this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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Do people really think we'll colonize mars soon?
Colonizing the bottom of the ocean would be orders of magnitude cheaper, and more practical. Same with Antarctica. And there's a reason we don't do that.
I hate to sound anal, but I don't think the public appreciates how monumentally difficult space travel is, and how it gets exponentially worse with every ounce you have to carry. Even with theoretical, morally questionable tech like fission fragment drives or whatever.
I'm not aware of any reason on why we'd want to colonize the bottom of the ocean, but there's many reasons to want to become a multi-planetary species. Space exploration has also lead to many technologies being used in everyday life today.
What's morally questionable about fission fragment drives?
This multi-planetary species thing just won’t work. The most likely scenario is that we fail. However, if we succeed the species will split very quickly on account of Mars’ unique evolutionary environment. You would get earth humans and Mars humans, and knowing our nature as a peaceful species, I am pretty sure we’d wipe each other out in no time.
That wouldn't happen for an extremely long time. It will be many generations before Mars would be self sufficient enough that they could wage war on Earth. I don't feel like that's enough of a possibility to not even try colonizing another planet.