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How settling Mars could create a new human species

nautil.us

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Re: How settling Mars could create a new human species

#81

Post by [deleted] »

Damian_Reloaded wrote: post #69
edblarney wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living on Mars = living inside a crapped space your entire life and never being able to breathe fresh air, or take a walk outside. Maybe in 1000 years Mars will be nice. I think until then - nice for a short visit. Living in a box would get tiring very, very quickly.

VR is going to help in this regard. Will VR be able to be a good replacement for a walk over the forest? I think it will. I didn't need VR to trade my outside activities for indoor, climatized comfy online ones. Although it's probably true that spending years inside a submarine isn't for everyone.

[deleted]

Re: How settling Mars could create a new human species

#82

Post by Damian_Reloaded »

edblarney wrote: post #77
Damian_Reloaded wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR is going to help in this regard. Will VR be able to be a good replacement for a walk over the forest? I think it will. I didn't need VR to trade my outside activities for indoor, climatized comfy online ones. Although it's probably true that spending years inside a submarine isn't for everyone.

"Will VR be able to be a good replacement for a walk over the forest?" Maybe in 200 years, when it's neurologically attached to our brains. Until them, no :)

Replacement doesn't necessarily means it will be identical. It could be an inherently different but superior experience. Of course it would only work for people who isn't in denial. ^_^

Re: How settling Mars could create a new human species

#83

Post by edblarney »

artmageddon wrote: post #63
edblarney wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living on Mars = living inside a crapped space your entire life and never being able to breathe fresh air, or take a walk outside. Maybe in 1000 years Mars will be nice. I think until then - nice for a short visit. Living in a box would get tiring very, very quickly.

> Maybe in 1000 years Mars will be nice. Wouldn't terraforming take much, much longer than that? Assuming it were possible(which doesn't seem possible due to lack of a magnetic field, as another commenter pointed out)

1000 years or a million - it's irrelevant I think.

After 1000 years of evolution and progress, we may have very different ideas about everything we understand.

We might possibly abandon Mars 'terraforming' for going to 'ready to go' planets that we can access further away.

Humans are not very good at planning at that horizon.

The only group that does that is the Catholic Church.

The big Cathedral in Cologne, Germany took 700 years to build. Imagine being born, raised, trained, and then working on a project that started 300 years ago and won't be done until 300 years after you are dead? Imagine being the guy in charge of that looking for investment 'for the next phase'? There are always more pressing costs.

It takes a commitment beyond that which our 'GDP' numbers capture.

Admittedly, 'space colonization' shares some of that impetus.

But the reality of it is, most people put their $ into Kardashian news.

Until then - my crazy but most actually realistic bet is that Wynne Hotels and Vegas-like entities, maybe Sandals resorts are the first people to make Mars accessible after NASA makes a few landings.

There will be a Casino on mars before most other things.

Re: How settling Mars could create a new human species

#84

Post by myowncrapulence »

edblarney wrote: post #56
myowncrapulence wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure there was someone in 1492 saying the same thing about America. The grass is always greener.

Living in North America is not that-that different from living in Europe. There is no 'green grass' on Mars, literally or metaphorically. There isn't even any 'air'.

He was talking about his personal perception of the future not the technicalities of existence. Jesus the level of poindexter in even philosophical pleasantries is suffocating on HN.

Re: How settling Mars could create a new human species

#85

Post by Apocryphon »

wongarsu wrote: post #54
M_Grey wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking more in terms of places to live actually... since that's the only benefit Mars has for us. Asteroid mining is an easy thing to see the benefit of, but colonizing another gravity well without fully exploiting our own? Not so much.

But what advantages does settling the ocean have compared to say, settling Wyoming (which with 6 people per square mile is much, much closer to the average population density of the ocean than the average population density of land)? With settling Mars we mitigate a number of potential extinction events, and fulfill some science fiction dreams. Living in the ocean also helps with both goals, but to a much lesser degr…

Wyoming is closer to the Yellowstone Caldera.

