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We ourselves would likely try to colonise an exoplanet similar to Earth around a nearby star before we even think about settling on Mercury. I think they have

We ourselves would likely try to colonise an exoplanet similar to Earth around a nearby star before we even think about settling on Mercury. I think they have a point on heat management, too much heat can easily make a place totally uninhabitable while cold can practically always be managed.

andsoitis 3y ago
> We ourselves would likely try to colonise an exoplanet similar to Earth around a nearby star before we even think about settling on Mercury. The other continents on Earth are much more similar to Antarctica than Mars is to Antarctica. We set up a presence on Antarctica and we haven’t yet on any other celestial body. I juts don’t buy that there was an Antarctic industrial civilization that couldn’t find a way to also live on the other continents but somehow did on Mars but left zero evidence.
- seszett 3y ago
  I think you're talking from a human point of view, but you know nothing of the similarity of Antarctica compared to the other continents for this hypothetical sentient species we're talking about. If they can't bear positive temperatures then all other continents are totally out of bounds for them, while Mars isn't. That's different from the reverse, in that even if we can't naturally live in negative temperatures we can easily enough wear warm clothes and heat up the spaces we live in. Same reason we find nearby Venus uninhabitable but faraway Europa seems almost colonisable. Of course there wasn't actually an Antarctic industrial civilisation, but that's not really the point. Also, any evidence would be found either under 2000 meters of ice or at the bottom of the Antarctic ocean, so we wouldn't know about it yet.
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    They can build craft to travel to Mars but not to another continent on Earth? That is an extraordinary claim!
    - seszett 3y ago
      I don't think the point was about being able to travel some place or not, but being able to settle it. Even humans can travel to Antarctica but won't leave a trace there. Also, we're discussing prehuman civilisations so dismissing an hypothesis as being an "extraordinary claim" within this context is a bit weird.

andsoitis 3y ago

> We ourselves would likely try to colonise an exoplanet similar to Earth around a nearby star before we even think about settling on Mercury. The other continents on Earth are much more similar to Antarctica than Mars is to Antarctica. We set up a presence on Antarctica and we haven’t yet on any other celestial body. I juts don’t buy that there was an Antarctic industrial civilization that couldn’t find a way to also live on the other continents but somehow did on Mars but left zero evidence.

seszett 3y ago
I think you're talking from a human point of view, but you know nothing of the similarity of Antarctica compared to the other continents for this hypothetical sentient species we're talking about. If they can't bear positive temperatures then all other continents are totally out of bounds for them, while Mars isn't. That's different from the reverse, in that even if we can't naturally live in negative temperatures we can easily enough wear warm clothes and heat up the spaces we live in. Same reason we find nearby Venus uninhabitable but faraway Europa seems almost colonisable. Of course there wasn't actually an Antarctic industrial civilisation, but that's not really the point. Also, any evidence would be found either under 2000 meters of ice or at the bottom of the Antarctic ocean, so we wouldn't know about it yet.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  They can build craft to travel to Mars but not to another continent on Earth? That is an extraordinary claim!
  - seszett 3y ago
    I don't think the point was about being able to travel some place or not, but being able to settle it. Even humans can travel to Antarctica but won't leave a trace there. Also, we're discussing prehuman civilisations so dismissing an hypothesis as being an "extraordinary claim" within this context is a bit weird.