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I'm pretty sure we've managed to colonize a tract of uninhabited land at least a couple of times throughout history. Maybe we could better spend our time worki

I'm pretty sure we've managed to colonize a tract of uninhabited land at least a couple of times throughout history. Maybe we could better spend our time working on the things we haven't figured out.

lisper 8y ago
> I'm pretty sure we've managed to colonize a tract of uninhabited land at least a couple of times throughout history. Without a connection to existing civilization, and without a source of easily accessible water provided by nature? No, we have never done that.
- dwild 8y ago
  What about the ISS? The water they consume is recycled and is clearly not provided by nature.
  - lisper 8y ago
    The ISS is very closely connected to civilization. It has real-time comms, and in an emergency a spacecraft can reach it in about six hours, or return an astronaut back to earth in less time than that. The longest it has ever gone between resupply missions is four months. The shortest time between resupply missions to Mars is two years.
    - kakarot 8y ago
      > The shortest time between resupply missions to Mars is two years. You aren't going to be sending only one ship at a time. You will be staggering shipments, with 3-4 ships in transit at a time. You could make the time between resupplies as short as you want.
      - jfoutz 8y ago
        Resupply isn’t quite the right word. If I break the X, i have to fix it myself or wait 2 years.
      - lisper 8y ago
        You don't understand the orbital mechanics of getting to Mars. Getting to Mars only takes eight months, but you have to launch when Earth and Mars are in a particular configuration relative to each other, and that configuration only happens every two (Earth) years. You can launch as many ships as you like during those windows, but you can't stagger them.
        craftyguy 8y ago
        Only if you want them to take no more than 18 months to arrive.. You can most definitely stagger supply ships and launch them at any time, it's just that some will take a bit longer than others to arrive and their various transit times can be taken into account to have them arrive in a staggered fashion.
        lisper 8y ago
        Well, sure, but how does that help? It's no different than having them arrive all at once and just waiting to open them. Whether they sit around on Mars or sit around in space doesn't matter.
        craftyguy 8y ago
        > Well, sure, but how does that help? It enables a continuous supply, without having to try to plan everything to happen all at once during a short launch window/timeframe > You can launch as many ships as you like during those windows, but you can't stagger them. Well, you don't have to only launch "during those windows". I'm no logistic genius, but it seems like it would be easier/more cost effective to loft resources towards Mars at intervals that don't depend on a relatively short event that occurs every ~18 months. Try collecting all of the things you need to go camping 30 minutes beforehand, vs over the period of a week/month before you go. Yea, not very effective.. ? Your comment I replied to above seems to be overly aggressive (that doesn't belong here): > You don't understand the orbital mechanics of getting to Mars. I'm quite sure there are lots of things you (or I) don't understand. Try being more constructive next time.
- imgabe 8y ago
  > Without a connection to existing civilization, and without a source of easily accessible water provided by nature? No, we have never done that. Civilization had to start somewhere. At some point humans started a civilization without any connection to an existing civilization. In all likelihood, several times in different places on Earth. And on Mars that would not be "without a connection to an existing civilization" They would absolutely be bringing equipment and supplies from Earth and have a communication link. Easily accessible water is a different story, but that's just a technological problem.
  - Retra 8y ago
    Civilization has only ever started in highly fertile ecosystems. It has never started in a place that basic plant life can't even survive.
    - imgabe 8y ago
      Well I guess we're lucky there have been quite a few advances in helping plant and other forms of life survive in the past 200,000 years so. It's not like we're dropping a bunch of naked humans on the surface of Mars and expecting them to live off the land.
      - Retra 8y ago
        Mars is a gigantic frigid rock. You can't eat it, you can't breathe it, and you can't touch it. If you go to mars, you're going to be living in a bubble and it hardly even matters whether you're on Mars at that point (aside from being close enough to study it.) You could just as well colonize the bottom of the ocean or Antarctica, and there's plenty of value in doing those things because the rewards from the efforts could easily be transported back to normal society. And if you get sick or injured, you can still survive rather than casting your valuable experience into the void. If the advances you speak of can't help you survive in Earth's mildly hostile uninhabited environments, then you can't expect them to work on Mars.
        8y ago
imgabe 8y ago
Exactly, literally every place that is now inhabited was once an uninhabited tract of land that humans colonized. Humans are very good at living in almost every environment on Earth.
- tomhoward 8y ago
  None of those places humans inhabited lacked water and natural food sources, not to mention air.
verinus 8y ago
OK, but why? It makes zero sense to go to Mars if we have enough uninhabited land available.
- nkrisc 8y ago
  Well if your interest is Martian geologic history (or biology), Nevada won't quite cut it.
- fouc 8y ago
  The word is "colonization", it's about the hundreds of years of development and growth to transform Mars into a place that supports humans. Why? It's a way to reduce risk of extinction. Put our eggs in more than one basket.
  - Retric 8y ago
    Colonizing Mars is a poor choice for that, much better to focus on the Asteroid then Kepler belt. It’s got both up and downsides. For example, you actually get more solar energy in the Astroid belt becase you can always face the sun and don’t need to worry about Mars’s dust storms. But, if we can colonize the Kepler belt the rest of the galaxy is open ‘for free’.
    - cheeko1234 8y ago
      You're forgetting radiation and gravity.
      - dylan604 8y ago
        How is mars better as a radiation shield? It has no magnetic protection like earth’s van allen belts. Until that exists, Mars will be a desolate place.
      - Retric 8y ago
        Staying on the other side of a X km wide object is a great radiation shield from the sun. But, distance also helps. If your in a space suit on the surface of Mars you have very little radiation protection. Using buried structures and going out at night seems to be the best option. But, overall it’s likely fairly close between the two. Gravity might be a larger issue on Mars than outer space as it’s harder to keep something spinning at 1g in a weak atmosphere. It really depends on how well humans adapt to 38% earths gravity. That might be fine over a lifetime, or low enough to be a significant issue.
jcranmer 8y ago
Restrict the history of colonization to: 1. Those that postdate farming. Because we obviously can't cream off the local wildlife in Mars as there is none. 2. Those that can survive the loss of their motherland. If the goal is to survive the complete loss of Earth, the Martian colony needs to be completely self-sustaining and cannot have any reliance on the Earth-bound umbilical cord. The list of lands uninhabited as of about 2000 BC essentially amounts to remote islands in the oceans. Polynesian colonization definitely relied on the sustained contact between these remote islands. A lot of the remote Arctic/Antarctic islands were settled largely to facilitate hunting of sea mammals (seals, whales) and wouldn't exist if that trade ceased. Hell, the Norse colony in Greenland collapsed after it was dropped from Viking trading routes... despite lasting for over 400 years before then. The closest thing I can think to of an example that meets this criteria is the Pitcairn Islands. But while they did clearly last for a decade without outside contact, much less support, they became dependent on outside support within about 50 years. The carrying capacity of Pitcairn Islands is probably smaller than the minimum self-sustaining band size of human beings.

