> I think that's a pill too bitter to swallow.

And what a fate to impose on your children. You personally may choose the hardest road, but your unborn children would have no choice in the matter, and those future children would be essential to a permanent colony.

Moral dilemma: What if children conceived and born on Mars (if that's even medically viable) decide that Mars totally sucks, and they want to migrate to Earth?

Do we build a wall around Earth and stop them as "illegal aliens"?

Seriously, life on Earth is likely to be much better, much easier than life on Mars, so there's going to be a desire among a significant number of Martians to leave, just as there's a desire among Earthlings to move for a better life. Then what? In order to keep the Mars colony sufficiently "staffed", do you turn it into a totalitarian regime, where nobody can leave? No personal freedom?

How many of us want to sacrifice our lives and our happiness just to be a "backup plan"?

I rarely if ever hear space enthusiasts talk about the morality of a Mars colony. They act like it's just a technological problem, and it's somehow a given that we can put large numbers of humans wherever we want, whether or not the humans themselves would want that.

Moral dilemma: What if children conceived and born on Earth decide that Earth totally sucks, and they want to migrate to Mars?

Do we build a wall around Mars and tell them their shitty life on earth is all they get, and they should be happy with antarctica?

I think your moral argument can easily be flipped, why do you get to decide that we shouldnt do something because there exist people who dont want to do it? What of the the people who do?

If you dont want to go, then dont go...

> Do we build a wall around Mars and tell them their shitty life on earth is all they get, and they should be happy with antarctica?

I'm not personally in favor of the "colonize Antarctica" approach. It's true that if we can't figure out how to colonize someplace like Antarctica first, then it's unlikely we'd be successful on Mars, but I'm not advocating the colonization of Mars anyway.

> If you dont want to go, then dont go...

This completely ignores what I said, which was "You personally may choose the hardest road, but your unborn children would have no choice in the matter".

I guess i see children having to deal with choices their parents made a part of life.

Would the offer of a trip back to earth for any child born on mars go any way to overcoming your concerns?

> I guess i see children having to deal with choices their parents made a part of life.

Most responsible parents strive to make the lives of their children better rather than worse. Not always successfully of course, but it's the goal, and going to Mars is predictably worse.

> Would the offer of a trip back to earth for any child born on mars go any way to overcoming your concerns?

It might allay the moral dilemma, but it would increase the concerns about the long-term viability of the colony.

Would you also say "shame on you" to anyone who procreates in a country with a lower standard of living than the wealthier countries on this planet? After all, aren't those parents subjecting their children to a life with more hazards / less opportunities?

I'm talking about freedom of choice:

>Do we build a wall around Earth and stop them as "illegal aliens"?

This was of course an analogy to the United States, where we put up barriers to prevent emigrants from seeking a better life here.

There's no shame in procreation, but there's shame in trapping people forever in a place where they no longer want to live.

You wouldn't even need an Iron Curtain: moving to Earth, however much they want to, would kill them.

> moving to Earth, however much they want to, would kill them

That is an assumption but far from a certainty.

Uncertainty does not help you here.

Only very few places on Earth are truly that shitty that I would doubt people's sanity for raising children there. Active war zones and areas affected by climate change for example, and to no one's surprise people risk their lives to escape from those. Even in a refugee camp, their children would still lead a life that is magnitudes easier and more pleasurable than on a Mars colony.

> Would you also say "shame on you" to anyone who procreates in a country with a lower standard of living than the wealthier countries on this planet?

I would not hesitate to do so to any parents that leave a perfectly functional society to raise children as subsistence farmers in an smog-choked, irradiated, arid clime. Opting to raise your children under worse conditions than those one grew up under, and has access to is despicable and selfish.

tl;dw: Anybody born there, provided that is possible, could not walk on Earth: their skeleton would not support them.

Slight correction: An average Martian could not walk on Earth. An extreme weightlifter trained on Mars would barely be able to walk on Earth.

> Moral dilemma: What if children conceived and born on Mars (if that's even medically viable) decide that Mars totally sucks, and they want to migrate to Earth?

This is essentially the plot of Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (albeit on a generation ship heading mission to another solar system(

It may not be biologically possible for those who grew up on a low-gravity planet like Mars to emigrate to a higher-gravity one like Earth.

> I feel terror at the idea of all of our species on one planet with no backup.

While I would like to live out the rest of my life as best as I could, and I hope everyone alive and not yet alive gets that chance too, I don't think it would be that great a tragedy if humankind no longer existed. Imagine a world where everyone is hooked up to a simulation that feels as real as real life and everyone gets to live out the best possible life (or even lives) for them. They can have as many (AI) children they want in the simulation and never even know they weren't real. In that world, where no one ever had real children again and humanity naturally died out, would that be a bad thing? Humanity is not providing any benefit except to itself.

That seems pretty bad, yeah. I care about humanity. I care about myself! You're welcome to sterilize yourself, but i don't think I'll follow.

The scenario you describe doesn't involve pain, but that doesn't mean it isn't bad. An empty, dead universe seems worse to me than one teeming with thought.

The thought experiment wasn't to end sentient life in a glorious generation of virtual hedonism, just humanity. Let the octopi build their ~own VR escapism pods.

I think people really underestimate resources needed to run these VR paradises - it needs mass and energy!

I can fully imagine a totally disconnected VR dwelling civilization that still has hordes or self replicating bots of doom that dismantle planets and stars only to make more memory and compute.

Might very well be more dangerous than a "normal" space faring civilization.

Yes, that's the good future, except the overwhelming majority of people are virtual (keeping meat alive is expensive!)

I would rather not live than live in a world where the only living species is mankind.

Think about a world without trees, birds, plants... well actually just imagine living on Mars.

This example of yours reminds me of Plato's allegory of the cave BTW.

a one way trip to Mars is the least of the problems. many have volunteered already.

Anybody who volunteers for a one-way trip is not sane enough to want to have along.

They might not object to going with equally insane incels, but do I want to spend to send and maintain them? The best that could be said is they wouldn't be here anymore.

Unnecessary comment. 200 000 people applied to Mars One and the ones I read about of the 700 that were accepted were definitely not "insane incels".

So what is the legality? AFAIK, euthanasia and assisted suicide are not legal in a lot of jurisdictions. An actual Mars mission may set a precedent, for, uhm, voluntary short-term underwater scientific missions for geriatrics and hospice patience with challenging pain management situations.

For the law, intent usually matters. If you help someone who has the intention to die, then that's assisted suicide. But people can accept any level of danger they please, as long as they intent to survive the ordeal. The actions might be the same, but the intent is different.

In certain jurisdictions, assisted suicide is an intentless offence.

It came out that the 700 "accepted" were those prepared to pay. Not for the trip, notably, but for more PR.

I doubt that out of the 700 people not even one would show up in the platform ready to take off.

they applied for a training program that will give them a ton of exposure.

I doubt they will leave Earth to go dying on a desert planet with no oxygen, water and Instagram after they eventually gained the "Mars space program" status at home.

> I think that's a pill too bitter to swallow.

No-one that wants to go to Mars has any expectations to go back. It's not even a factor.

It's really not required to be one-way. Starship is explicitly designed to refuel and return. It's way harder (in rocketry terms) to go from Earth to Mars than the other way around.