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I think there are going to be some very serious mental health issues for people trying to colonize Mars, especially if they're taking a one way trip. First, you

I think there are going to be some very serious mental health issues for people trying to colonize Mars, especially if they're taking a one way trip. First, you have to deal with a different day-night cycle and the reduced gravity. That stuff matters for humans who have gotten used to 24 hour days and 9.807 m/s^2 gravity over the last 200,000 years. Then, you're going to have to deal with boredom and cabin fever. Mars seems cool in the abstract--"explore another world!"--but its just a big, completely dead desert. I'm betting the novelty of it will wear of in an hour (tops) of landing there. There really isn't that much for humans to learn by going there in person. Those people will just have to stay in a tiny space for years on end without a lot to do. Think of what a bust the video game No Man's Sky was. People hated it because it was boring. But I'm sure exploring planets in that game was much more interested than Mars will be. As the years go on, loneliness and despair will set in. Those first colonists will likely spend the rest of their lives pretty much with who they landed with. Their lives won't change much at all over the decades they're there, and they'll have no hope for things to ever be different. Settling to Mars seems so glamorous, but it really will not be a fun affair. It'll be extremely expensive, really depressing, and probably pointless.

maxerickson 9y ago
Yeah, I wouldn't do it. But I bet that any substantial (more than a few dozen) effort would build some pretty huge indoor spaces.
zeristor 9y ago
This was the most annoying thing about the film The Martian for me. Everyone crows about the science, but I've not heard anything about the psychological trauma someone marooned and isolated on an alien planet for several months would go through. I imagine it would be something on a par with the Dancing plagues of Strasbourg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518 But without the cheesy disco music.
- samsonradu 9y ago
  Did you see the "Mars" series (National Geographic) ? Definitely touches the psychological implications of such a trip.
- kbenson 9y ago
  While mostly glossed over, I believe there was some small nod to Watney being one of the psychological anchors of the original team (at least in the film, I don't recall if that was in the book). Him being an optimist that doesn't give up is just as important to his survival as his specific scientific skill sets that come into play. That said, I believe a lot of his sanity was preserved by hope. He believed in a non-negligible chance that he could be rescued. People that signed up and are living a situation where there's no real hope it will change might have a vastly different reaction over time. Then again, they would also have company, and that can make a huge difference.
- branja 9y ago
  People have in fact talked about these things. Including the science being great, the psychology being preposterous yet entertaining, and the disco being disco. https://arstechnica.com/science/2014/11/stuck-on-mars-with-nothing-but-disco-ars-talks-with-the-martians-andy-weir/2/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2014/11/stuck-on-mars-with-n...
- yahna 9y ago
  Well he was taking crushed up vicodin and acting pretty odd during that movie.
noonespecial 9y ago
>As the years go on, loneliness and despair will set in. Those first colonists will likely spend the rest of their lives pretty much with who they landed with. Their lives won't change much at all over the decades they're there, and they'll have no hope for things to ever be different. We don't have to wonder. We do it now. Its called jail.
deegles 9y ago
VR games/interaction will fill that void IMO. Especially if you grow up with that being the norm.
larkeith 9y ago
One thing to note is humans can entrain to a 24.65 hour (Mars sol) circadian rhythm [1]. This does not significantly detract from your point, however. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1934931/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1934931/
seren 9y ago
I am often thinking about food, it will likely be incredibly bland and not very varied. Plus you'll spend probably most of your time indoors. You won't ever lay on a beach listening to the sounds of the wave, or walk on dry leaves in a forest anymore.
- wyager 9y ago
  There are a huge number of humans on earth who spend their lives in urban centers and also never have those experiences. Speculating about the quality of food on mars is pointless; we have no idea how that will work. If you can afford regular equipment shipments to mars (which is probably what a mars colony will require with near-future tech), it would probably make a lot of sense to ship up a bunch of spices. They have a very high utility/weight ratio, which is why they were the impetus for the foundation of so many historical colonies.
  - munificent 9y ago
    > There are a huge number of humans on earth who spend their lives in urban centers and also never have those experiences. Those people can and do at least go to parks. A better analogy is that it would be like living in an underground bunker on Death Valley, with periodic excursions out to the desert, while wearing a spacesuit.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      There are a few theories for getting magnetic poles going on Mars. With that, and some terraforming, and a whole lot of time, they could eventually have a breathable atmosphere. Of course this will take many hundreds of years and need a bunch of new tech. Anyway, for now, we can breathe the atmosphere when we go outside. That's not what it's like on Mars. I don't think I'd enjoy that.
ceejayoz 9y ago
> First, you have to deal with a different day-night cycle and the reduced gravity. There's more difference between Alaska and the Equator than the extra 40 minutes Mars introduces, and there don't seem to be significant mental health issues from zero gravity on the ISS. Bone density, sure. > I'm betting the novelty of it will wear of in an hour (tops) of landing there. I know a geologist who's still getting super-excited over rocks ten years later.
