Which is why Mars is a tougher project than it seems. The ferry part is relatively easy compared to the incredibly difficult challenge of building a self-sustaining stable ecosystem that can survive on a manageably small umbilical to Earth, and the even harder challenge of building a political system that doesn't explode into factional war, regular suicides, and/or mad dictatorship.
Musk is already a little eccentric and doesn't seem like someone with the world's highest EQ. I suspect he's underestimating how hard it's going to be to make a colony work.
Nutrition and a sufficiently large social, group on the other hand, may be a problem
Mars only gets 43% as much sunlight as Earth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars). On top of that, Mars's lack of a magnetic field like Earth's makes cosmic radiation there worse to the point that colonies will likely be underground, or behind heavy shielding aboveground: https://phys.org/news/2016-11-bad-mars.html
One possible problem not discussed would be the giant dust storms that can cover large tracts of the planet for weeks. We don't have this kind of weather on our cradle planet.
Now the real question is whether colonists can/will live on the surface? But then a secondary addition, due to modern technology we now have much better lighting that can approximate natural lighting, even underground.
But… although I do 100% drink the Elon Koolaid about "us" colonizing Mars, I really doubt that humans, as we know them today, are the creature that is going to be there.
It will instead be some planet-specific tweaked versions of us and other creatures, eventually in a different substrate even, as opposed to bags of meat.
When you think of it that way, the possibilities for mental health are just a sub-problem of the larger problem of aligning AGI.
I said I drink the Koolaid, and the above may sound out of line with what Elon has been saying about making humans multi-planetary.
But if you read between the lines of what he says, I think this is already his view; he just doesn't say it the way I did above because (I think his reason is) the freakout factor is too high. It is consistent with what he does say. Lately he has been saying "make life multi-planetary" and "make consciousness multi-planetary" not just humans. He still says humans too but it may be a loose usage of the word humans, and I don't doubt there will be a transition period with some homo sapiens. Long term, not so much.
OK that kind of got far afield but the point is mental health is going to be a different equation by that point. Maybe harder actually, but different.
Sleeping underground would be a good idea though.
It's already a matter of historical record that the first landings on Mars have been robots.
Robot intelligence is only getting better. The Singularity is projected to happen late in this decade. There will be Mars landings throughout this decade and it will make sense that some of them will send more robots. But we'll also want to send humans, because, well that's just how we roll.
Then at some point we get better and better at making smart robots, and they get smarter and smarter.
And also there are hybrids. I'm not saying which way it will go — robots, hybrids, both — because I have no idea. But any combination seems possible. Humans likely will be in the mix at first as well, just not sure about the long term for our body types.
And Mars is kind of a "safe" (scare quotes because it's not, really) remote place to park embodied AI experiments beyond what we might allow to roam around freely here. Some things we disallow on Earth might be allowed to happen on Mars.
Around the time when the transportation systems are getting robust (a decade or so), we will be heavily feeling the impact of the fact that life support systems could be a lot easier if we just send the non-meat versions of ourselves, or human 2.0, which will be either what today we might call robots, or some hybrid creature with somewhat human-ish sensibilities.
If it's a hybrid, the base body plan will not necessarily start with a human body.
Let's say we are in a decade where the available tech is something like Neuralink. Going to Mars, maybe you want a much smaller body, for whatever reasons. Lower gravity, more space efficient, etc., so maybe it will make sense to start with, say just for example, a Macaque monkey body, enhanced with Neuralink.
The fact that Mars creatures need to be autonomous from Earth also figures in here. The SNL skit scenario with Chad is not going to happen, because of the communication delay. So We can't just send dumb robots forever. Our current robots there have already been autonomous to increasing degrees for several generations, the last few missions over the last couple of decades.
It is science fiction, but we are getting there… it's going to be real, unless something really bad happens before then.
Scie-Fi for sure.
