a Horrible Idea: Let’s do it!

You can also view the script on Github in Markdown format