- emilp89 9y ago
  > and there don't seem to be significant mental health issues from zero gravity on the ISS Wrong. The astronauts do have mental health issues. Google it.
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/mental-health-in-outer-space/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/mental-healt... > Across 89 shuttle missions from 1981 to 1998, US astronauts had over 1,800 in-flight medical events; less than 2 percent of these were related to behavioral health, largely stemming from “anxiety and annoyance.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_and_sociological_effects_of_spaceflight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_and_sociological... doesn't mention much that sounds significant (and they're likely the same sort of things that happen on, say, a nuclear submarine). Any particular Google results you want to steer me towards?
Pigo 9y ago
It seems like gravity is the biggest factor that the pie in the sky posts always seem to gloss over. As you said, living in the low of gravity, for the rest of your life, has to have untold issues on bodies that evolved here. It would also add another layer of complexity to everything you do. So many people act like it's just a cool destination spot for Sheldon-types. I have no doubt there'd be no shortage of people wanting to sign up, but it does seem very sad to me. Like people willing to get facial tattoos sad. They should focus on finding ways to create a VR experience that would allow everyone to experience it safely.
- TFortunato 9y ago
  To play devil's advocate - there are a lot of people who would argue that the view: "Why would you do something with so many known and unknown dangers, when you could focus your energies on making a VR simulation of it instead?" also very sad.
  - Pigo 9y ago
    I'm not saying we should shoot for Mars, just that until we reach the point of being able to do round-trips and step up the solutions, it sounds like an awful idea to go there. The VR is just a personal wish that I think would be great for not just Mars but all space exploration. I know that I'll never get a chance to visit the moon. But before we're able to engineer a roundtrip I could purchase, I know we'd be able to engineer a rig that could transmit a VR experience that we could all enjoy.
  - visarga 9y ago
    We need both - simulations and to go there in person. We used simulation even for going to the moon, it's going to be an essential tool for Mars as well.
LeifCarrotson 9y ago
> Then, you're going to have to deal with boredom and cabin fever. Mars seems cool in the abstract--"explore another world!"--but its just a big, completely dead desert. I'm betting the novelty of it will wear of in an hour (tops) of landing there. Have you ever been backpacking in a desert, mountains, wilderness? It continues to be amazing for days. Anything that new and different definitely induces novelty more than an hour tops. Also, have you seen the data returned by the rovers? There's stuff to explore and discover everywhere. Mars may have less biome variation (on a scale that can be sensed by unprotected humans, and for whatever the 'bio' of 'biome' means on a lifeless world) than Earth, but it's not featureless.
- theothermkn 9y ago
  This strikes me as the usual motivated denial that you get from Mars enthusiasts. You're not going to "go exploring" forever. At some point, it's just more rocks. A better analogy than backpacking would be permanently living underwater at great depth. To leave your underwater habitat, you have to scuba dive or get into a submarine. You never get an unmediated experience of the outside world. Your skin touches the inside of your suit. You smell only the air from your breathing apparatus and your own breath. Forever. I'd be way more impressed with Mars enthusiasts if they'd admit that this is a problem and then describe how they'll overcome it, rather than just insisting that it all really is going to be one big breathless adventure. It's like mentioning boredom on Mars is a taboo that upsets frail escapists.
  - resu_nimda 9y ago
    I'd be more impressed with Mars pessimists if they'd admit that it's just not really the kind of thing that interests them rather than insisting that it's going to be a terrible nightmare for anyone. The GP said the novelty will wear off in one hour, tops. Sorry, to some people, that's a ridiculous statement. Pointing out that it would probably last longer than that is not insisting that it's going to be one big breathless adventure. People have lived in solitude and isolation before. People have lived on the space station for extended periods of time. There are people that don't really care to come home to their comfortable home and family every night. I'm pretty sure there are some people who would not be miserable living on Mars.
grondilu 9y ago
> As the years go on, loneliness and despair will set in. Those first colonists will likely spend the rest of their lives pretty much with who they landed with. Their lives won't change much at all over the decades they're there,... They may suffer from an acute version of what is known as prairie madness[1], which American colonists suffered from in the nineteenth century. > ...and they'll have no hope for things to ever be different. They will have hope : to go back to Earth. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_madness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_madness
thaumaturgy 9y ago
