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Comment by dheera | Hacker News Reader

One of my biggest concerns for habitation on other worlds is not what the author mentions, but rather interplanetary communication.

The mean distance between Earth and Mars is about 1338 light-seconds, or about 22 minutes. You wouldn't be able to have a meaningful phone call with your friends or relatives at Earth -- you'd be stuck with writing long e-mails or voice messages. That would suck.

Building a CDN between Earth and Mars would also be a technical nightmare. Especially for whatever data-hungry VR and other content we'll have at that time.

Everything else about making Mars habitable -- climate control, resources, food, water, medical, cultural, job opportunities, transportation, recreation, entertainment -- seems approachable to me in the next few thousand years of technological development.

The speed of light will suck. Unless Einstein is wrong in some way we don't yet understand.

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What you're describing is what moving to another continent was like until a few decades ago. Or moving to another city was like until 1-2 centuries ago.

Plenty of people moved anyway.

Sure. But it's very hard for humans to go back to that once they are used to being able to have real-time communication as we have today.

You'd have all the recorded entertainment you could possibly want. My grandparents liked electric stoves and telephones well enough, but also griped that thoughtful letters and coal stoves had advantages they missed, too. I don't think they would have batted an eye if they were told things were going back to the old ways. It would be like living in a small town, mostly, and many prefer that; to be part of a tight group, not lonely in an endless mass of very loosely connected people.

They moved for opportunity. Dunno if Mars is much of an opportunity, especially after 150 days of weightlessness stuck in a small RV.

Being one of the first Martians makes you solar system famous and a historical figure.

Surely the fame and fortune from that will cause plenty of opportunity.

First and probably last. You will have fame surely but then no groupies. And I don't think that fortune will get you much of anything when you're 33.9 million miles away from Walmart on a good day.

You're not imaginative enough :)

You may not be able to spend your money at Walmart but you could invest in startups, fund charities, buy property you'll never see etc.

After a point, that's what rich people do anyway. There's only so much enjoyment to have from physically shopping for bread.

Hell, you could even have a second remote job if you got that bored.

Colonists in the new world dealt with worse just fine for hundreds of years. You make a new life and send letters.

Unless this VR content is real time it's not a roundtrip problem but a bandwidth problem. Even without a high bandwidth uplink a few tons of storage sent to Mars on a rocket with some regularity goes a long way. Maybe Martians will play GTA 10 a bit after the rest of us, no big deal.

That's because the "new world" was already livable by the people who, um, were native.

Things that we take for granted on earth (and which allow a simple tribal existence):

- air with enough oxygen

- most radiation is shielded, allowing one to subsist with minimal clothing

- vegetation that grows food

- roaming animals that can also be food

- water for basic necessities (hydration, hygiene).

Picture setting up camp in Death Valley. That's luxury compared to Mars.

The GP is postulating problems colonists will still have on Mars in the year 4000.

Your comment is entirely irrelevant to that discussion. By that time Mars could have been fully terraformed, but the speed of light won't have changed, nor presumably will planetary orbits.

The first sentence is false in very large part BTW - before the eventual introduction of earthworms to the New World, most common agriculture was impossible.

Isn't 22 minutes the maximum?

I mean if 1AU=150e6 km, and Mars-Sun is 230e6 km, and assuming circular orbits, we get a distance between mars and earth of between

    230e6km - 150e6km = 80e6km

and

    230e6km + 150e6km = 380e6km

Giving a range of 4.4-19.4 minutes. (EDIT: I guess 22 min is the back-and-forth time)

Anyway, this will surely suck, but I often chat with people while they're doing stuff, and they often only get back to me every 10 minutes or so. You just need to multi-task while doing conversation.

Also, some reddits only allow you to post once every 5 minutes or so; that's not that different from having a 5 minute delay (note how old posts are that you're responding to).

For many people, most communication is already delayed.

You assume people who want to move to Mars in the first place would want to have meaningful contacts with friends or relatives in Earth.

I believe a selection effect (the desire to go to Mars in the first place) may prove your assumption wrong.

Keep in mind every (four?) years it gets close enough to earth to Snapchat.

Care to explain?

I believe he is referring to the elliptical orbits aligning in some manner which would reduce the distance enough to have near real time communication

Okay.. I thought there might be more to his point given who contextual "close enough to ... Snapchat" is.

Yeah Elon Musk said it: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/76e79c/i_am_elon_mus...

People managed for a long time not being able to communicate between distant settlements faster than months or years, either having to go in person or send something on paper -- I think we'll be able to manage 20 minutes delay on them receiving video chat.

Just move Mars

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