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Comment by caconym_ | Hacker News Reader

Maybe your initial comment was not clear. Reproduced below:

> Excitement cannot overcome a lack of exploitable natural resources at the destination.

In context ("the more SpaceX progresses, the more people will get excited about space and investment money will be thrown at space technology"), I assumed your point was that natural resources on Mars cannot be economically relevant to Earth-based investors, and therefore no such investment money will be "thrown" at Mars colonization regardless of how "excited" people are about the idea. Hence the substance of my reply.

Did you instead mean to say that air, water, food, and radiation shielding are intractable problems for Mars colonization?

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It's both.

Without local resources, whether economic or life-sustaining, you're not really a colony, but a scientific expedition or military outpost or both.

Both of which put you under the political authority (and reliance for survival) of your sponsoring entity, which to me largely quashes the whole sovereignty appeal.

That isn't to say that there won't be "true believers" who buy into the idea of starting a colony, as it's sold by Elon or NASA or the US Space Force or whoever. I'm sure they'll find volunteers.

You also seem to be taking as a given that independent survival on Mars is functionally impossible due to a lack of "local resources" from which to derive the essentials of survival viz. "air, water, food, and radiation shielding". Is that correct?

My original comment explicitly (see: "if/when independent survival is [...] feasible") takes no position on this matter.

Thanks for pointing that out. Guess I forgot that 'if' when I read:

> There are absolutely exploitable resources there; they are just irrelevant...

Because I haven't read of any human-sustaining resources except some ice. Rather that analyzed samples of the soil and atmosphere are too toxic and radiation at the surface too high.

It's definitely not an easy place to live. My understanding is that even in a best case scenario where everything you need turns out to be theoretically available, you'll need a bunch of currently-speculative industrial processes to extract it at scale.

I'm not convinced it's intractable, though, especially with a few more decades of progress in industrial automation.

"My original comment explicitly (see: "if/when independent survival is [...] feasible") takes no position on this matter."

Since "independent survival" will never be feasible on Mars, your comment sounds like pure fiction.

It's not like you can just go out in the wilderness and kill an animal for food, or find a river to drink from. You can't even breathe there.

"Independent survival" is barely even feasible on Earth.

You will always be dependent on the facilities, supply ships, etc.

Then there's the question of protecting what you have, without having any authorities, law enforcement, etc. to help you.

If you go there, it will most likely be an experience as in the old mining towns, where a single company owned everything, (factory, shops, residential areas, recreational areas, etc), and the workers will mainly be paid in "company bucks", that can only be used there.

For most people, it'll be like a dystopian neo-feudalistic nightmare, you can't wake up from. One where you can't even quit your job, because there's nowhere else to go. Indentured servitude on another planet.

But the Elon fan boys will no doubt be happy to sign up for it anyway.

I like how you call my comment "pure fiction" and then launch into a bit of highly opinionated speculative fiction regarding what "life on Mars" will surely be like.

Beyond that, I'm not sure what you think I mean by "independent survival", but just to be clear: I'm not talking about, like, one dude striking out for a life of rugged solitude in the great Martian outdoors.

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