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Bruce Sterling put this rather well 10 years back: "I'll believe in settling Mars when I see people settling the Gobi desert". http://boingboing.net/2004/01/08/

• Omniusaspirer 12y ago
  Desert habitation is actually something I've been really curious about lately- does anyone have links to some good source material I could read into? I'm currently envisioning construction like you'd see in passive homes- hyper insulated, probably powered by solar/wind, and some means of reusing water since it's obviously a limited resource. It's very possible I'm hugely naive though so I'd love to find some hard numbers on the actual viability of what I've described.
  • jkaunisv1 12y ago
    I don't have any expertise in this, but off the top of my head: - wind power would be tough because of sand in the wind. I imagine that would make the tech break down often. Guess it depends on what kind of desert you're talking about. - Bedouin/Saharan peoples are probably a good reference. They had/have cisterns throughout the desert to preserve water between rainfalls. I think they were largely nomadic but I don't know the motivation for that (trade vs food supply vs ?) - Bill Gates reports drinking water from human waste tastes fine, you could probably get your hands on the tech his people are developing.
• Houshalter 12y ago
  It's certainly possible, but who would want to fund or participate in that? Mars gets support because it sounds cool.