I am someone who has wanted to go to Mars for many years now. I first thought about it when I was about 8 years old -- 30 years ago. I'm still enthusiastic about it, although I doubt I'd have the skill sets or youth to participate given the current timeline. I expect Mars would be too much the opposite of boring. We'd be trying to live in an environment that, as far as we know, doesn't support any life at all. It is extremely hostile. The conditions are more difficult than Antarctica. The planet will be trying to kill you in all kinds of ways, some of which we haven't imagined yet. Early colonists will have their hands full solving one life-threatening issue after another, and without the massive manufacturing and diagnostics and natural resources of Earth at hand. There is a great deal of science to be done there and that would likely be a major impetus for going and one of the selection criteria for early colonists. Even when the planet isn't trying to kill them, they'd have work to do -- mapping, soil samples, ongoing human health research, materials research, agriculture and biology. Martian colonists would also not be entirely isolated. There's no reason in principle why you wouldn't be able to email people on Earth on a semi-regular basis, or receive the latest books and movies and games -- to the extent that you'd really have time for any of that. There are people who are attracted to the idea of living in a smaller community in a completely alien environment. They tend to get dismissed out-of-hand, but it's not really all that unusual. Humans are tribal, there are isolated research facilities in remote parts of the world, even a cramped little space station now. I seriously doubt it will turn out to be pointless. Colonization has usually moved the larger human society forward a little, with new forms of governance, new materials, new technologies or techniques for daily life. We have no way of knowing now what kind of returns we'd get back from a long-term Martian colony, but I don't think the answer is "none".
- theothermkn 9y ago
  > Colonization has usually moved the larger human society forward a little, with new forms of governance, new materials, new technologies or techniques for daily life. I would really like to see the historical data that bears out this broad claim. I'd like to see a more or less representative sample of "colonization" events that "moved society forward," for example. Also, I'd like to see an accounting of the counterfactuals regarding progress that wouldn't have happened. To cite one example, the "new [if that can be alleged] form of governance" that resulted (if that much can be alleged) in the U.S. from the colonization of the New World took a quarter of a millennium. How much longer for the cotton gin? Ironically, it's been 50 years since we landed on the Moon, and we can't even rid ourselves of the Space Race / World Of Tomorrow propaganda that drives the public's impression of space exploration. I think we need to look elsewhere than colonization to explain progress. (Where was colonialism in the discovery of integral calculus? In chaos theory? In...? I'll stop.)
elorant 9y ago
Busy people rarely get bored. We won't go to Mars for vacations, we'll go to establish a colony. Which means there are a myriad tasks that have to be accomplished on any given day. They'll have to make sure their equipment works in stellar condition otherwise they'll die, build new things, explore, grow plants and taste their food, run experiments, fix things, take notes of everything and report back to Earth, and the list goes on. And once they get there we'll keep sending them new stuff, and probably other people too, quite frequently. Mars is indeed a barren place but imagine being a geologist, it's like Christmas, you have a new world all to yourself to explore and learn new shit. That could keep you busy for a lifetime. Sure, in the long term they might get depressed assuming a trip back to Earth would be impossible. And that's why we'll send mosty scientists. We want people who are dedicated and passionate about exploration and learning.
colordrops 9y ago
Everything in your comment presupposes a one way trip, which it doesn't have to be. Furthermore, the idea isn't just to get there and whittle on your rocking chair until you die. There will be a plan to start building out facilities which is an endless task that will keep colonists busy.
sporkenfang 9y ago
I found this (mental health issues of colonization) to be one of the most interesting parts of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. It drags on a bit but plenty of folks go batshit, so that lends a tinge of realism.
Florin_Andrei 9y ago
> a different day-night cycle The duration is very close to Earth's. I don't think it will be an issue. And since Mars is several light minutes away, and hence out of range for real-time dialogue, going out of sync with Earth's cycle will not be a huge issue either. You'll be talking via email anyway. > reduced gravity Yeah, that's a bigger issue. > boredom and cabin fever Could be an issue, yes. But if you're a scientist, you could work yourself to death in that new environment. So much to study, so little time. > It'll be extremely expensive, really depressing, and probably pointless. Climbing down from trees seemed the same at first. Moving out of caves, into hand-built dwellings seemed the same at first. Etc. The point being, it's easy to overstate both the glamorous and the depressing aspects of something we are not familiar with.
hectorr1 9y ago
It will be pretty miserable for the first colonists. But that's true of any endeavor like this. Some goals are worth suffering for, even if the individual will never see the payoff. And I don't like to begrudge people for their optimism. Optimism, well-grounded in a long-term vision, can be incredibly helpful in overcoming adversity on the way to audacious goals. In other words: fake it til you make it.
alexpotato 9y ago
Whenever I hear this point made I think of the movie Master and Commander. In the 1800s, being on a European wooden sailing vessel in the Pacific was, relatively speaking, very similar to being on another planet: - Takes months or years to get there: check - Fire could kill everyone on your vessel: check - "Nature" could kill you in innumerable ways: check - Some life sustaining and necessary items could be found along the way but many had to be brought with you: check
InclinedPlane 9y ago