Re: How settling Mars could create a new human species

#86

Post by M_Grey »

wongarsu wrote: post #54
M_Grey wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking more in terms of places to live actually... since that's the only benefit Mars has for us. Asteroid mining is an easy thing to see the benefit of, but colonizing another gravity well without fully exploiting our own? Not so much.

But what advantages does settling the ocean have compared to say, settling Wyoming (which with 6 people per square mile is much, much closer to the average population density of the ocean than the average population density of land)? With settling Mars we mitigate a number of potential extinction events, and fulfill some science fiction dreams. Living in the ocean also helps with both goals, but to a much lesser degr…

Living on Mars only obviates the risk of extinction when it has a biosphere capable of supporting life, or is sufficiently advanced to survive without regular shipments from Earth. We're not even remotely close to that, even in the planning or dreaming stages. That said, Wyoming makes more sense than Mars too.

Re: How settling Mars could create a new human species

#87

Post by dmytrish »

SixSigma wrote: post #53
NickBusey wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, while no one can actually claim the land, if they land a bunch of habitat shaped 'space objects' on the surface, it is still under the jurisdiction of the country that launched them. Sounds like a loophole? "We don't claim this land, it's just covered with a city sized grouping of space objects that we do claim."

Dispatcher: Hello 911 Caller: Someone just broke into my space pod. Dispatcher: Ok, I'll send someone right over, should be with you in 6 months or so.

Add several hours of delay between phrases.

Re: How settling Mars could create a new human species

#88

Post by johngalt »

artmageddon wrote: post #63
edblarney wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living on Mars = living inside a crapped space your entire life and never being able to breathe fresh air, or take a walk outside. Maybe in 1000 years Mars will be nice. I think until then - nice for a short visit. Living in a box would get tiring very, very quickly.

> Maybe in 1000 years Mars will be nice. Wouldn't terraforming take much, much longer than that? Assuming it were possible(which doesn't seem possible due to lack of a magnetic field, as another commenter pointed out)

Sounds reasonable to me. Consider where we were in year 1016 vs now, and the rate of change is increasing. If current trends continue, 1000 years seems long if anything.

Even without terraforming, large enough domes would probably be good enough.

Re: How settling Mars could create a new human species

#89

Post by M_Grey »

pharke wrote: post #45
M_Grey wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could try to exploit the 78%+ of this planet we don't use... the oceans. Easier than space, that's for damned sure.

Perhaps, the sea poses its own set of challenges. Given sufficient funds, anyone can buy a boat but deriving useful benefit from seafaring is another story. If you were to explore the 'unused' or currently unexploited aspects of the ocean it would require similar investments in research, life support, materials, construction, and a host of other areas that also need to be tackled for space colonisation and exploratio…

I would agree that on land makes a lot of sense in terms of living space, but in terms of trade and all of the other factors which have traditionally driven humans to the coasts, not so much. By contrast Mars offers nothing that isn't more readily obtained from asteroids, and still offers a gravity well to be stuck in. If you want zero G, vacuum industries, that kind of thing... moons or large asteroids make much more sense than Mars.

A terraformed Mars makes sense, but it's not exactly impending. If you just think about it terms of colonies on Earth, colonies existed because they had something to offer the "mainland". Sugar, rum, slaves, spices... something. Colonies without that benefit didn't stay colonies for long, and what's the point of creating... I don't know... SpaceHaiti2000?

Re: How settling Mars could create a new human species

#90

Post by M_Grey »

Apocryphon wrote: post #85
wongarsu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what advantages does settling the ocean have compared to say, settling Wyoming (which with 6 people per square mile is much, much closer to the average population density of the ocean than the average population density of land)? With settling Mars we mitigate a number of potential extinction events, and fulfill some science fiction dreams. Living in the ocean also helps with both goals, but to a much lesser degr…

Wyoming is closer to the Yellowstone Caldera.

If that puppy blows, any colony on Mars would almost certainly die off, unless they had become totally self-sufficient. I can't imagine that an Earth struggling with that level of natural disaster would bother with such a far-flung enterprise.
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