I was thinking about this the other day. Wouldn't the people most likely to say yes to a chance like this be the least ideal people to send to start a colony? Historically, people have embarked on migrations in the hope the life at the other end would be a lot better, but that's almost certainly not true for living on Mars, even with every mod con you could imagine.
Mars is like Antarctica or Sahara, but much worse, why would people want to live their lives there? I can understand scientists or perhaps adventurers living there for a 2 year shift. But why would anyone want to spend time there if it's a worse place to live than Earth in almost every regard?
By the way, I'm a big SpaceX fan and I hope there will be an outpost on Mars, but a self-sustaining city is just unrealistic, sadly.
Human colonization seems more of an ego driven activity to me. If we really want to get serious about learning about our universe we'll start sending many more robot probes.
I for one don't see why anybody rational would want to live on Mars. All in all Earth is pretty sweet for humans. A martian colony I guess might make sense for mining but frankly you'd have to be pretty hard up economically to agree to go work there...
The whole concept here is that we have hundreds of thousands of people who desperately want to live on Mars. You don't seem to be getting that in this comment thread. YES, we know it's cheaper to live on Earth.
We.
Don't.
Care.
We want to live on Mars. We will give anything to go live on Mars. It'll cost more. Yes. It'll be tougher. Yes.
In contrast to people super hyped about space I have a far more pessimistic view.
I feel that if the US spends enough money they will get to Mars, leave some instruments, and maybe go back a few more times, then … everyone will forget about it and move on - just like they did with the Moon.
I don’t get the talk of colonising Mars either. Who the heck would want to live there? After the novelty of “I’m on another planet!” wears off, all you got is a hostile environment that doesn’t support life. It’s a dead planet with insufficient oxygen in the atmosphere to support human life, no magnetic field to protect it, and significantly lower gravity than Earth’s (whose gravitational field our bodies have evolved to function in). Living anywhere but earth seem more dangerous and for most part is a less pleasant experience.
Frankly, if it did become economical to migrate to Mars and live there, it would probably be the poor who would end up on Mars due to the potential gentrification of Earth.
Not saying we shouldn’t make “escape plans” from earth - although with several billion of us I wonder how feasible an escape plan will really be and for how many - but some people’s view of the colonisation of space is a tad too positive IMHO.
I agree. This is what I don't get. We don't have a real permanent colony in space. We don't have a real permanent colony on the moon. Mars is so much further away with less access to resources. It is fine to goal to someday get to Mars but we should have a plan for sustainable living in orbit, then on the Moon, and that will help us know how to get to Mars.
Uh, no, it's not. There are a great number of people who say they would be willing to live on mars under those conditions basically just for the novelty of it. There are a great number of challenges with colonizing mars. Getting a small group of competent people is not one of them.
I never understand why some people are so gung ho about colonizing Mars while ours is still the most hospitable planet in the observable universe. It may be that their thoughts are driven by a survivalist instinct and they are using Mars as a crutch.
Seriously, it would be a lot easier to build a colony on the bottom of the ocean or even on the moon - without the incredibly harsh penalty of many months of travel back and forth. There literally doesn't seem to be any benefit to living on Mars except for the romantic notions of it being another planet.
I highly doubt people born and raised on Mars (if it is even possible to live long-term there) could ever live on Earth -- simply with respect to gravity and developmental consequences.
The author's main argument seems to be that nobody will want to do it. But historically, there have been numerous cases of colonists giving up a safe, easy life to go live somewhere inhospitable and dangerous.
When I think about the first settlers that sailed across the Atlantic to colonize America, it seems amazing to me that people were willing to give up so much and endure such risks and hardships, but there have always been people that will go to great lengths to conquer new frontiers. I expect the first Martians will be no different in this respect.
The problem with that line of thinking is that it's a fool's gamble either way. For the people living on Mars, you'll have a quality of life far below that of a prisoner in a second world country. Forever. And for the people staying behind, you get to pay exorbitant sums of money so that people other than you get to survive an asteroid impact in the next few million years. (Unless of course it's Mars that is struck, then you just lit 80 trillion dollars on fire.)
Sorry, colonizing Mars just doesn't make sense and it probably never will. At least not until we have progressed to the point that we have the resources to terraform planets at will. And even then, it will probably make more sense to just live in space.
Actually, there is one very specific scenario in which colonizing Mars is a great idea: if you're in the business of selling space travel to governments.
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