Considering the colonisation of Mars? Werner Herzog would like a word
- Reference: 1606298531
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/11/25/herzog_slams_musk_mars_plan/
- Source link:
In an [1]interview with Inverse , Herzog described Musk's dream of colonisation as "an obscenity", and compared humans to locusts, emptying one planet of resources before moving on to the next.
Herzog's comments came during the publicising of the director's latest project, Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds , a documentary on meteors, comets, and the cultural and physical impact they've had on Earth.
[2]
Werner Herzog in Cannes in 2019
As well as directing the feature, Herzog also narrated it.
The Register asked Herzog about the interview and he told us, regarding his "obscenity" remark: "When speaking about technological utopias that will come to an end in the 21[st] century, I mean not only colonization of Mars, or other planets out there, but also the idea of immortality – as if we could abolish death by modifying DNA sequences in our bodies." He went on to say: "I would like to add something about Elon Musk: he is doing the doable – electric cars, reusable rockets, and soon improved batteries. In pursuing this, he is the right man for our time."
The film-maker was not averse to the idea of visiting Mars with a camera but reckoned the longer term plan of a self-sustaining city was a mistake.
Herzog isn't alone. The idea of colonising Mars has been met with much scepticism over the years. Former Voyager team member Garry Hunt told The Register that the concept of terraforming the planet was "absolutely stupid" and went on to detail the numerous problems faced by those seeking to live on or even attempt to make Mars more Earth-like.
Let's go space truckin': 1970s probe Voyager 1 is now 14 billion miles from home [3]READ MORE
Highlighting the lack of pressure on Mars, Hunt told The Reg : "There's no way the planet can hold the gases naturally in the atmosphere". He also pointed out that "Mars does not have a magnetic field" – meaning it has little defence against the constant stream of charged particles spewed from the Sun.
Hunt's take was that humanity needed to work together to deal with some of the more down-to-Earth challenges facing our species.
Herzog has interviewed Musk in the past, and the billionaire [4]cropped up in 2016's Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World in which the director cheerfully (at least as cheerfully as Herzog gets) said he would accept a one-way ticket to the Red Planet. Laughing, Musk replied: "I think we'll want to offer round trips."
Herzog is notable, in the opinion of this hack, for improving whatever production in which he turns up, be it the first Tom Cruise Jack Reacher vehicle in 2012 or a surprise voice role in 2014's animated Penguins of Madagascar . He also had a part in Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian in 2019.
We can but hope that the great man will be able to provide the narration should Musk's Martian dreams ever come to fruition. ®
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[1] https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-mars-city-werner-herzog
[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/11/24/herzogshutterstock.jpg
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/18/voyager_1_14_billion_miles/
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we6rMEIGp9s
[5] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Fitzcarraldo
I was thinking more along the lines of
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguirre,_the_Wrath_of_God
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguirre,_the_Wrath_of_God
There’s hope yet!
I mean nobody thinks that colonising Mars is easy. And yes, I agree with Werner that from the outside we will look like locusts flocking from planet to planet. I’m also hopeful, though, that being forced to face and deal with global warming and global pollution will bring forward better, less environmentalLy disruptive and more sustainable ways of working that will have a big effect on what happens as and when we start ‘doing more’ off-planet. It won’t stop us using resources elsewhere - I mean, if everything were going swimmingly we probably wouldn’t be thinking about doing it at all, right? Certainly not with the level of urgency Elon is bringing.
And I love how he’s doing large scale R&D in public. Just awesome to watch.
Elon thinks big and aims very, very high and I applaud him for that. Even if he misses his original target he’ll still have achieved more for the human race than most. He’s already single-handedly shown us that you can mass produce electric cars (and roll out your own charging network) even though the incumbents are dragging their heels and building hybrid abominations (an emotional term, yes) that allow people to feel good about the batteries they haul around while still polluting and costing a fortune to maintain.
Re: There’s hope yet!
"that allow people to feel good about the batteries they haul around while still polluting and costing a fortune to maintain.". Because you think that building and recycling batteries is non pollutant? And neither is electricity production?
I agree cars using fossil fuels have to disappear, but battery-powered EV are not the solution for everybody, just for urban people who don't need to travel.
Humans like locusts
Using all the resources we can reach... just like locusts, eh? But at least humans can consider other options, and maybe think this is perhaps not the best way to do things... contraception would be a start.
Living on a single planet when there's all that real estate out there? If a species can get off its home planet, it should. In a wide wide universe, I wonder how many didn't, and succumbed to famine/plague/poison/large rocks landing on their heads?
Comparison
If there's one person who is as annoyingly opinionated as Elon Musk, it is Werner Hertzog. However, one makes real progress toward the future and the other makes films.
Who's doing it?
"I would like to add something about Elon Musk: he is doing the doable – electric cars, reusable rockets, and soon improved batteries...."
He's not doing it - he's just paying for a lot of very (and in a few cases apparently some less) smart people to do it for him and taking the credit for the results. The two things he's proved himself at are accumulating wealth and self-promotion.
"...humans should 'not be like the locusts.' "
It's a bit hard to descend on Mars like locusts when there's bugger-all to eat there - there won't be any life there (assuming there isn't any at the moment) until humans do descend en masse.
As far as we know, there isn't any life anywhere else, so until we know otherwise, I look on human colonization of the planets as us spreading life from the one place that it exists, to places that are barren.
It would help, though, to have some international agreement on what to do if we do find life elsewhere.
Fitzcarraldo
One could argue there are parallels between the tasks Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald and Elon Musk set themselves
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzcarraldo
icon: Musk is yet to engage the services of the natives
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzcarraldo