Comment by colonelspace
1 day 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.
1 day 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.
But 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.
I'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.
They'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.
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I 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.
I know what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but really? We're going this far with it? It doesn't even exist anymore?