I'm pretty sure we've managed to colonize a tract of uninhabited land at least a couple of times throughout history. Maybe we could better spend our time working on the things we haven't figured out.

lisper 8y ago

> I'm pretty sure we've managed to colonize a tract of uninhabited land at least a couple of times throughout history. Without a connection to existing civilization, and without a source of easily accessible water provided by nature? No, we have never done that.

dwild 8y ago
What about the ISS? The water they consume is recycled and is clearly not provided by nature.
- lisper 8y ago
  The ISS is very closely connected to civilization. It has real-time comms, and in an emergency a spacecraft can reach it in about six hours, or return an astronaut back to earth in less time than that. The longest it has ever gone between resupply missions is four months. The shortest time between resupply missions to Mars is two years.
  - kakarot 8y ago
    > The shortest time between resupply missions to Mars is two years. You aren't going to be sending only one ship at a time. You will be staggering shipments, with 3-4 ships in transit at a time. You could make the time between resupplies as short as you want.
    - jfoutz 8y ago
      Resupply isn’t quite the right word. If I break the X, i have to fix it myself or wait 2 years.
    - lisper 8y ago
      You don't understand the orbital mechanics of getting to Mars. Getting to Mars only takes eight months, but you have to launch when Earth and Mars are in a particular configuration relative to each other, and that configuration only happens every two (Earth) years. You can launch as many ships as you like during those windows, but you can't stagger them.
      - craftyguy 8y ago
        Only if you want them to take no more than 18 months to arrive.. You can most definitely stagger supply ships and launch them at any time, it's just that some will take a bit longer than others to arrive and their various transit times can be taken into account to have them arrive in a staggered fashion.
        lisper 8y ago
        Well, sure, but how does that help? It's no different than having them arrive all at once and just waiting to open them. Whether they sit around on Mars or sit around in space doesn't matter.
        craftyguy 8y ago
        > Well, sure, but how does that help? It enables a continuous supply, without having to try to plan everything to happen all at once during a short launch window/timeframe > You can launch as many ships as you like during those windows, but you can't stagger them. Well, you don't have to only launch "during those windows". I'm no logistic genius, but it seems like it would be easier/more cost effective to loft resources towards Mars at intervals that don't depend on a relatively short event that occurs every ~18 months. Try collecting all of the things you need to go camping 30 minutes beforehand, vs over the period of a week/month before you go. Yea, not very effective.. ? Your comment I replied to above seems to be overly aggressive (that doesn't belong here): > You don't understand the orbital mechanics of getting to Mars. I'm quite sure there are lots of things you (or I) don't understand. Try being more constructive next time.
imgabe 8y ago
> Without a connection to existing civilization, and without a source of easily accessible water provided by nature? No, we have never done that. Civilization had to start somewhere. At some point humans started a civilization without any connection to an existing civilization. In all likelihood, several times in different places on Earth. And on Mars that would not be "without a connection to an existing civilization" They would absolutely be bringing equipment and supplies from Earth and have a communication link. Easily accessible water is a different story, but that's just a technological problem.
- Retra 8y ago
  Civilization has only ever started in highly fertile ecosystems. It has never started in a place that basic plant life can't even survive.
  - imgabe 8y ago
    Well I guess we're lucky there have been quite a few advances in helping plant and other forms of life survive in the past 200,000 years so. It's not like we're dropping a bunch of naked humans on the surface of Mars and expecting them to live off the land.
    - Retra 8y ago
      Mars is a gigantic frigid rock. You can't eat it, you can't breathe it, and you can't touch it. If you go to mars, you're going to be living in a bubble and it hardly even matters whether you're on Mars at that point (aside from being close enough to study it.) You could just as well colonize the bottom of the ocean or Antarctica, and there's plenty of value in doing those things because the rewards from the efforts could easily be transported back to normal society. And if you get sick or injured, you can still survive rather than casting your valuable experience into the void. If the advances you speak of can't help you survive in Earth's mildly hostile uninhabited environments, then you can't expect them to work on Mars.
      - 8y ago

