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Comment by clpm4j | Hacker News Reader

I would say that "living on Mars" could be classified as delusional.

It was, but once Starship becomes operational, the financial game changes by many orders of magnitude - to a point where a single billionaire with no fucks to give can actually book themselves a ride to Mars.

One may hate on Musk for a number of very good reasons, but it cannot be denied him, Shotwell and the rest of the SpaceX team have thoroughly kicked the established space industry mooches into their asses.

Elon Musk has unfortunately a very long track record of over-promising and under-delivering.

Anything he say should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.

I don't think he is a complete fraud, but I would not bet my shirt on his Mark colonization project.

> billionaire with no fucks to give can actually book themselves a ride to Mars

What is a billionaire gonna do once they get to Mars?

"What is a billionaire gonna do once they get to Mars?"

Undergo profound physical atrophy leading to organ dysfunction and eventually cancer ...

... since Mars gravity is something like 1/3 that of Earth.

There's a huge chasm between "disrupting an already inefficient space industry" and "living on Mars".

We barely have the capability of living long term on Antarctica, and it has plentiful water, oxygen, gravity, a magnetic field, and doesn't have lethal radiation. Until I see a 100K population colony on Antarctica, I'll be unconvinced that we even have a prayer of building a 1K population colony on Mars.

We could easily build a 100k colony in Antarctica or out in the ocean right now (or in the Australian Outback or Canadian north or any other inhospitable boring hellscape)

I'll admit that I'm not sure what the point of a mars colony is either, except for science and to act as a forward space outpost.. maybe it would be useful for industrial purposes? I guess you wouldn't have to worry about utterly destroying the environment.

If it were mostly self sufficient it could act as a seed to repair earth society in the event of a catastrophic asteroid strike or nuclear war, I guess

Meh. No one wants to live on the poles, not even for bragging rights, other than a few scientists. Mars however? There's a shitload of people who'd volunteer to go there simply for their entry in the history books.

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