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> Antarctica is probably 100x more hospitable than Mars and establishing a colony there must be a thousand times easier. Even then, except for a few research st
by warning26 4y ago
> Antarctica is probably 100x more hospitable than Mars and establishing a colony there must be a thousand times easier. Even then, except for a few research stations—which are also only inhabited during summers—humans have largely avoided living in Antarctica. Why make a settlement in a place where everything is significantly harder?
This is a valid point, though I'd argue there's a sci-fi allure of living on another planet that makes it inherently more compelling than living in Antarctica.
- downrightmike 4y agoIt would only take a few hundred years to turn Venus into a pretty close Earth analog. It has issues to be dealt with, but would really have much more resources available that Mars. Even solar power would be more viable on Venus than Mars. Plus it would give us a good midway point to start planet harvesting Mercury if we wanted it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI&t=606s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI&t=606s
- CogitoCogito 4y agoI just watched that video and only have one question: are you being serious?
- simonh 4y agoWith that level of technology and industrial capacity, we could just build a few tens of thousands of orbitals far more cheaply.
- gregjor 4y agoA few hundred years? With what technology? We can’t deliberately terraform this planet in that time period and we don’t have to launch millions of tons of equipment off the planet to do it. Going from “Some planet has these chemicals in its atmosphere or crust” to “We can make it earth-like” is a huge leap that just gets waved away. We can’t extract fresh water from the ocean economically at scale yet. So far we’ve had lots of failed attempts to land even small probes on Venus.