This is way off, and reflective of a view of space exploration of the Apollo style rather than actual colonization like what will happen on Mars. The first people to go to Mars may be scientists and explorers, but the second wave will be a very different kind of people. That group will have the job of building a technologically advanced, industrialized, self-sufficient civilization on Mars. That is no small task, nor is it one we have a simple template for. The people who will be drawn to it won't be the "science is f'ing cool!" spectators, nor will they even be hardcore research scientists. They'll be hyper-competent workaholics and overachievers. They'll be people with broad expertise in multiple subjects who just enjoy getting stuff done. The sheer amount of work ahead of them will be mind-boggling. But by the same token, the amount that they can get done, what they will be able to achieve will be equally mind-boggling. Every single day they'll wake up and they'll have a hundred lifetimes of truly challenging work ahead of them. And every single night they'll go to bed having made real, material, significant progress on advancing Martian colonization and making human civilization multi-planetary. Most days they'll do something that was never done on Mars before. They'll build something that will have a tangible impact on what is possible in the future on Mars, and on many other people's lives. They won't just be spending their days reading facebook and occasionally making a git pull-request, they'll be building greenhouses, they'll be farming, they'll be making habitats, and they'll be building up all of the industrial infrastructure to do that. They'll be mining ice, and iron ore, and sand, etc. They'll be figuring out how to setup iron smelting operations. How to make plastic out of methane. How to make concrete on Mars. How to build habitats with the maximal contribution of Martian resources that are safe and robust. They'll be min/maxing like crazy, and innovating like crazy. They'll be spending a crap-ton of time in shops using machine tools. And they will constantly see the fruits of their labor, day by day, hour by hour. They'll be able to look around at their growing colony and think to themselves "I built this". It will be like the ultimate start-up experience on steroids. Some of them might find it overwhelming, but I doubt many of them will find it boring, they won't have time.
yahna 9y ago
The mars day isn't all that much longer than the earth one.
elihu 9y ago
It's doubtful we'd send people to Mars as a one-way trip (though some regard that as a reasonable cost-cutting measure). The day-night cycle is almost the same. We don't know what extended time in ~40% gravity would be like, but people have lived for an extended time in zero G, which is a much more extreme change. Sailors on submarines have survived in tight quarters without natural sunlight or wide-open spaces for extended periods of time. I think you're thinking of a trip to Mars in the most pessimistic terms possible: a small team of explorers with no return trip and they live out the rest of their days in a tiny RV buried under the Martian soil and totally dependent on Earth for supplies and entertainment and no possibility of meeting anyone new. Consider a different possibility: a smallish community growing into a large community by periodic waves of immigration and shipments of equipment needed to establish self-sufficient infrastructure. Ships travel back and forth, so trips are possible. Living and working spaces are small at first, but are constantly being expanded by continuous construction. You can live and work with interesting people on an ambitious project to establish a permanent human presence in a hostile environment. We don't really know which of these alternatives is going to be a more accurate description of the situation presenting itself to the first Martian settlers, but we'll have a good idea which it's going to be before sending anyone. And if it looks like it's going to be a miserable experience and way too expensive, well, we can wait another decade or so and let the technology mature.
- stouset 9y ago
  Okay, but why? What is anyone's purpose for going to mars en masse? Migration to the New World was spurred on by the promise of wealth, resources, and independence from existing governments. The latter is utterly implausible when you consider the total dependence colonists would have upon supply from the nations they're hypothetically fleeing. The former, well, again I suspect dependence upon supplies from the home-planet puts colonists on an extremely poor footing for negotiation. I'm just not seeing the case for why large groups of people would feel compelled to make the trip at obscene cost.
  - elihu 9y ago
    When it comes to negotiation, both sides have quite a bit of leverage. Earth (pretending for a moment that it's a monolithic political entity) can threaten to withhold supplies, whereas Mars explorers can do things Earth doesn't want them to because they aren't there to stop them. So, the situation is complicated. Earth may have the upper hand in the beginning, but that dynamic could change as Mars becomes more self-sufficient. A lot of scientists would want to go. Ordinary people might too if they were feeling adventurous and if Musk is right and we can send people at a relatively affordable cost. There will also probably be a lot of workers to do the things that are physically demanding and not very much fun. If they're paid more to do that work on Mars than on Earth, then it could be a good deal. Some people might want to stake a claim to some land or participate in the creation of a new government. There might be valuable natural resources like gold or platinum that make the transportation and infrastructure costs worthwhile. Some old people might prefer walking in ~40% gravity to being confined to a wheelchair on Earth. Some people might be sick of working on made-up first-world problems (like how to get more people to click on ads) and creating shareholder value, and want to do something more challenging and more rewarding. Some people might just prefer the company of the sort of person that would move to Mars.

