Assuming that SpaceX can refuel an orbiting spacecraft, build boosters capable of launching 1,000 times over, establish a propellant factory on another planet and of course, that you've got US$100,000 to spare, you could soon be faced with some pretty tough life choices. Earlier this week Elon Musk outlined his plan to send one million people off to colonize Mars, but there is a lot to consider when sizing up your own little patch of rock and dust. To get a handle on some of the likely settlement sites if Musk's interplanetary plans do materialize, New Atlas checked in with who we'll call realtors of the Red Planet to find out some prime locations to set up shop.
The fact of the matter is that there are tens, if not hundreds of potential Mars landing sites being bandied about by scientists concerned with such endeavors. At a NASA workshop last October, hundreds of researchers from around the world debated the strengths and weaknesses of 48 strong candidates, and the reality is these will be chopped and changed as we come to learn more about our dusty red neighbor. But hey, it's been a big week for Mars and the romantic notion of dreaming big, so we'll get into the spirit of things and let our imaginations run wild just a little.
What's your choice, the bottom of Valles Marineris, the Gale Crater, the Medusae Fossae Formation, or other?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday October 06 2016, @01:03AM
Uh huh. I'm not setting foot on that rock until I understand what laws apply on Mars. Who owns the property? Where will I be evicted to once a factory is shut down by a scum sucking c-suite? Where is the affordable housing? Are LIVING WAGES paid by good ol' Elon everywhere on Mars? How much does living cost there, does my social security apply, etc.
There are a fuck-ton of unanswered questions and the only acceptable answer right now out of Elon's mouth is, "I will pay for everything. You will work to survive and build, but I will make sure you have everything you could need, and I will *guarantee* certain standards of living will be met. Worst case scenario, I send you back to Earth for free".
Why would Elon agree to that in the first place? I'm guessing it's because I won't enjoy ownership of jack diddly shit and Elon wants to plant his flag there first and ensure his family owns most of Mars like the Wong family in Futurama.
Mars is not hospitable to life. At least here I can run away to South America, or to the middle of nowhere, and be reasonably assured that I will still have air and water. Mars has no such guarantees, and just about every argument you could have up there will be extra deadly.
I'm not going to be exploited as Elon's slave, so argument number one commencing....
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Thursday October 06 2016, @01:25AM
You're almost certainly right, but there's a tiny part of me that hopes Musk really did read way too much sci-fi and actually secretly believes he can make a utopian society in space. Either way I'll probably be too old to go/still want to go by the time they get anything under way unless stuff moves way faster than it looks like it is.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 06 2016, @05:51AM
The guarantees on Mars are the same as Earth:
1) you will die.
2) you will be taxed.
With any luck, the Martian colony won't be forced to recycle you when you become too weak to work, but if things get rough - that's one likely coping mechanism the million martian colony will have to employ to have a chance to prosper in the more distant future.
Remember: you're moving to a place with ZERO ready infrastructure - even the first native Americans crossing the Bearing landbridge walked into a land of plenty with readily available food to hunt, harvest and farm.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 06 2016, @12:49PM
Fortunately, you will die before you are taxed.
Just make sure you are on the right rocket [youtube.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 06 2016, @02:06PM
I don't think "infrastructure" is the word you are looking for. It is "resources", as in air to breathe, water to drink, a magetic field to keep radiation away from your body, an atmosphere to provide the pressure you have evolved to exist at, food to eat (animals, plants, bacterial mats even), and so on.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 06 2016, @07:31PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @11:18PM
You wouldn't even live A FEW MINUTES on Mars without bringing your own air supply. There is practically no atmosphere (1% of Earth's pressure) and you can't even breathe it. This is no minor obstacle, it is major. Saying otherwise is like saying it's a piece of cake to live in space, all you need to do is stay inside your space station and hope nothing breaks.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 08 2016, @01:09AM
You wouldn't even live A FEW MINUTES on Mars without bringing your own air supply.
Or having your own air supply already there on Mars. This is what infrastructure is all about.
There is practically no atmosphere (1% of Earth's pressure) and you can't even breathe it. This is no minor obstacle, it is major.
