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You're not considering the actual, non-hype reasons for colonization of Mars. It's about scientific discovery first and foremost, and the vast majority of "bein
by WhompingWindows 8y ago
You're not considering the actual, non-hype reasons for colonization of Mars. It's about scientific discovery first and foremost, and the vast majority of "beings" there will be robots in early colonization. Look at what we've sent already: robots for scientific discovery. This pattern will continue for at least a couple decades, the first humans sent there will be technically minded to do maintenance on robots, build up a small base/solar arrays/propellant production. Putting fake bases in the West isn't going to do anything towards understanding Mars, its former ecosystems, and its current potential for harboring life.
If you and everyone else has bought into the hype machine, well that sucks, but real scientists are still focused on robotics on Mars.
- cicero 8y agoThe article is about Mars One, which was about sending humans to Mars.
- lisper 8y agoI'm not opposed to the scientific exploration of Mars. I'm just saying that we are nowhere near ready to seriously consider colonizing Mars.
- bufferoverflow 8y agoYou're confusing "can't" with "don't want to". Nobody wants to colonize some desert patch, but many people want to colonize Mars for many different reasons. Self-sustaining will take time, but it's not unsolvable even with the current technology. It's just very expensive at the moment.
- lisper 8y ago"Very expensive" asymptotically approaches "unsolvable" for large values of "very". I do get that colonizing Nevada is nowhere near as glamorous and sexy as colonizing Mars. But if we can't do it in Nevada (and it is far from clear that we actually can) then Mars is just hopeless. You could do that experiment for a tiny fraction of the money being invested in launch vehicle development. If the results were negative, you could save an awful lot of money.