maxerickson 9y ago

Yeah, I wouldn't do it. But I bet that any substantial (more than a few dozen) effort would build some pretty huge indoor spaces.

zeristor 9y ago

This was the most annoying thing about the film The Martian for me. Everyone crows about the science, but I've not heard anything about the psychological trauma someone marooned and isolated on an alien planet for several months would go through. I imagine it would be something on a par with the Dancing plagues of Strasbourg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518 But without the cheesy disco music.

samsonradu 9y ago
Did you see the "Mars" series (National Geographic) ? Definitely touches the psychological implications of such a trip.
kbenson 9y ago
While mostly glossed over, I believe there was some small nod to Watney being one of the psychological anchors of the original team (at least in the film, I don't recall if that was in the book). Him being an optimist that doesn't give up is just as important to his survival as his specific scientific skill sets that come into play. That said, I believe a lot of his sanity was preserved by hope. He believed in a non-negligible chance that he could be rescued. People that signed up and are living a situation where there's no real hope it will change might have a vastly different reaction over time. Then again, they would also have company, and that can make a huge difference.
branja 9y ago
People have in fact talked about these things. Including the science being great, the psychology being preposterous yet entertaining, and the disco being disco. https://arstechnica.com/science/2014/11/stuck-on-mars-with-nothing-but-disco-ars-talks-with-the-martians-andy-weir/2/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2014/11/stuck-on-mars-with-n...
yahna 9y ago
Well he was taking crushed up vicodin and acting pretty odd during that movie.

noonespecial 9y ago

>As the years go on, loneliness and despair will set in. Those first colonists will likely spend the rest of their lives pretty much with who they landed with. Their lives won't change much at all over the decades they're there, and they'll have no hope for things to ever be different. We don't have to wonder. We do it now. Its called jail.

deegles 9y ago

VR games/interaction will fill that void IMO. Especially if you grow up with that being the norm.

larkeith 9y ago

One thing to note is humans can entrain to a 24.65 hour (Mars sol) circadian rhythm [1]. This does not significantly detract from your point, however. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1934931/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1934931/

seren 9y ago

I am often thinking about food, it will likely be incredibly bland and not very varied. Plus you'll spend probably most of your time indoors. You won't ever lay on a beach listening to the sounds of the wave, or walk on dry leaves in a forest anymore.

wyager 9y ago
There are a huge number of humans on earth who spend their lives in urban centers and also never have those experiences. Speculating about the quality of food on mars is pointless; we have no idea how that will work. If you can afford regular equipment shipments to mars (which is probably what a mars colony will require with near-future tech), it would probably make a lot of sense to ship up a bunch of spices. They have a very high utility/weight ratio, which is why they were the impetus for the foundation of so many historical colonies.
- munificent 9y ago
  > There are a huge number of humans on earth who spend their lives in urban centers and also never have those experiences. Those people can and do at least go to parks. A better analogy is that it would be like living in an underground bunker on Death Valley, with periodic excursions out to the desert, while wearing a spacesuit.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    There are a few theories for getting magnetic poles going on Mars. With that, and some terraforming, and a whole lot of time, they could eventually have a breathable atmosphere. Of course this will take many hundreds of years and need a bunch of new tech. Anyway, for now, we can breathe the atmosphere when we go outside. That's not what it's like on Mars. I don't think I'd enjoy that.

ceejayoz 9y ago

> First, you have to deal with a different day-night cycle and the reduced gravity. There's more difference between Alaska and the Equator than the extra 40 minutes Mars introduces, and there don't seem to be significant mental health issues from zero gravity on the ISS. Bone density, sure. > I'm betting the novelty of it will wear of in an hour (tops) of landing there. I know a geologist who's still getting super-excited over rocks ten years later.

emilp89 9y ago
> and there don't seem to be significant mental health issues from zero gravity on the ISS Wrong. The astronauts do have mental health issues. Google it.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/mental-health-in-outer-space/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/mental-healt... > Across 89 shuttle missions from 1981 to 1998, US astronauts had over 1,800 in-flight medical events; less than 2 percent of these were related to behavioral health, largely stemming from “anxiety and annoyance.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_and_sociological_effects_of_spaceflight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_and_sociological... doesn't mention much that sounds significant (and they're likely the same sort of things that happen on, say, a nuclear submarine). Any particular Google results you want to steer me towards?

