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No...that sounds pretty abysmal to me. But I guess if you don't appreciate the outside world on your own planet it doesn't really matter. >If you have a shelte

No...that sounds pretty abysmal to me. But I guess if you don't appreciate the outside world on your own planet it doesn't really matter. >If you have a shelter that provides adequate conditions for life, that's it. I mean so do prisons, generally, or well they're supposed to, most people wouldn't choose to live in one though.

wcarss 6y ago
This (and the parent) both require a kind of paucity of vision or imagined capability -- endless subterranean hospital hallways and infinities of military bunkeresque quarters would indeed be abysmal, but there is no particular reason we could not instead build sweeping open spaces full of light and life and visions we've never dreamed, if we were so capable as to profitably settle a rogue world. Sure, it could (and likely would!) be hard to make it not suck to live in a place like that. But if we're going to indulge in wild future space colonization fantasies, we certainly don't need to stop and get mired in the economic feasibilities of the potential lifestyles there to the point that they become depressing. Imagine "Halo", not "HAL"!
- radu_floricica 6y ago
  Yeap. Indoor space in a seismically dead world is very cheap. Energy is presumably also cheap. Paint the ceiling blue and you ciuld have real sized California. For a contemporary example, people pay a premium to go to the mall. Just scale it up - not even a lot, 10x or 100x, and you basically have paradise. Far from abysmal.
  - darkerside 6y ago
    And then the population expands to fill that space. Then what? It's a lot harder to expand your hermetically sealed environment than it is to cut down a few trees.
    - whatshisface 6y ago
      Uhh... Digging more Mars holes is a lot better than cutting down trees.
      - darkerside 6y ago
        Surely you don't think expanding a sealed base within a hostile environment is that easy?
        tomrod 6y ago
        Not easy, but plannable.
    - radu_floricica 6y ago
      We're already dependent on an industrial society. Without, for example, mass produced fertilizer we could not sustain current population. Same thing with digging holes.
  - selimthegrim 6y ago
    The Earth will be seismically dead at some point.
moralestapia 6y ago
>I guess if you don't appreciate the outside world I never said that. Sorry, I didn't know you were throwing a tantrum. I thought we were having an honest discussion. I can tell you, for sure, that there are people on this earth which are living under an overall worse standard of living than the one you would probably find in early mars colonies; and they outnumber people like us, with food, clean water, internet access, etc... That obviously sucks, but to say that life on Mars is going to be necessarily worse than life on Earth is an argument that is quite easy to disprove.
- darkerside 6y ago
  What slum are you talking about that is worse than living in what amounts to a slightly larger ISS? Rio? Dharavi? Not the parent, but it made a good point, so I'm curious about yours.
  - harimau777 6y ago
    I'm not sure it's fair to characterize it as a slightly larger ISS. The root poster was suggesting a colony the size of a planet.
    - darkerside 6y ago
      I must have missed that, and didn't see it on a second skim. Still, even if that's the case, I'm sure we'll fill it to a similar per capita density from a total living volume perspective.
  - moralestapia 6y ago
    Check this [0]: "Around 9 million people die every year of hunger and hunger-related diseases" "A child dies from hunger every 10 seconds" and also, by the end of the article: "2.5+ billion people in need of water" I don't care if its a "slum" or not, it could be happening in Switzerland and it wouldn't make a difference for me as I'm not discussing the "aesthetic" side of the argument. If people on a Mars colony have enough food and water (which they almost certainly will), they will be doing better than the ones referred to at in the article. 0: https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty/hunger-and-obesity/how-many-people-die-from-hunger-each-year https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty...

wcarss 6y ago

This (and the parent) both require a kind of paucity of vision or imagined capability -- endless subterranean hospital hallways and infinities of military bunkeresque quarters would indeed be abysmal, but there is no particular reason we could not instead build sweeping open spaces full of light and life and visions we've never dreamed, if we were so capable as to profitably settle a rogue world. Sure, it could (and likely would!) be hard to make it not suck to live in a place like that. But if we're going to indulge in wild future space colonization fantasies, we certainly don't need to stop and get mired in the economic feasibilities of the potential lifestyles there to the point that they become depressing. Imagine "Halo", not "HAL"!

radu_floricica 6y ago
Yeap. Indoor space in a seismically dead world is very cheap. Energy is presumably also cheap. Paint the ceiling blue and you ciuld have real sized California. For a contemporary example, people pay a premium to go to the mall. Just scale it up - not even a lot, 10x or 100x, and you basically have paradise. Far from abysmal.
- darkerside 6y ago
  And then the population expands to fill that space. Then what? It's a lot harder to expand your hermetically sealed environment than it is to cut down a few trees.
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    Uhh... Digging more Mars holes is a lot better than cutting down trees.
    - darkerside 6y ago
      Surely you don't think expanding a sealed base within a hostile environment is that easy?
      - tomrod 6y ago
        Not easy, but plannable.
  - radu_floricica 6y ago
    We're already dependent on an industrial society. Without, for example, mass produced fertilizer we could not sustain current population. Same thing with digging holes.
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  The Earth will be seismically dead at some point.

moralestapia 6y ago

>I guess if you don't appreciate the outside world I never said that. Sorry, I didn't know you were throwing a tantrum. I thought we were having an honest discussion. I can tell you, for sure, that there are people on this earth which are living under an overall worse standard of living than the one you would probably find in early mars colonies; and they outnumber people like us, with food, clean water, internet access, etc... That obviously sucks, but to say that life on Mars is going to be necessarily worse than life on Earth is an argument that is quite easy to disprove.

darkerside 6y ago
What slum are you talking about that is worse than living in what amounts to a slightly larger ISS? Rio? Dharavi? Not the parent, but it made a good point, so I'm curious about yours.
- harimau777 6y ago
  I'm not sure it's fair to characterize it as a slightly larger ISS. The root poster was suggesting a colony the size of a planet.
  - darkerside 6y ago
    I must have missed that, and didn't see it on a second skim. Still, even if that's the case, I'm sure we'll fill it to a similar per capita density from a total living volume perspective.
- moralestapia 6y ago
  Check this [0]: "Around 9 million people die every year of hunger and hunger-related diseases" "A child dies from hunger every 10 seconds" and also, by the end of the article: "2.5+ billion people in need of water" I don't care if its a "slum" or not, it could be happening in Switzerland and it wouldn't make a difference for me as I'm not discussing the "aesthetic" side of the argument. If people on a Mars colony have enough food and water (which they almost certainly will), they will be doing better than the ones referred to at in the article. 0: https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty/hunger-and-obesity/how-many-people-die-from-hunger-each-year https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty...