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Comment by greendestiny | Hacker News Reader

Go to a rocky desert, there are huge ones out there (albeit nothing compared to Mars), and tell me if you find parts of it that make you want to set up life in tank or if it all looks the same.

We evolved to be interested in the things that keep us alive or can kill us - other flora and fauna and water are the top of that list. We find variations of that endlessly interesting. Rock formations, not so much.

Man wants to conquer Mars but I don't to see the pitiful existence of those poor few fools who sacrifice themselves for our collective egos. Especially the first settlers who can't come back and beg for their lives over the video link constantly.

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Well I guess it depends if you're an optimist or a pessimist about the thought of living in a remote, hostile place, doing science and research that may have extraordinary repercussions for the entire species.

Well to be fair, I grant you that certain people would find those awful conditions worth it for the sake of the mission. I just think the novelty will wear off and there won't be a stream of people heading off to colonise Mars.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to jump out of this deep gravity well just to be stuck on another one at our current technology levels. Instead asteroids will be much more inviting and the technology to harvest them will combat the large existential risk from rogue asteroids that is one of main arguments for the colonisation of other planets in the first place.

I'd much rather visit an asteroid than Mars, so I agree with you there - but I think there are other ways that Mars may become attractive to settlers - especially those who want to escape tyranny on Earth. If a settlement starts and survives, then whoever gets there and participates is literally building a new civilization from scratch. I think you might be a little naive in thinking there aren't a large number of willing people who want to do that, no matter the personal cost. There's a lot of potential.

The problem isn't the individual, its the society that has to pay for it. We can find the exploration of Mars a worthwhile thing in the abstract. But as a society that interest will wane in the face of the reality. Then we aren't going to be paying billions to ship misanthropes off to Mars to thumb their noses at us.

Fortunately for us, there are enough rich misanthropes to not have to worry about the problem. ;)

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