Pigo 9y ago

It seems like gravity is the biggest factor that the pie in the sky posts always seem to gloss over. As you said, living in the low of gravity, for the rest of your life, has to have untold issues on bodies that evolved here. It would also add another layer of complexity to everything you do. So many people act like it's just a cool destination spot for Sheldon-types. I have no doubt there'd be no shortage of people wanting to sign up, but it does seem very sad to me. Like people willing to get facial tattoos sad. They should focus on finding ways to create a VR experience that would allow everyone to experience it safely.

TFortunato 9y ago
To play devil's advocate - there are a lot of people who would argue that the view: "Why would you do something with so many known and unknown dangers, when you could focus your energies on making a VR simulation of it instead?" also very sad.
- Pigo 9y ago
  I'm not saying we should shoot for Mars, just that until we reach the point of being able to do round-trips and step up the solutions, it sounds like an awful idea to go there. The VR is just a personal wish that I think would be great for not just Mars but all space exploration. I know that I'll never get a chance to visit the moon. But before we're able to engineer a roundtrip I could purchase, I know we'd be able to engineer a rig that could transmit a VR experience that we could all enjoy.
- visarga 9y ago
  We need both - simulations and to go there in person. We used simulation even for going to the moon, it's going to be an essential tool for Mars as well.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago

> Then, you're going to have to deal with boredom and cabin fever. Mars seems cool in the abstract--"explore another world!"--but its just a big, completely dead desert. I'm betting the novelty of it will wear of in an hour (tops) of landing there. Have you ever been backpacking in a desert, mountains, wilderness? It continues to be amazing for days. Anything that new and different definitely induces novelty more than an hour tops. Also, have you seen the data returned by the rovers? There's stuff to explore and discover everywhere. Mars may have less biome variation (on a scale that can be sensed by unprotected humans, and for whatever the 'bio' of 'biome' means on a lifeless world) than Earth, but it's not featureless.

theothermkn 9y ago
This strikes me as the usual motivated denial that you get from Mars enthusiasts. You're not going to "go exploring" forever. At some point, it's just more rocks. A better analogy than backpacking would be permanently living underwater at great depth. To leave your underwater habitat, you have to scuba dive or get into a submarine. You never get an unmediated experience of the outside world. Your skin touches the inside of your suit. You smell only the air from your breathing apparatus and your own breath. Forever. I'd be way more impressed with Mars enthusiasts if they'd admit that this is a problem and then describe how they'll overcome it, rather than just insisting that it all really is going to be one big breathless adventure. It's like mentioning boredom on Mars is a taboo that upsets frail escapists.
- resu_nimda 9y ago
  I'd be more impressed with Mars pessimists if they'd admit that it's just not really the kind of thing that interests them rather than insisting that it's going to be a terrible nightmare for anyone. The GP said the novelty will wear off in one hour, tops. Sorry, to some people, that's a ridiculous statement. Pointing out that it would probably last longer than that is not insisting that it's going to be one big breathless adventure. People have lived in solitude and isolation before. People have lived on the space station for extended periods of time. There are people that don't really care to come home to their comfortable home and family every night. I'm pretty sure there are some people who would not be miserable living on Mars.

grondilu 9y ago

> As the years go on, loneliness and despair will set in. Those first colonists will likely spend the rest of their lives pretty much with who they landed with. Their lives won't change much at all over the decades they're there,... They may suffer from an acute version of what is known as prairie madness[1], which American colonists suffered from in the nineteenth century. > ...and they'll have no hope for things to ever be different. They will have hope : to go back to Earth. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_madness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_madness

