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I just made a comment in another thread that Cape York, a huge chunk of northern Queensland has a mere 18,000 inhabitants. It's more sparsely occupied than northern Alaska by nearly a factor of two.

Why? Because it is low-value land due to monsoons turning the dirt into mud, and that dirt doesn't have enough minerals in it so agriculture is too difficult to bother with.

It has free oxygen. It has 1g gravity. You can fly there for about a thousand dollars instead of a thousand billion. The radiation might give you skin cancer, but won't kill you immediately. There's too much water. It has animals you can hunt and eat. Etc, etc...

Practically nobody wants to live there that wasn't already there for generations.

If the human race can't be bothered occupying land like that, then colonising Mars is so, so far down the list it isn't even on the same page, book, or library shelf.

The desire to fly to space can be compared with such for going to Everest, the place less hospitable than Cape York, yet having quite an interest from all sides. However, exploration of space could be way more practical than conquering the highest point on Earth - it serves scientific goals, and after science often come applications. There are many useful technologies which grew from space exploration and particularly from manned space programs, and we can expect those benefits to follow those who keeps studying space and learning to live close to the object of study.

We're just starting an energetic space exploration with appearance of better tools in the recent years. Getting to the Moon is relatively easy, and could be barely done with much more modest technology; now we plan a bigger scale program. Getting people to Mars is undoubtedly more complex, but still within reach of the existing - or almost existing - technology. Getting furter from Earth, while not immediately in the plans, may get just as possible and useful with time, and we shouldn't claim to know what could be our reasons tomorrow to visit, say, Ceres or Venus. There is no scientific impossibility for flying almist anywhere in Solar system - the matter is only in needs and economic costs. Our predecessors could be confused with our habits of flying between continents and islands the way we can and do today - similarly some of us may not see the immediate reason to leave Earth - that can pass, as past habits got changed to our current ones.

No one has aspirations or desire to live on Everest. They just want to go there plant a flag and say they did it before rushing back to.Civilization. Hmmm kinda like the moon.

Yes, but Everest brings back less in terms of science - it's a smaller place than space.

Moon was that in 1960s. Now we're talking about a McMurdo station, not a dash to the South Pole with temporary storages along the way.

I think there are quite a few people would build a hotel on top if the respective nations controlling the area let them. ;-)

For the record, I would definitely visit such a hotel, even better if it included a super high altitude railway, Jungfrau Railway style!

You would wear an oxygen mask for your entire visit to stay alive? along with the climb, that even with modern technology and accessibility, only a few thousand people have ever done?

because flying helicopter up there is incredibly dangerous and nobody would be willing to do regularly for a job. In fact, only one person has ever done it just to prove that it could be done.

I mean, I don't know you, but I feel like most people are not truly considering the level of discomfort, such a visit would entail. Much less being on the Moon or mars for any extended period of time.

You would essentially be paying tens of thousands of dollars to be an agony for several days. I've done such things just to say i did in my 20's but not for that cost.

I looked into going to Everest - it is possible for a normal person to go - you need to save up a lot of money ($10-20k) which is within reach of most people if you really want to go. However even if you are filthy rich you still shouldn't: there is a lot of litter on the mountain because it is almost impossible to make the whole trip without leaving things behind. Combine with the danger and you really should not make the trip. Instead a have few photographers and scientists (who have real science to do up there - I'm not sure what there is) make the trip, or better yet a robot - and then look at pictures/videos and read their reports.

The moon is unlikely to be self sustaining - gravity is too low. In turn that means that earth will forever be polluting the earths atmosphere (CO2!) to supply it.

Well, the solar system itself is ridiculously huge - saying "lets don't bother" because interstellar flight looks cumbersome with current technology ? Seems like quite the premature optimization.

Yes, while for now there is no known method for useful interstellar flight, spaceships with nuclear reactors could reduce the time required for traveling through the Solar System to acceptable values.

> It should be remembered, however, that the bird successful in flight is an evolution. It has taken a great many generations of his kind to develop his muscular system in just the right way for flying purposes, and very likely the process has consumed many centuries of time. The mistake of the scientist would appear to be in his assumption that he can do with much less suitable material by a single act of creative genius what nature accomplishes with such immeasurable deliberation. [1]

> Face it, earth is all we get: make it last.

Recent sci fi novels I've ready have been really depressing because while maybe some colony planet is doing OK the Earth is a used up husk, and I'd like to think that we could have both: a planet we chose to make last and successful footholds on other bodies (water moons and water planets make more sense to me)

[1] New York Times, 9 weeks before the Kitty Hawk's first flight (https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/svc/tmach/v1/refer?pdf=true...)

Earth is by far the best we can get, but on big enough spaceships it is possible to create living conditions that are better than on any other body of the Solar System, except perhaps on a ship floating in the clouds of Venus.

The experiments done on ISS suggest that for optimum health a gravity of at least two thirds of that of Earth is necessary, which disqualifies almost all the bodies from the Solar System, because they are either too small or too big.

On a rotating spaceship it is possible to create any level of artificial gravity. In theory, one could make an underground rotating living space on Mars, to increase the apparent gravity, but that would consume much more energy and it would complicate entering and exiting, in comparison with a rotating spaceship.

Obviously, something like this will not be built any time soon, but nonetheless an expansion into the Solar System is possible even without living on the surfaces of other celestial bodies.