That would be the primary purpose of said infrastructure - to overcome major obstacles like quick deaths from lack of air.
Saying otherwise is like saying it's a piece of cake to live in space, all you need to do is stay inside your space station and hope nothing breaks.
I'm not holding you back. You keep telling us how hard it is to breathe when you don't have air. Maybe we haven't heard yet.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hartree on Thursday October 06 2016, @01:10AM
"send one million people off to colonize Mars"
I've got a whole list of people I'd like to volunteer for that!
Martin Shkreli doesn't top the list, but you know he's on there somewhere.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 06 2016, @01:19AM
Ark B
And we'll give them lots of guns, explosives and ammo, booze and drugs
The highlight reels will be great.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Thursday October 06 2016, @01:39AM
It does sound like America today!
Who was it that said he thought the ATF [atf.gov] (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobbaco and Firearms) was a convenience store in the US?
I believe the Englishman [wikipedia.org] thought Ark B actually landed in the good ol' U.S. of A.
Cheers
(Score: 1) by sweettea on Thursday October 06 2016, @01:52AM
(Score: 3, Funny) by el_oscuro on Thursday October 06 2016, @02:04AM
Ah yes, the B Ark. These tales of impending doom allowed the Golgafrinchans to rid themselves of an entire useless third of their population. The story was that they would build three Ark ships. Into the A ship would go all the leaders, scientists and other high achievers. The C ship would contain all the people who made things and did things, and the B ark would hold everyone else, such as hairdressers and telephone sanitisers. They sent the B ship off first, but of course the other two-thirds of the population stayed on the planet and lived full, rich and happy lives until they were all wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 06 2016, @11:48AM
And release hallucinogens into the air system. That's how they did it in the Vault.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by forkazoo on Thursday October 06 2016, @05:45PM
No, you are thinking of the ones we send to colonize the sun.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 06 2016, @01:31AM
...sounds rather like Galt's Gulch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 06 2016, @01:59AM
This is all self-indulgent garbage. Nobody needs to worry about great places to live on Mars, as we do not have the technology to get (and/or live) there. Good grief can Musk be annoying.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 06 2016, @07:43PM
Nobody needs to worry about great places to live on Mars, as we do not have the technology to get (and/or live) there.
And that situation will never change because nobody ever develops new or better technologies!
Why do people think Musk is proposing hopping into a rocket with a six pack and going to Mars RIGHT NOW? Even with the six pack technology, it's going to be more work than it's worth, especially if you die right off the bat.
The real world delay between proposal and any actual arrival date gives his R&D staff plenty of time to deal with the "impossible" engineering challenges and the "insurmountable" niggling details.
(Score: 5, Informative) by khallow on Thursday October 06 2016, @02:49AM
It's the lowest point on Mars (floor of the Hellas impact crater) and thus have the highest atmospheric pressure (roughly 0.01 atmosphere in summer) for in situ resource utilization (ISRU) which is going to be a significant help for early colonization efforts such as methane production, water and nitrogen extraction, and maybe even a little bit of wind power. It also has some of the warmest surface temperatures on Mars meaning less work to insulate human infrastructure and habitats.
It's at the bottom of a very considerable vertical drop of roughly 9km from the edge of the crater. Among other things, this could allow for some regional scale experiments with heavy greenhouse gases such as high molecular weight CFCs (which incidentally can probably be manufactured on site using carbon in the atmosphere and chlorine and fluorine from salts in the soil and/or groundwater).
It also has roughly three quarters the surface area of Europe. So there's plenty of room for a human presence to expand in that area.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 06 2016, @05:59AM
I know there are exceptions, but, by and large, the $100K buy-in is going to dramatically skew the colonist population to higher age brackets. Who under 30 has a positive net worth north of $100K anymore? Ideally, the colonists would be in their late teens / early 20s, sending up a 50 year old just means they're going to weigh more and have much less useful life ahead of them.
Sure, a few smart old guys (and gals) are good to have around, but in a new frontier colony you need probably 100 strong backs for every wise old leader. In this case, the strong backs may be more maintaining, operating, designing and manufacturing machinery instead of digging ditches with hand tools, but even there, old guys have a lot less productive years left before they become fertilizer... unless that's actually the plan? Pay $100K to become future fertilizer on another planet? That would be a business plan with vision!
