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Re:Why Not Mars by ocdtrekkie on Monday January 02, 2023 @12:02AM (#34214562)
But we... have already mostly done that in Antarctica already. There's not a lot more to learn by moving a few thousand more people to a particularly unpleasant place to live.
Re:Why Not Mars by mvnuweucxqokii on Monday January 02, 2023 @12:23AM (#34214651)
Is Antarctica self-sustaining?
Re:Why Not Mars by ocdtrekkie on Monday January 02, 2023 @12:31AM (#34214699)
No, but there's also little we gain from trying to make it so. We know how to operate all sorts of things in Antarctica, and anything else we bring there just... needs to be operated pretty much the same way.
Re:Why Not Mars by moloch-hai on Monday January 02, 2023 @03:07AM (#34215535)
Finding out we can't, yet, would be pretty important.
Re:Why Not Mars by TeMPOraL on Monday January 02, 2023 @04:07AM (#34215907)
That's the wrong approach, though. "We can't" is the default state. The thing we need to find out is how to make it so. The goal is to be able to say, after all the finding out, that yes, we can now.
Re:Why Not Mars by moloch-hai on Monday January 02, 2023 @04:20AM (#34215992)
Not dying just because we can't yet is pretty important.
Re:Why Not Mars by meheleventyone on Monday January 02, 2023 @06:10AM (#34216637)
But scale does add difference as does all the complexity required to make that scale self-sustaining.
Re:Why Not Mars by tsimionescu on Monday January 02, 2023 @02:29AM (#34215314)
That's not even remotely true. For one, we have barely scratched the surface of the psychology of living in an Antarctic outpost, and already what we've seen doesn't suggest long-term viability (decades instead of months). Perhaps with more people, the problems could go away, perhaps not - there's no reason to find out on Mars.