3 ms·
In the 1950s & 60s, there were dual dreams of human settlement both of space, and of the continental shelf. One dream continues to have a hold on popular imagi
by mncharity 7y ago
In the 1950s & 60s, there were dual dreams of human settlement both of space, and of the continental shelf. One dream continues to have a hold on popular imagination, one not so much.
You don't have oil industry divers looking around the seafloor and thinking, "yeah, this is where I want to raise my kids someday". And yet, Mars is a planet-sized perchlorate superfund site, and the Moon is worse. So might it have gone the other way?
One argument for pushing rapidly to human settlement is we're in a window now where it both seems at the edge of technological plausibility, and it has some popular appeal. And it's possible to imagine the latter going the way of ocean settlement.
- mjevans 7y agoMars makes a lot of sense for a viable colony in the category of getting _all_ the eggs out of the single basket they're in. So would literally any other place. (Though Mars might be lower hanging fruit since the gravity, pressure, and temperature are only a little off.)
- Retric 7y agoLiving under the ocean adds a lot of redundancy a lot more easily. Getting Mars self sustaining so it can produce everything including CPU’s would require a truly massive colony. Until then it’s not really useful. Under sea on the other hand assuming undersea gardens could protect from a dinosaur killing asteroid, with a small population able to repopulate earth in a few years.
- mjevans 7y agoI'm not saying it shouldn't be done as well, I'm just pointing out that having some bubble-wrap around one of the eggs near the bottom of the basket isn't the same as having an egg in another basket on the table. Or in a basket in another room entirely. PS: the background of the SOMA storyline.