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Thursday October 06 2016, @09:21AM
In Ohio there are some people facing tough "life" choices. Perhaps the state could spare $100,000 each to send them to Mars? I daresay it would be cheaper than what they're doing now.
/article.pl?sid=16/10/04/0128254 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by romlok on Thursday October 06 2016, @11:10AM
In a dangerous environment, when everyone is living in close quarters, emotional stability and maturity is *essential*. How many years of useful life someone has ahead of them is generally irrelevant if they have a hissy fit and vent the habitat after 6 months of confinement.
Contrary to US dietary policy, body mass does not universally increase with age.
Fortunately, we have robot arms and power suits. Not to mention that, Martian gravity being what it is, those backs only need to be about a third as strong.
Remember that the chance of dying when first colonising the Americas was *huge*, and that was a land of plenty. Now we're talking about colonising Mars - *everyone* will likely have far fewer productive years left!
You want to send people who will make those first few years(/months) really count for something.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 06 2016, @12:54PM
In all seriousness, I'm looking at NASA and the Soviet space program astronaut profiles, which do not generally include over-40s when they take their first flight (I'm sure there's more than one exception). In the colonist situation, you're not coming home or getting any younger.
Emotional stability/maturity is, of course, paramount - which raises another thorny problem: how emotionally stable/mature are people who both have $100K+ net worth and also want to leave Earth forever? Again, it would seem that those who have accumulated the wealth should typically also be accumulating emotional/family ties that would pre-dispose them to not want to go on a mission of no return.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 06 2016, @07:25PM
Emotional stability/maturity is, of course, paramount - which raises another thorny problem: how emotionally stable/mature are people who both have $100K+ net worth and also want to leave Earth forever?
What makes it a problem in the first place?
Again, it would seem that those who have accumulated the wealth should typically also be accumulating emotional/family ties that would pre-dispose them to not want to go on a mission of no return.
Sure, but a lot of people don't fit your stereotype, particularly when it comes to things they think are important.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 06 2016, @08:29PM
>a lot of people don't fit your stereotype, particularly when it comes to things they think are important.
Absolutely, with 7B people on Earth, finding 1M that are ready and willing to go to Mars is a piece of cake - you may even be able to find a million of them that can either afford, or get sponsorship for the $100K without too much trouble.
Thing is, "my stereotype" is about the social dynamics of the communities we have and know at least a little bit about. When you're talking about 1:1000 personality types, cherry picking the odd birds and throwing them all together in an isolated community would be... much more uncertain as to the outcome than the relatively simple problems of breathable air, water, propellant, radiation, food, sandstorms, etc.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 07 2016, @03:59AM
Thing is, "my stereotype" is about the social dynamics of the communities we have and know at least a little bit about. When you're talking about 1:1000 personality types, cherry picking the odd birds and throwing them all together in an isolated community would be... much more uncertain as to the outcome than the relatively simple problems of breathable air, water, propellant, radiation, food, sandstorms, etc.
That uncertainty just might turn out to be one of the strongest benefits of the scheme.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 10 2016, @03:02PM
>That uncertainty just might turn out to be one of the strongest benefits of the scheme.
_Might_, and probably will, if you repeat the experiment 100 times. Most early colonies failed in the past, for similar reasons - and one evolved to be the strongest country on Earth, for a brief period starting around 1950.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 10 2016, @11:55PM
Most early colonies failed in the past, for similar reasons - and one evolved to be the strongest country on Earth, for a brief period starting around 1950.
Note that colony failure was so rare, it was legendary. Roanoke is the classic example in the US (with the colonists outright disappearing) while the next two, Jamestown and Plymouth, both survived though they both suffered through significant die-offs . I'll note that once a few were established, new colonies sprung up like mushrooms even in the face of serious genocidal war with Native Americans. And that warfare incidentally was one of the primary causes of colony death up to the Comanche domination of western Texas during the US Civil War in the 1860s. The other was never really being economically viable, which still goes on in modern times in the US (Arcosanti, for a famous example).
