It's really never a choice of 'which planet should we work on'. The problems on Earth can be solved, but not under capitalism and the current global power structure. Under a different system that could actually address the problems, there would be such a massive global effort underway to improve life on Earth, that some human exploration of Mars would be a tiny expenditure in comparison. As things stand, the problems aren't permitted to be solved, so even if all space exploration was ended tomorrow, all that labor and resources would be redirected to the military or industrial research to boost the profits of corporations.

This only applies to the actual material reality. Billionaires and Musk-worshipers who delude themselves into thinking that Mars will let them escape climate change exist outside of that.

Far far smarter writers and philosophers than me have written on this topic. I think the general pitch was that terraforming a planet like mars was basically a new westward expansion and would kind of...maybe not "solve" but at least delay a lot of the problems we have at home.

No, you're definitely not alone in thinking this

Me, an alien, staring at Earth: "Listen, it's a nice fantasy, but there's no way anything can survive on that planet with the enormous amounts of corrosive and deadly oxygen. Also, the barometric pressure is way too low to support a colony. And don't get me started on the solar radiation. You know what alpha rays do to our skin."

It's vandalism of the natural world.

That can be said about literally any endeavor to increase the productive capacity of a given piece of land though...

This isn't a Marxist/Materialist position, is what I'm getting at.

What nature?

Far as we know,Mars is a dead rock. I agree that we should preserve hypothetical alien lifeforms,but what nature are we ruining by making an empty place livable?

Anne Clayborne was right! Keep Mars Red!

I really am suprised we are not pioneering this tech with our current space station.

We're starting to get there. China's Chang'e 4 far-side lunar rover was controlled via a relay satellite in a halo orbit around the L2 Lagrange point. But I think crewed science missions to Mars will have to be housed on the ground for a few reasons:

• Solar particle radiation, such as from solar flares. Mars' atmosphere, thin as it is, does help reduce this considerably despite the almost-nonexistent magnetic field. We've had radiation detection equipment on the surface of Mars for decades. We know exactly what to expect.

• Synthesizing oxygen and methane using the Sabatier process for breathing and for refuelling a ship can't be done from orbit. Since there has to be a ground station for the Sabatier machinery, then why not just keep the astronauts there too? It's one less facility to maintain, and if they're at the same facility, they'll have access to effectively unlimited oxygen and water.

• Orbital transfer windows are every 26 months. We've done 12 month stays on the ISS, but the astronauts and cosmonauts involved have had significant recovery time back here on Earth afterwards. 26 months in 0 G, plus the 3-4 month each-way travel time, may be too dangerous from a health perspective. 1/3 G might be enough to stave off the worst of bone and muscle loss. The amount of time the astronauts would have to exercise is reduced considerably from 0 G, and might not be needed at all if we're lucky. We've had an entire evolution's worth of time to experience 1 G, about a half century at 0 G, and a few weeks in 1/6 G. 1/3 G is a total unknown until we actually send well-informed fully-consenting healthy astronauts to see what it does to the human body.

• Centrifuges to simulate gravity for humans like in the movie 2001 have never been put into space. The science is sound, but the engineering may be more complex than expected, there's a lot of moving parts involved. This is something we need to do reliably and repeatedly in Earth orbit before trying it somewhere else.

Starship is actually the least-crazy way to get people and bulk cargo to Mars with current technology. Aerobraking around Mars definitely works, we've done it many times with uncrewed satellites and probes. Starship will take advantage of Mars' atmosphere to bleed off most of its speed without having to carry a lot of fuel. Estimates are that about 98 to 99% of the transfer orbit speed can be bled off this way which is a massive fuel savings. The latest Starship flight test was a big success in demonstrating this capability. It made it all the way through re-entry and did a soft intact water landing in the Indian Ocean. Aerobraking at Mars is like a gentle breeze compared to the brutal pummelling that the successful IFT-4 Starship dealt with on its way down through Earth's thick atmosphere from near-orbital speeds.