imgabe 8y ago

Exactly, literally every place that is now inhabited was once an uninhabited tract of land that humans colonized. Humans are very good at living in almost every environment on Earth.

tomhoward 8y ago
None of those places humans inhabited lacked water and natural food sources, not to mention air.

verinus 8y ago

OK, but why? It makes zero sense to go to Mars if we have enough uninhabited land available.

nkrisc 8y ago
Well if your interest is Martian geologic history (or biology), Nevada won't quite cut it.
fouc 8y ago
The word is "colonization", it's about the hundreds of years of development and growth to transform Mars into a place that supports humans. Why? It's a way to reduce risk of extinction. Put our eggs in more than one basket.
- Retric 8y ago
  Colonizing Mars is a poor choice for that, much better to focus on the Asteroid then Kepler belt. It’s got both up and downsides. For example, you actually get more solar energy in the Astroid belt becase you can always face the sun and don’t need to worry about Mars’s dust storms. But, if we can colonize the Kepler belt the rest of the galaxy is open ‘for free’.
  - cheeko1234 8y ago
    You're forgetting radiation and gravity.
    - dylan604 8y ago
      How is mars better as a radiation shield? It has no magnetic protection like earth’s van allen belts. Until that exists, Mars will be a desolate place.
    - Retric 8y ago
      Staying on the other side of a X km wide object is a great radiation shield from the sun. But, distance also helps. If your in a space suit on the surface of Mars you have very little radiation protection. Using buried structures and going out at night seems to be the best option. But, overall it’s likely fairly close between the two. Gravity might be a larger issue on Mars than outer space as it’s harder to keep something spinning at 1g in a weak atmosphere. It really depends on how well humans adapt to 38% earths gravity. That might be fine over a lifetime, or low enough to be a significant issue.

jcranmer 8y ago

Restrict the history of colonization to: 1. Those that postdate farming. Because we obviously can't cream off the local wildlife in Mars as there is none. 2. Those that can survive the loss of their motherland. If the goal is to survive the complete loss of Earth, the Martian colony needs to be completely self-sustaining and cannot have any reliance on the Earth-bound umbilical cord. The list of lands uninhabited as of about 2000 BC essentially amounts to remote islands in the oceans. Polynesian colonization definitely relied on the sustained contact between these remote islands. A lot of the remote Arctic/Antarctic islands were settled largely to facilitate hunting of sea mammals (seals, whales) and wouldn't exist if that trade ceased. Hell, the Norse colony in Greenland collapsed after it was dropped from Viking trading routes... despite lasting for over 400 years before then. The closest thing I can think to of an example that meets this criteria is the Pitcairn Islands. But while they did clearly last for a decade without outside contact, much less support, they became dependent on outside support within about 50 years. The carrying capacity of Pitcairn Islands is probably smaller than the minimum self-sustaining band size of human beings.