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This one is gold: "As Bruce Sterling has put it: "I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi D

by mikk0j 15y ago

This one is gold: "As Bruce Sterling has put it: "I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live."

kitsune_ 15y ago
Well, actually, people do live in the Gobi Desert (for example in Erenhot - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erenhot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erenhot - a city with 16'000 inhabitants).
rsheridan6 15y ago
I would be very surprised if the Gobi Desert, and Antarctica, and any other inhospitable place you care to name, was not colonized and exploited in the distant future. Right now we aren't doing that because we don't need to, but we could. As for space colonization, there's enough of a romantic interest in it that I wouldn't think that the fact that it doesn't make economic sense would necessarily be a deal killer. There's also the possibility that some group would want to escape Earth at any expense. It didn't make a lot of economic sense for the Puritans to go to America, but they wanted out of the mother country.
hackermom 15y ago
The significant difference is that we have colonized this planet already. It's in the nature of our species to increase our reach and breadth, and settling in the Gobi Desert simply doesn't pander towards this call. The perspective put forward by Sterling is very naive and narrow-minded, as it entirely disregards this human trait. Remember, we went to the moon, and we want to go to Mars, too, for reasons that we all know can't be fulfilled by a trip to the Gobi Desert.
- SamReidHughes 15y ago
  > It's in the nature of our species to increase our reach and breadth, It is? Maybe it's in the nature of some individuals, but three boats ain't no rocketship.

by mikk0j 15y ago

kitsune_ 15y ago

Well, actually, people do live in the Gobi Desert (for example in Erenhot - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erenhot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erenhot - a city with 16'000 inhabitants).

rsheridan6 15y ago

I would be very surprised if the Gobi Desert, and Antarctica, and any other inhospitable place you care to name, was not colonized and exploited in the distant future. Right now we aren't doing that because we don't need to, but we could. As for space colonization, there's enough of a romantic interest in it that I wouldn't think that the fact that it doesn't make economic sense would necessarily be a deal killer. There's also the possibility that some group would want to escape Earth at any expense. It didn't make a lot of economic sense for the Puritans to go to America, but they wanted out of the mother country.

hackermom 15y ago

The significant difference is that we have colonized this planet already. It's in the nature of our species to increase our reach and breadth, and settling in the Gobi Desert simply doesn't pander towards this call. The perspective put forward by Sterling is very naive and narrow-minded, as it entirely disregards this human trait. Remember, we went to the moon, and we want to go to Mars, too, for reasons that we all know can't be fulfilled by a trip to the Gobi Desert.

SamReidHughes 15y ago
> It's in the nature of our species to increase our reach and breadth, It is? Maybe it's in the nature of some individuals, but three boats ain't no rocketship.