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Comment by pasquinelli | Hacker News Reader

that's crazy to say. mars is very cold and very dry and not shielded from radiation and doesn't have much air and that air isn't breathable.

i wouldn't say we've settled antarctica, which is on our planet and has air.

100 years would be a wild amount of time for us to settle mars.

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It's also particularly awkward to land on, as it has just enough atmosphere to be annoying, but not enough to be particularly helpful. Most Mars landings have involved some sort of ridiculous Rube Goldberg machine or other (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_crane_(landing_system) , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Pathfinder#Entry,_descent... ) which would not be viable for humans (and were only arguably viable for the probes they were used for; the risk of failure was high).

Add to that a soil and dust that's toxic to humans. Our biology, unsurprisingly, is only compatible with a single planet.

We purposefully decided not to settle there socially, yet we have settled there permanently with research and military stations.

Just as we will with Mars.

And yes we grow things there, even if just green onions and herbs.

Not to mention the reason for this isn't that it is insurmountable, merely that far better land is close by.

100 years is beyond pessimistic. We could easily have settled Mars with 1970s tech.

> the reason for this isn't that it is insurmountable, merely that far better land is close by.

times a few orders of magnitude and this is the main reason to doubt a settled Mars colony.

Possibly a research outpost, but why would that be staffed by humans rather than robots?

There is no 'few orders of magnitude', because it's conquered, you're not allowed to settle there, and it's not a new frontier.

Yet Mars is a new frontier, and endless, massive numbers of humans would go to Mars in a heartbeat.

Frankly, settlers travelling to the new world in the 1400s faced a far more dangerous journey and living conditions than a trip to Mars.

We're talking first explorers here, so many died on boats, of starvation the first year, on and on.

Modern tech does not remove said risk, but it tips the playing field.

Given that no one has yet traveled to Mars, “faced a far more dangerous journey” seems a ridiculously hyperbolic statement. (Thinking even about the lost colony at Roanoke.)

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