thaumaturgy 9y ago

I am someone who has wanted to go to Mars for many years now. I first thought about it when I was about 8 years old -- 30 years ago. I'm still enthusiastic about it, although I doubt I'd have the skill sets or youth to participate given the current timeline. I expect Mars would be too much the opposite of boring. We'd be trying to live in an environment that, as far as we know, doesn't support any life at all. It is extremely hostile. The conditions are more difficult than Antarctica. The planet will be trying to kill you in all kinds of ways, some of which we haven't imagined yet. Early colonists will have their hands full solving one life-threatening issue after another, and without the massive manufacturing and diagnostics and natural resources of Earth at hand. There is a great deal of science to be done there and that would likely be a major impetus for going and one of the selection criteria for early colonists. Even when the planet isn't trying to kill them, they'd have work to do -- mapping, soil samples, ongoing human health research, materials research, agriculture and biology. Martian colonists would also not be entirely isolated. There's no reason in principle why you wouldn't be able to email people on Earth on a semi-regular basis, or receive the latest books and movies and games -- to the extent that you'd really have time for any of that. There are people who are attracted to the idea of living in a smaller community in a completely alien environment. They tend to get dismissed out-of-hand, but it's not really all that unusual. Humans are tribal, there are isolated research facilities in remote parts of the world, even a cramped little space station now. I seriously doubt it will turn out to be pointless. Colonization has usually moved the larger human society forward a little, with new forms of governance, new materials, new technologies or techniques for daily life. We have no way of knowing now what kind of returns we'd get back from a long-term Martian colony, but I don't think the answer is "none".

theothermkn 9y ago
> Colonization has usually moved the larger human society forward a little, with new forms of governance, new materials, new technologies or techniques for daily life. I would really like to see the historical data that bears out this broad claim. I'd like to see a more or less representative sample of "colonization" events that "moved society forward," for example. Also, I'd like to see an accounting of the counterfactuals regarding progress that wouldn't have happened. To cite one example, the "new [if that can be alleged] form of governance" that resulted (if that much can be alleged) in the U.S. from the colonization of the New World took a quarter of a millennium. How much longer for the cotton gin? Ironically, it's been 50 years since we landed on the Moon, and we can't even rid ourselves of the Space Race / World Of Tomorrow propaganda that drives the public's impression of space exploration. I think we need to look elsewhere than colonization to explain progress. (Where was colonialism in the discovery of integral calculus? In chaos theory? In...? I'll stop.)

elorant 9y ago

Busy people rarely get bored. We won't go to Mars for vacations, we'll go to establish a colony. Which means there are a myriad tasks that have to be accomplished on any given day. They'll have to make sure their equipment works in stellar condition otherwise they'll die, build new things, explore, grow plants and taste their food, run experiments, fix things, take notes of everything and report back to Earth, and the list goes on. And once they get there we'll keep sending them new stuff, and probably other people too, quite frequently. Mars is indeed a barren place but imagine being a geologist, it's like Christmas, you have a new world all to yourself to explore and learn new shit. That could keep you busy for a lifetime. Sure, in the long term they might get depressed assuming a trip back to Earth would be impossible. And that's why we'll send mosty scientists. We want people who are dedicated and passionate about exploration and learning.

colordrops 9y ago

Everything in your comment presupposes a one way trip, which it doesn't have to be. Furthermore, the idea isn't just to get there and whittle on your rocking chair until you die. There will be a plan to start building out facilities which is an endless task that will keep colonists busy.

sporkenfang 9y ago

I found this (mental health issues of colonization) to be one of the most interesting parts of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. It drags on a bit but plenty of folks go batshit, so that lends a tinge of realism.

Florin_Andrei 9y ago

> a different day-night cycle The duration is very close to Earth's. I don't think it will be an issue. And since Mars is several light minutes away, and hence out of range for real-time dialogue, going out of sync with Earth's cycle will not be a huge issue either. You'll be talking via email anyway. > reduced gravity Yeah, that's a bigger issue. > boredom and cabin fever Could be an issue, yes. But if you're a scientist, you could work yourself to death in that new environment. So much to study, so little time. > It'll be extremely expensive, really depressing, and probably pointless. Climbing down from trees seemed the same at first. Moving out of caves, into hand-built dwellings seemed the same at first. Etc. The point being, it's easy to overstate both the glamorous and the depressing aspects of something we are not familiar with.

hectorr1 9y ago

It will be pretty miserable for the first colonists. But that's true of any endeavor like this. Some goals are worth suffering for, even if the individual will never see the payoff. And I don't like to begrudge people for their optimism. Optimism, well-grounded in a long-term vision, can be incredibly helpful in overcoming adversity on the way to audacious goals. In other words: fake it til you make it.

alexpotato 9y ago

Whenever I hear this point made I think of the movie Master and Commander. In the 1800s, being on a European wooden sailing vessel in the Pacific was, relatively speaking, very similar to being on another planet: - Takes months or years to get there: check - Fire could kill everyone on your vessel: check - "Nature" could kill you in innumerable ways: check - Some life sustaining and necessary items could be found along the way but many had to be brought with you: check

