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We are exploiting the oceans to large degree: fishing, oil pumping, waste dumping, trade routes, even possibly some of the CO2 accumulation.
by eveningcoffee 10y ago
We are exploiting the oceans to large degree: fishing, oil pumping, waste dumping, trade routes, even possibly some of the CO2 accumulation.
- M_Grey 10y agoI was thinking more in terms of places to live actually... since that's the only benefit Mars has for us. Asteroid mining is an easy thing to see the benefit of, but colonizing another gravity well without fully exploiting our own? Not so much.
- wongarsu 10y agoBut what advantages does settling the ocean have compared to say, settling Wyoming (which with 6 people per square mile is much, much closer to the average population density of the ocean than the average population density of land)? With settling Mars we mitigate a number of potential extinction events, and fulfill some science fiction dreams. Living in the ocean also helps with both goals, but to a much lesser degree.
- Apocryphon 10y agoWyoming is closer to the Yellowstone Caldera.
- M_Grey 10y agoIf that puppy blows, any colony on Mars would almost certainly die off, unless they had become totally self-sufficient. I can't imagine that an Earth struggling with that level of natural disaster would bother with such a far-flung enterprise.
- M_Grey 10y agoLiving on Mars only obviates the risk of extinction when it has a biosphere capable of supporting life, or is sufficiently advanced to survive without regular shipments from Earth. We're not even remotely close to that, even in the planning or dreaming stages. That said, Wyoming makes more sense than Mars too.