4 ms·
There are large swathes of earth that are too inhospitable, like deserts. They're more accessible and easier to support life in than Mars, and yet no one lives
by colonelspace 1y ago
There are large swathes of earth that are too inhospitable, like deserts. They're more accessible and easier to support life in than Mars, and yet no one lives there.
The deserts even have breathable air.
- jayd16 1y agoI will say the compelling thing about Mars is that you wouldn't be disrupting an ecosystem to terraform it. That said, I'm definitely on the side of making Fresno a paradise before we try mars.
- ctoth 1y agoI know what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but really? We're going this far with it? It doesn't even exist anymore?
- bryanlarsen 1y agoBut there are people living in the inhospitable deserts that have useful resources like oil. Or artificial resources like legalized gambling. Antarctica is even more inhospitable than deserts, and there are people living there for research purposes.
- colonelspace 1y agoI'm just making the basic point that we have a wealth of much more hospitable places to live on earth, and somehow they're not viable candidates as "backup plans" for humanity. Going a little further, living in the ocean is easier than living on Mars. As far as I can tell there are no billionaire-funded submarine civilisation programs.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoThey're not viable candidates as backup plans for humanity because they have the same vulnerabilities to comet strikes, global nuclear war and pandemic as the rest of the Earth. OTOH, if one of those took out human life on Earth, people living on Mars could re-colonize Earth.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoEarth after a global nuclear war or comet strike is still more hospitable than Mars. It's hard to imagine anything that would make Mars a better place to live than simply staying on earth.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoYes it would be. But that doesn't matter if no humans make it through the apocalypse in the first place.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoThe moon would do the job at a lot cheaper price.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoNope. Because of aero braking, Mars takes less delta v to get to and land on than the moon does.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoNow I'm wondering why the Apollo program went to the moon if doing Mars is so much cheaper.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoGoing is cheaper. Coming back is more expensive. And of course the 3-6 month travel time is a challenge.