InclinedPlane 9y ago

This is way off, and reflective of a view of space exploration of the Apollo style rather than actual colonization like what will happen on Mars. The first people to go to Mars may be scientists and explorers, but the second wave will be a very different kind of people. That group will have the job of building a technologically advanced, industrialized, self-sufficient civilization on Mars. That is no small task, nor is it one we have a simple template for. The people who will be drawn to it won't be the "science is f'ing cool!" spectators, nor will they even be hardcore research scientists. They'll be hyper-competent workaholics and overachievers. They'll be people with broad expertise in multiple subjects who just enjoy getting stuff done. The sheer amount of work ahead of them will be mind-boggling. But by the same token, the amount that they can get done, what they will be able to achieve will be equally mind-boggling. Every single day they'll wake up and they'll have a hundred lifetimes of truly challenging work ahead of them. And every single night they'll go to bed having made real, material, significant progress on advancing Martian colonization and making human civilization multi-planetary. Most days they'll do something that was never done on Mars before. They'll build something that will have a tangible impact on what is possible in the future on Mars, and on many other people's lives. They won't just be spending their days reading facebook and occasionally making a git pull-request, they'll be building greenhouses, they'll be farming, they'll be making habitats, and they'll be building up all of the industrial infrastructure to do that. They'll be mining ice, and iron ore, and sand, etc. They'll be figuring out how to setup iron smelting operations. How to make plastic out of methane. How to make concrete on Mars. How to build habitats with the maximal contribution of Martian resources that are safe and robust. They'll be min/maxing like crazy, and innovating like crazy. They'll be spending a crap-ton of time in shops using machine tools. And they will constantly see the fruits of their labor, day by day, hour by hour. They'll be able to look around at their growing colony and think to themselves "I built this". It will be like the ultimate start-up experience on steroids. Some of them might find it overwhelming, but I doubt many of them will find it boring, they won't have time.

yahna 9y ago

The mars day isn't all that much longer than the earth one.

elihu 9y ago

It's doubtful we'd send people to Mars as a one-way trip (though some regard that as a reasonable cost-cutting measure). The day-night cycle is almost the same. We don't know what extended time in ~40% gravity would be like, but people have lived for an extended time in zero G, which is a much more extreme change. Sailors on submarines have survived in tight quarters without natural sunlight or wide-open spaces for extended periods of time. I think you're thinking of a trip to Mars in the most pessimistic terms possible: a small team of explorers with no return trip and they live out the rest of their days in a tiny RV buried under the Martian soil and totally dependent on Earth for supplies and entertainment and no possibility of meeting anyone new. Consider a different possibility: a smallish community growing into a large community by periodic waves of immigration and shipments of equipment needed to establish self-sufficient infrastructure. Ships travel back and forth, so trips are possible. Living and working spaces are small at first, but are constantly being expanded by continuous construction. You can live and work with interesting people on an ambitious project to establish a permanent human presence in a hostile environment. We don't really know which of these alternatives is going to be a more accurate description of the situation presenting itself to the first Martian settlers, but we'll have a good idea which it's going to be before sending anyone. And if it looks like it's going to be a miserable experience and way too expensive, well, we can wait another decade or so and let the technology mature.

stouset 9y ago
Okay, but why? What is anyone's purpose for going to mars en masse? Migration to the New World was spurred on by the promise of wealth, resources, and independence from existing governments. The latter is utterly implausible when you consider the total dependence colonists would have upon supply from the nations they're hypothetically fleeing. The former, well, again I suspect dependence upon supplies from the home-planet puts colonists on an extremely poor footing for negotiation. I'm just not seeing the case for why large groups of people would feel compelled to make the trip at obscene cost.
- elihu 9y ago
  When it comes to negotiation, both sides have quite a bit of leverage. Earth (pretending for a moment that it's a monolithic political entity) can threaten to withhold supplies, whereas Mars explorers can do things Earth doesn't want them to because they aren't there to stop them. So, the situation is complicated. Earth may have the upper hand in the beginning, but that dynamic could change as Mars becomes more self-sufficient. A lot of scientists would want to go. Ordinary people might too if they were feeling adventurous and if Musk is right and we can send people at a relatively affordable cost. There will also probably be a lot of workers to do the things that are physically demanding and not very much fun. If they're paid more to do that work on Mars than on Earth, then it could be a good deal. Some people might want to stake a claim to some land or participate in the creation of a new government. There might be valuable natural resources like gold or platinum that make the transportation and infrastructure costs worthwhile. Some old people might prefer walking in ~40% gravity to being confined to a wheelchair on Earth. Some people might be sick of working on made-up first-world problems (like how to get more people to click on ads) and creating shareholder value, and want to do something more challenging and more rewarding. Some people might just prefer the company of the sort of person that would move to Mars.