There are plenty of inhospitable places here on earth where you could set up your anthropology experiment— deep under the ocean, for example, heck there was even a series of videogames made about this exact scenario. :)

That's right. I'd like to see that happen too. Although I'd argue that space has much more abundant materials & resources due to its vastness. Minus the geopolitical baggage.

More importantly, there is a bootstrap problem. Where are the funds going to come from? There is no commercial benefit from such an experiment except perhaps tourism. On the other hand, a space colony could develop a self sustainable economy, developing various enterprises from tourism, mining to manufacturing

Yeah, the bootstrap funding is the main issue - other than that basically all available resources are out there in space, pretty much by definition. From that poikt of view it is a no brainer, once the initial cliff can be overcome.

Deep under the ocean is a lot more difficult than Mars.

How do you figure?

You need to build structures that can withstand pressure, but that's not a problem. We sent people to the deepest parts of the ocean 80 years ago.

Bottom of the ocean is on average about 3.5 km deep. You can pump air in from the surface, which isn't an option on Mars. You have abundant water, which can be desalinated, or pumped in from elsewhere. You can communicate with the rest of Earth virtually instantly. Resupplying your underwater base is infinitely faster, easier and cheaper than resupplying Mars. In an emergency, getting to or from the underwater base from a major city is only a few hours compared with potentially years for Mars depending on the launch windows.

Colonists of the underwater base don't have to worry about health problems from low gravity, nor do they need to worry about cancers from the deadly radiation on Mars.

Sea base modules can be built on the surface and simply lowered into the sea. We have ample experience with underwater construction from thousands of deepwater oil rigs and other underwater projects. We also have experience from building many underwater habitats for research purposes.

I would guess building a deep underwater base is many orders of magnitude easier than sustaining humans on Mars.

I'm thinking about colonies that are (eventually) self-sufficient. I agree that it's easier to have a small crew of people living at the bottom of the ocean because it's generally cheaper to get stuff down there. But a self-sufficient colony is pretty much impossible, I think.

Building structures that can withstand pressure, never fail catastrophically, and can be repaired is really hard. In contrast on Mars you only need a bit of dirt for radiation shielding and any atmosphere leaks can be repaired at a much more relaxed pace. People can walk around on Mars in simple suits, you can't leave your structures at the bottom of the ocean at all outside of a deep sea submarine. Building habitats on Mars is essentially just mining, and we have centuries of experience with that.

Getting energy at the bottom of the ocean is also difficult. Nuclear and geothermal are the only options, whereas on Mars you can use solar panels.

Self sufficient on the bottom of the ocean is IMO no more difficult than self sufficient on Mars, _particularly_ when you consider how much infrastructure you could establish there with even a fraction of the cost of bootstrapping a Mars colony.

I think the problem is that we have the ability to wipe out the whole earth many times over, and a lot of the governments and leaders who have that power are extremely unreliable.

Won't they just recreate Earth's social structures on the Moon? Possibly with divergence over time but why would they suddenly abandon racism and nationalism?

If the expanding United States is an example, they'll probably change the social structures of Earth.

Consider the map in the section Turn of the Tide on Wikipedia's Women's Suffrage in the United States article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_the_Unit...

It's not a coincidence that as you go from west to east, the level of suffrage for women generally decreases prior to the 19th amendment. Nor is it a coincidence that the 19th passed. This was due, in part, to the federal system of government allowing states great freedom in how they operated, but also due in part to the expanding frontier. Governments were allowed to experiment. Wyoming (followed quickly by Utah) was the first state to recognize women's right to vote. It actually working was great evidence for proponents in other places. It also put competitive pressure on other states to get it right if they wanted women to immigrate to their state (which they did).

Over the short term, we'll probably see something on the moon more like the early British colonies. But over the long term, once the moon becomes more or less self sufficient and people start spreading out across the surface to found new domes or tunnels or whatever form colonies eventually take, I suspect we'll reap social and governmental benefits.

I would assume/hope the fact there are only a very small number of you living on an inhospitable rock would bond people together in the effort needed to survive.

They will of course invent a new racism, off-Worlders. But I'll take that as a slight improvement to our current situation anyways.

Look no further than to The Expanse, welwala[0]. It's all fun and games until (spoiler alert) someone decides to drop some space rocks on your home.

That said, I think it's still worth the risk.

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[0] - A slur that roughly translates to "lover of planets and culture that comes from them".

I find it interesting that all the major powers in Expanse are in a realistic cold war & pretty nasty. You migh find one of them sympathetic for a while, only to find out it was all a construction hiding the horrendous deeds they did for political power. Only to find out the others did even worse thing. And agains this backdrop you have the heroes, trying to keep some sort of moral integrity & helping to save what they can, often derailing various grand schemes withou even realizing it.

Yes but sadly people are still people.. they will take their problems with them.

Off course we will first solve the problem of terraforming Mars or the moon before we can solve the climate disaster