> The evolution of dark skin is believed to have begun around 1.2 million years ago,[9] in light-skinned early hominid species after they moved from the equatorial rainforest to the sunny savannas. In the heat of the savannas, better cooling mechanisms were required, which were achieved through the loss of body hair and development of more efficient perspiration. The loss of body hair led to the development of dark skin pigmentation, which acted as a mechanism of natural selection against folate depletion, and to a lesser extent, DNA damage. The primary factor contributing to the evolution of dark skin pigmentation was the breakdown of folate in reaction to ultraviolet radiation; the relationship between folate breakdown induced by ultraviolet radiation and reduced fitness as a failure of normal embryogenesis and spermatogenesis led to the selection of dark skin pigmentation. By the time modern Homo sapiens evolved, all humans were dark-skinned.
And genetic engeneering has come a long way, but modifying humans genetically for improved radiation protection is sci-fi at the moment. Maybe it comes already in a couple of years, but currently it is not remotely there - so sci fi.
If technology develops enough and we can have a fleet of starships on stand-by, then the moon might not be so bewilderingly frightening a place to feel trapped as Mars would, with its much longer journey times and periodically grander distances and Delta-Vs from Earth.
Can you site source for this claim, I do not see any detrimental mental health, at least in terms of people are willingness to go back to work from office.
Mind giving me a source for this? I personally feel much worse during the pandemic and most people I know do as well. If your doing better I’m happy for you but not everyone is the same.
1 in 5 adults developed mental disorders -
https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/science/1-in-5-adu...
1 in 4 young adults suicidal -
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/mental-healt...
Effects of isolation on elderly -
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25697700/
https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/18590724.sedation-manage...
Effects of isolation on the future health of children -
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
https://www.unicef.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Unicef-...
Mental illness in children rising due to lockdowns -
https://newschannel20.com/news/local/hospitals-see-high-rate...
Half of young adults showing signs of depression -
https://fee.org/articles/harvard-researchers-nearly-half-of-...
The mental health of students -
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-55105044
Suicidal thoughts greater in those under restrictions and unchanged in those without any -
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517812...
Prevalence of depression before and after in the US -
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
Cases of depression in the US have tripled -
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/us-cases-of-depres...
US Census shows 48% of Wa adults have depression -
https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2020/demo/hhp/hhp15.html#...
Lockdowns pose great threat to mental health -
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/dec/27/covid-poses-...
Suicides:
https://abc7news.com/suicide-covid-19-coronavirus-rates-duri...
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/dealing-with-a-lot...
Suicides among black people spiked during lockdowns -
https://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-hs-black-suicides-pan...
Suicides up sharply in Toronto -
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/toronto/article-suici...
Trends in suicide during the pandemic -
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4352
Canadians in quarantine twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts -
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/quarantine-m...
Military suicides up 20% -
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-09-27/milita...
Suicides up among children -
https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2020/09/24/cook-childrens-alarming-...
There are even fewer readers than gamers, and even those that are get bored with reading after a while.
Many people want to go outside and do something every now and then... but on the way to/from Mars there's nowhere to go, and every moment you're in space you know that on the other side of thin shield of metal lies death.
Sure, people could still entertain/distract themselves and each other.. and they'll have to. But it won't necessarily be easy to do in the long term.. especially if things start going wrong, if tempers flare up, or if serious incompatibilities are discovered among the crew.
Not much changes when you get there, too. I think at best we will have something like McMurdo Station, for researchers on 2-3 year stints. Maybe less, since the round-trip is long and cosmic rays remain a significant health concern even when you are on Mars itself—no appreciable magnetic field and no ozone layer.
Even when you're there, excursions will be limited and planned well in advance, probably not much different from spacewalks today. The rest of the time you'll be in a tiny underground bunker.
Under current projections, anybody who took a trip to Mars with a ~1 year stay would exceed their lifetime radiation allowance, and would never be able to fly again. (Assuming a solar flare doesn't kill you mid-trip. Unlikely, we think, but possible.) If you're the first astronaut, or even the first dozen, this might be worth it. After that, though...? I'm sure there would be no shortage of volunteers, but we won't just need bodies, we'll need talented scientists at the top of their game who are physically and mentally healthy enough to make the trip in the first place.
From what I understand, the science can be done better with robots and probes anyway. So I'm not sure scientists are even necessary.
But they will need dedicated, motivated, fit, and mentally stable people willing to risk and possibly give up their lives.