That's what makes it truly exciting to me: it seems like a lot of smart people have been putting serious thought and consideration towards what would/will be required to have a realistic shot at colonizing another planet.
Technology is going to destroy birth rates and scarcity and machines will rapidly eclipse our own abilities to do anything and so future man will smartly answer the question of inter-planetary and perhaps interstellar travel with 'machines not people'. Eventually we may leave Earth on some scale but I doubt we'll ever run out of room or resources here and be forced to leave.
Imagine, the solar system would be a more harmonious place if everyone with rather strong ideas about how the world should be run could simply go start their own world to be run that way. You could have a libertarian planet, a socialist planet, a centre-left planet, a centre-right planet, and if someone didn't like the way things were run they could move to a new planet. Of course there's not enough planets for that, but there's enough raw materials to build enough orbital habitats.
I don't think that's clear at all. I think the widespread view that society is going to keep looking more or less like the present but with self driving cars is complete folly. Technology is going to -- among other things -- destroy scarcity, erase language barriers, end warfare, conquer disease and educate the masses. The societal changes coming are bigger than industrialization, maybe bigger than moving from hunter gatherers to agriculture.
> Imagine, the solar system would be a more harmonious place if everyone with rather strong ideas about how the world should be run could simply go start their own world to be run that way.
That doesn't sound very harmonious at all. That sounds like institutionalizing ignorance as an organizing principle and seems like something intelligent society would move away from.
I don't see how this is "institutionalizing ignorance", though on its own I agree it may not be very harmonious; it sounds like a recipe for an interplanetary nuclear conflict.
When thinking of colonizing a new planet, is there any information about who will control the resources of the colony? Will the USA control Martian resources if we get there first or will it be a collaborative effort like the Space Station?
But, to be honest, not particularly all that more major than any number of issues that arise on Earth all the time, and we generally muddle through them. It'll be a long time before anyone would have any reason to start a shooting war over an off-planet resource.
And science fiction has been predicting the near inevitability that eventually the off-planet colony will demand independence anyhow, a position I see no reason to modify or disagree with, personally. The structural forces in favor of that outcome are just overwhelming.
If and when this becomes a legitimate issue, it will be interesting to see who claims what, or if it will be it's own independent place.
Once they're self-sustaining, I'd say the Martians will control Martian resources. Good freaking luck trying to exert power over people several light-minutes away.
It just makes more sense to increase collaborations between colonies if you are so far away from earth. If there would be a US colony on Mars and a Chinese colony on Mars, these people would probably have more interactions with each other than with any person or nation on earth. There are huge advantages of exchange of goods between colonies, so that not every colony has to produce every special item or mine every kind of resource.
They are there to maintain the status quo.
Maybe in your generation.
For me it evokes thoughts of Star Trek, of humanity as a whole expanding to outer space and building habitats in far away places.
I really don't think people talking about colonizing Mars think about it in terms of colonial times. And this may be a source of various misunderstandings when debating manned space missions.
China also has plans for Mars and it has no collaborative efforts with the ISS. How much land will it claim?
And how many colonies will demand secession?
edited: typo :)