Skip to main content
Space Exploration

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

14
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ This might be nitpicking, but "it's essentially just science fiction" is exaggeration, especially given the follow-on questions asked by OP. Actual engineering effort is being expended on Mars ISRU development, though I admit that the work has stayed very basic without sufficient development or budget and the best-known plans like Mars One are somewhere between fanciful and outright cons. $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 3, 2024 at 9:11
  • 22
    $\begingroup$ @ErinAnne I think I just set the bar to what I consider "colonization" to be rather high. For example, despite thousands of people currently living and working in Antarctica, I would not really consider the continent "colonized" in any way. Same with Mars, there will be quite a bit of manned exploration that needs to happen before a colonization effort can be attempted. Yes, some groups are working on technologies which, one day, could be used by Mars colonists but we haven't even sent a manned mission there, so anything we have now is, at best, a distant precursor to what will be used one day $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 3, 2024 at 12:46
  • 18
    $\begingroup$ @Dragongeek ... I like the comparison with the Antarctic. Despite being much more accessible and benign than mars, we do not have the technology to make the Antarctic independent of scheduled outside support. Like the ISS. $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 3, 2024 at 15:15
  • 6
    $\begingroup$ @PM2Ring: That is because the average person has a heavily romanticized idea of what Mars would be like. You'd be living in a tiny box with no (or at best extremely limited) internet, no entertainment devices that weigh more than a pound or so, the outside world is miles and miles of brown, and you (probably) aren't allowed to do an EVA anyway unless you have a good reason. I'm sure there are people who would be willing to put up with all of that because it's Mars, but I tend to imagine that the novelty would wear off real quick for the average person. $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 3, 2024 at 20:31
  • 4
    $\begingroup$ @Kevin no entertainment devices that weigh more than a pound or so, - 20 years ago that would have been a problem. Now with modern tablets that's trivial. And shared large storage could provide decades worth of books, movies, etc. But food will be a biggie - until you have a huge nearly-self-sustaining "colony", all but the basics will be shipped from Earth - which means either very basic very boring limited menu or incredibly expensive - coffee, chocolate, beef? (actually beef might have the best chance with lab-grown meat) will all be Earth-sourced for a long time. $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 3, 2024 at 21:24