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NASA says it will fly a Canadian to the Moon:
NASA just struck a historic deal with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) that will entail, for the first time in history, a non-US astronaut orbiting the Moon.
The agreement says that the CSA will help NASA with its upcoming Artemis Moon missions in exchange for a seat on some of the flights, according to Space.com. Not only is the CSA's support good news for the Artemis missions specifically, but it's a major international development in the future of crewed space exploration.
[...] "This will make Canada only the second country after the U.S. to have an astronaut in deep space... and send the first Canadian around the Moon," Navdeep Bains, Canada's government minister of innovation, science and industry said at a Wednesday press conference, according to Space.com.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Thursday December 24 2020, @09:50AM
Even better than asking yourself, ask me! Because the reasons for this are probably not what you think. The most fundamental reason is that the Antarctic Treaty System [wikipedia.org] that specifically prevent doing anything whatsoever on Antarctica. It is literally illegal to take a piss on Mars. It's required to recovered, packaged, and then sent back for processing away from Antarctica. Any form of development or industrialization on Antarctica is explicitly illegal.
And in many ways Antarctica is, contrary to intuition, not an especially great place to develop (even if it were legal) relative to somewhere like Mars. The obvious issue with Mars is that it has an unbreatheable atmosphere alongside high radiation exposure. But this can be summed up pretty simply: "If you go outside on Mars without proper equipment, or if your equipment fails while outside, you will die." The reason I frame it in this way is because the exact same is also true in Antarctica. Of course the technology involved in the equipment is different, but the issue is no different in either place.
But beyond that issue Mars is better in just about every way. Mars is bizarrely similar to Earth in its seasonal and day-night cycle owing to a number of improbable, but fortunate coincidences. During the summer near the equator on Mars you're even looking at right balmy conditions hitting around 70 degrees. Of course the nights are quite cold, but about the same as winter in Antarctica. By contrast Antarctica has an infamously brutal and never-ending night during winter. Another major strength for Mars is weather. Antarctica has a pretty brutal climate and weather system that is subject to extreme, and sudden, conditions. By contrast the weather on Mars is extremely calm and consistent.
One of the most interesting aspects of this is in "The Martian." The Martian is a hard sci-fi book where the author made every effort to create a scientifically accurate text. The main event that triggers the catastrophe and consequent happenings in the book is a strong dust storm that knocks out the base facilities and sets everything in motion. Interestingly enough this is one of the very few things in that book that was intentionally faked. The strongest dust storm on Mars would feel like a slight breeze owing to the lower atmospheric pressure. Think about that for a minute. In a hard sci-fi book, the author had to resort to fantasy in order to create a disaster on Mars - and that's perfectly understandable given the nature of Mars.
Mars also has vast mineral resources and without doubt immense scientific treasures we've yet to discover. It also has a land mass that is near identical to that of Earth (land, not ocean). Antarctica by contrast has very little and is relatively very small to say nothing of how inaccessible much of what land that exists is due to a mixture of geographic inhospitability paired alongside the extreme weather events. Anyhow, I could go on and on, but this is probably already a scattered enough stream of consciousness that I'm trying to keep somewhat brief. Suffice to say that our intuition often tends to mislead us on complex topics. And this is no exception!