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Dr. Robert Zubrin with a brilliant answer to "Why Should We Go To Mars?"

Jamin Gray · 470.4K views · 2015-12-08 · 4:26

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Overview

A short clip of Dr. Robert Zubrin, author of The Case for Mars, answering why humanity should go to Mars. He argues that societies grow by challenging themselves and that exploration inspires young people.

On Hacker News

HN commenters repeatedly link it as the best concise answer to the question of why go to Mars when problems remain on Earth.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 5 months · HN mentions 2016–2021

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What people said

sktrdie · 2021-04 · Strong recommendation

When I hear these kind of "why go to space if we have people dying of hunger here on earth?" kind of arguments I always refer them to the amazing speech Robert Zubrin gave on the answer for "why go to Mars?": [VIDEO] The idea is that: "We’d get millions of scientists, engineers, and inventors, technological entrepreneurs, doctors, medical researchers out of that (going to mars), and the intellectual capital from that would enormously benefit us" I do believe of course that all things should be done - we should do the best we can to first save our planet. But that doesn't mean we should stop doing the rest of the "pushing the envelope" kind of things.

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herbstein · 2020-05 · Strong recommendation

Robert Zubrin has what I consider a great, comprehensive answer to why we should go to Mars. But ultimately it generally applies to all space exploration. [VIDEO]

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thaumaturgy · 2018-07 · Strong recommendation

The person I responded to, in the part that I quoted, brought up people without electricity and plumbing as a contrast to spending efforts on exploration. It looks like an either/or to me. > People are simply arguing against spending more on it when we have more pressing issues to contend with. But this argument happens every time the issue of funding space exploration comes up. Every single time. Without fail. Not a single time is there a proposed NASA budget without part of the discussion devolving into, "why don't we just hand the money out to the poor instead?" Not a single time do the risks and costs of SpaceX, or a new satellite, or the rovers, or the ISS, or other efforts get discussed without someone saying, "but cancer..." This is a line of thinking which scrutinizes every single dollar spent on exploration. Left unchallenged, it would eventually halt all spending on exploration altogether. I, and a lot of other people -- like the person at the top of this thread -- believe that exploring Mars is not just worthwhile, it's necessary, in spite of the many other people on Earth who have more immediate needs. Dr. Robert Zubrin argued that case far more eloquently than I could: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Jamin Gray, played through YouTube.

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