How settling Mars could create a new human species

Re:How settling Mars could create a new human species by rootbear on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @12:13PM (#12902001)

Agreed. It would be interesting to see how genetic engineering might be used to "steer" the changes needed to adapt to life on Mars. I've been concerned about the gravity issue for some time. It's not at all clear that 0.38g is healthy for humans in the long term. And the radiation threat is a very serious issue, even just for the trip out there. The long term effects are hard to predict. It really is a pity that Venus is such a hell hole; 0.87g would be much nicer on the human body.

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Re:How settling Mars could create a new human species by M_Grey on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @12:24PM (#12902093)

Or we could try to exploit the 78%+ of this planet we don't use... the oceans. Easier than space, that's for damned sure.

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Re:How settling Mars could create a new human species by eveningcoffee on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @12:39PM (#12902242)

We are exploiting the oceans to large degree: fishing, oil pumping, waste dumping, trade routes, even possibly some of the CO2 accumulation.

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Re:How settling Mars could create a new human species by M_Grey on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @12:42PM (#12902268)

I was thinking more in terms of places to live actually... since that's the only benefit Mars has for us. Asteroid mining is an easy thing to see the benefit of, but colonizing another gravity well without fully exploiting our own? Not so much.

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Re:How settling Mars could create a new human species by wongarsu on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @01:42PM (#12902793)

But what advantages does settling the ocean have compared to say, settling Wyoming (which with 6 people per square mile is much, much closer to the average population density of the ocean than the average population density of land)?

With settling Mars we mitigate a number of potential extinction events, and fulfill some science fiction dreams. Living in the ocean also helps with both goals, but to a much lesser degree.

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Re:How settling Mars could create a new human species by M_Grey on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @02:43PM (#12903323)

Living on Mars only obviates the risk of extinction when it has a biosphere capable of supporting life, or is sufficiently advanced to survive without regular shipments from Earth. We're not even remotely close to that, even in the planning or dreaming stages. That said, Wyoming makes more sense than Mars too.

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Re:How settling Mars could create a new human species by Apocryphon on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @02:41PM (#12903309)

Wyoming is closer to the Yellowstone Caldera.

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Re:How settling Mars could create a new human species by M_Grey on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @03:17PM (#12903556)

If that puppy blows, any colony on Mars would almost certainly die off, unless they had become totally self-sufficient. I can't imagine that an Earth struggling with that level of natural disaster would bother with such a far-flung enterprise.

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Re:How settling Mars could create a new human species by pharke on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @01:24PM (#12902634)

Perhaps, the sea poses its own set of challenges. Given sufficient funds, anyone can buy a boat but deriving useful benefit from seafaring is another story. If you were to explore the 'unused' or currently unexploited aspects of the ocean it would require similar investments in research, life support, materials, construction, and a host of other areas that also need to be tackled for space colonisation and exploration.

Say you wanted to create a city sized operation/colony. If we start by comparing to vessels and platforms already in operation we see that the price tag for such can vary between $250 million and >$1 billion for both cruise ships and oil platforms. Those costs are for established technologies with existing production infrastructure and with the assumption of constant resupply and a market for the goods and services they produce. If you were to break ground on a completely new area the costs would be much, much higher.

There's also the question of what special benefit we gain from moving an operation to the ocean when compared to doing something similar on land. Both are still on Earth with all its pros and cons but the ocean simply multiplies the engineering challenges. You could ask the same question of space but the difference is that a space based facility has several major advantages that go hand in hand with the challenges it presents. Namely, greatly reduced gravity, vast amounts of 'rare' elements, the potential to move large quantities of material with a comparatively small vehicle/engine, and the prestige that comes with a new frontier.

Finally, doing one does not necessarily mean we neglect the other. There are many areas where advances in one could benefit the other and there are proposals for systems that would see a great deal of overlap between the two, such as the Sea Dragon.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_(rocket)

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Re:How settling Mars could create a new human species by M_Grey on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @03:16PM (#12903550)

I would agree that on land makes a lot of sense in terms of living space, but in terms of trade and all of the other factors which have traditionally driven humans to the coasts, not so much. By contrast Mars offers nothing that isn't more readily obtained from asteroids, and still offers a gravity well to be stuck in. If you want zero G, vacuum industries, that kind of thing... moons or large asteroids make much more sense than Mars.

A terraformed Mars makes sense, but it's not exactly impending. If you just think about it terms of colonies on Earth, colonies existed because they had something to offer the "mainland". Sugar, rum, slaves, spices... something. Colonies without that benefit didn't stay colonies for long, and what's the point of creating... I don't know... SpaceHaiti2000?

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Re:How settling Mars could create a new human species by eloisant on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @11:30AM (#12911556)

And let's not forget the Sahara, the Gobi Desert, etc...

Cleaning the atmosphere and terraforming those deserts is probably much easier than terraforming Mars.

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Re:How settling Mars could create a new human species by dpc59 on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @12:43PM (#12902275)

Not necessarily, deep water is a shit ton of pressure.

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Re:How settling Mars could create a new human species by M_Grey on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @12:43PM (#12902288)

Still easier than vacuum, hard radiation, and total isolation from a functional biosphere. You don't have to colonize the Marianas Trench after all.

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