Comment by njb311 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by njb311 | Hacker News Reader

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I agree, earth orbit is great for deploying tech that helps us on the surface. The moon may prove useful if there's something of sufficient value to bring back. Mars is pure 'human endeavour', putting it kindly. Some individuals with large egos and wallets are pursuing it just because they can. Any sense in which Mars could be 'colonised' is indeed fantasy unless we are talking over a hundreds-to-thousands-of-years timescale, and you can be sure that it wouldn't be some haven. For one thing, the military would be the first to occupy, and if that was the military of one country you can be sure that they'd be joined by another fairly soon, and then...

Given we seem to struggle with working out how humans will get on okay on earth in the coming decades, we should not be distracting resources (our own and our planet's) until we have solved some more pressing issues. Given most of the 'wealth' that we have today has been created by exploiting fossil fuels (or exists only within financial systems), we have a huge job ahead in transforming society into something more sustainable.

> there is no future event that would make earth as uninhabitable as Mars is today

As I heard someone say recently: while we think about terra-forming Mars, we are busy Mars-forming Earth.

> the military would be the first to occupy

What's your reasoning here? The purpose of the military is to defend valuables from others. Deploying military to Mars is as likely as deploying military to the Antarctic.

Scientists will be the first and probably last to occupy. Difficult to imagine it will ever expand much beyond research missions. The Antarctic environment is far less harsh than Mars and no-one maintains a permanent base there.

Not because of the lack of trying though: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_activity_in_the_Ant...

Text from that link:

As Antarctica has never been permanently settled by humans, there has historically been little military activity in the Antarctic. Because the Antarctic Treaty, which came into effect on June 23, 1961, bans military activity in Antarctica, military personnel and equipment may only be used for scientific research or any other peaceful purpose (such as delivering supplies) on the continent.

What about under it?

> Deploying military to Mars is as likely as deploying military to the Antarctic.

Nobody is suggesting we colonise the Antarctic, because there's nothing much (of current economic value) there. There are a handful of people there to study it and they need a constant supply of resources to sustain them. If that was the point of going to Mars, then you'd really have to question what can be achieved there that warrants such massive cost, especially if any part of that cost is government funded.

Now, if we contrast that with the Arctic, the first sign of a melting ice cap and there's military posturing over who is going to exploit the natural resources being exposed there.

> The Antarctic environment is far less harsh than Mars and no-one maintains a permanent base there.

That's completely incorrect. While a lot of the workers in the Antarctic program (I wintered over in 2016 as a station Network Engineer) go on to work at NASA, because of environmental similarities to space/Mars/etc, many countries maintain permanent research stations in Antarctica. The personnel switch out every season, but the bases are permanent.

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