I think the sanest starting approach is a small science station on the surface of Mars. Start with just a few people for their 26-month tour, maybe a dozen or so NASA scientists and technicians who are highly educated on the risks and willing to go anyway. Just use the Starships themselves as bases to start, leased from SpaceX, but 100% controlled by NASA. Use orbital relays to control robots in real-time like China did with Chang'e 4.

(Insert my usual caveat here about how my respect for SpaceX is strictly for the people doing the real science and engineering there, and not the asshole who owns it.)

Everyone is thinking Humans, land first, then live on there. I think we are putting the cart before the horse on this

Agreed generally. Counterargument though- billionaires, land first, then live(?) on there. Totally sustainable and it even returns a whole lot of wasted, poorly-allocated and ill-gained resources back into the system on Earth for humanity to benefit from immediately. Highly practicable (and flexible, once they're out of orbit it doesn't matter where they go or if anything goes wrong), sustainable, and virtually zero risk (at most, the shuttles are a write-off- using catapults instead might remedy this).

The rest of the process you described can happen after, but I think this is the most appropriate course of action.

We have robotics, VR, cell and wireless tech. We can fairly easily build a space station around Mars. Set up a VR lab in the station and Avatar robots down there. I really am suprised we are not pioneering this tech with our current space station. Wouldn't it be cool to walk up to an Avatar bot controlled by someone on the ISS? That would be a great moment. Robots cheaper than humans and the systems required to keep them alive. They can also build.

That just seems like a more expensive, less reliable, less useful mars rover. Also, humanoid robots are terrible and incredibly prone to failure. Walking is an extraordinarily difficult act that has few inherent advantages over wheels. Lastly, how does VR help here?

We can fairly easily build a space station around Mars.

Alright. Let me know where you're at in a week.

What is a solar panel if not a very tiny contribution to a Dyson Sphere future?

*happy Icarus noises*

I'm more of a Dyson swarm kinda girl.

It's the repeating information near the end

What's always intrigued me was air pressure and altitude. We all know air gets thinner as you go up, the inverse is true as well. A crater seven miles below "sea" level on Mars would have air pressure similar to the pressure of mountainous regions on Earth.

They'd probably still need a tent to block radiation, but they'd be livable breathable habitats. A few of these crater cities could dot the landscape while preserving the rest of Martian beauty, no terraforming required.

The fundamental question of all space colonization - whether the planet next door or the other side of the galaxy - is: why? Who on earth would want to do that, and what could possibly be a sufficient economic incentive? Space travel is so outrageously difficult, expensive, and dangerous that it would without a doubt be easier to synthesize any special space resources (which probably don't exist anyways btw). We don't need the space because even Antarctic winters are cozier than the nicest day on Mars and population growth is about to level off globally.

It just doesn't make any sense.

Like, what would we gain from colonizing Mercury?

Earth is clearly already on a death spiral.

No matter how bad things get on earth, they will be much, much easier to improve to habitable conditions than Mars. The difference in resource investment required is so many orders of magnitude as to be almost unquantifiable in terms that relate to any real world economic activity. Like, 1000 years of the entire productive capacity of the Earth to even begin to meaningfully change the climate of Mars to something where we could live there.

I consider it only natural for humanity to spread, and stagnation leads to issues like we are dealing with now. Resource shortage, climate change, pollution.

Why is it natural for humanity to spread? All three of those issues on earth are extremely solvable through a different economic system. We don't even need new technology. Population growth is obviously not going to continue for ever - it's already declining. Our planet has more than enough resources to live here sustainably until the sun burns out in a few hundred million years. We simply need to stop allowing a parasitic class to destroy things for their own short-term gain. You might scoff at the infeasibility of that task, but I promise you it is far easier than shipping billions of people through space and all the resources necessary to sustain them on a planet where not only are they not evolved to live, but where the conditions for life are worse than literally any spot on Earth. It simply doesn't make sense.