OTOH, I agree that colony failure on Mars is a real risk. It's just not as bad historically as you claim above.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 06 2016, @05:20PM
Who under 30 has a positive net worth north of $100K anymore?
Or get sponsored. It wouldn't be that hard.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 06 2016, @06:14PM
As others have pointed out, prisoners with long term sentences would be much cheaper to ship out to "New Melbourne" than to maintain in their cells on earth. Might be a challenge for social stability in the small colony community.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 06 2016, @07:47PM
As others have pointed out, prisoners with long term sentences would be much cheaper to ship out to "New Melbourne" than to maintain in their cells on earth.
Mr. "Emotional stability/maturity is, of course, paramount" maybe you want to reconsider that?
Might be a challenge for social stability in the small colony community.
Just might be.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 06 2016, @08:31PM
>>Might be a challenge for social stability in the small colony community.
>Just might be.
Worked out O.K. in Brisbane, Perth is still a little dodgy.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday October 06 2016, @10:25PM
I know there are exceptions, but, by and large, the $100K buy-in is going to dramatically skew the colonist population to higher age brackets. Who under 30 has a positive net worth north of $100K anymore? Ideally, the colonists would be in their late teens / early 20s,
Send your parasitic offspring to Mars and be rid of them forever for a one time payment of only $100,000!
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday October 06 2016, @06:08AM
Sorry, I'm not going to live on Mars. Nothing against candy bars, but I definitely prefer a more varied diet.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 06 2016, @11:51AM
Potatoes, actually. You'll eat nothing but potatoes. So, not really different from how we live now in America.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday October 06 2016, @10:37PM
I will get crucified for this by those who only think in terms of short term human economic benefit, but would it not be great if the human race matured enough before colonizing the Moon, Mars, or anywhere else in the solar system (universe?) to survey them and set aside the most beautiful and spectacular places for the future benefit and enjoyment of all? I foresee a day when, after generations of rape and plunder have made a horrible mess of most of these places, that we will look back and ask "what have we done?". Alas, I don't have much hope, when you still have those that lust after the idea of building condos and mining right up to the edge of national parks here in the US, that any thought at all will be given to the subject.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 07 2016, @04:07AM
I will get crucified for this by those who only think in terms of short term human economic benefit, but would it not be great if the human race matured enough before colonizing the Moon, Mars, or anywhere else in the solar system (universe?) to survey them and set aside the most beautiful and spectacular places for the future benefit and enjoyment of all?
If we never go out there, then there is extremely little future benefit to be had. It's putting the cart before the horse. My view is that in order to "mature" to the point you would like, space colonization is a prerequisite.
I foresee a day when, after generations of rape and plunder have made a horrible mess of most of these places, that we will look back and ask "what have we done?".
With most of the histrionics coming from people who never will see these places.
Alas, I don't have much hope, when you still have those that lust after the idea of building condos and mining right up to the edge of national parks here in the US, that any thought at all will be given to the subject.
Just make sure the edges are ample. It's not rocket science.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday October 11 2016, @02:30AM
With most of the histrionics coming from people who never will see these places.
Well so what. Just because one personally will not see them does not mean one cannot hope that others receive the benefit of doing so.
Just make sure the edges are ample. It's not rocket science.
Spoken like one who has no conception of what makes wilderness valuable. I am not surprised.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 11 2016, @10:01AM
Well so what. Just because one personally will not see them does not mean one cannot hope that others receive the benefit of doing so.
Funny how the people allegedly "hoping" are the ones who want to block those who would "receive the benefit".
Just make sure the edges are ample. It's not rocket science.
Spoken like one who has no conception of what makes wilderness valuable. I am not surprised.
Let's go over your original comment and my reply again.
Alas, I don't have much hope, when you still have those that lust after the idea of building condos and mining right up to the edge of national parks here in the US, that any thought at all will be given to the subject.
Just make sure the edges are ample. It's not rocket science.
See? Make the parks bigger and they can't build to the edge of the old park, but only to the new boundary which is further away. Another problem solved via the internet with minimal effort.