RE: Mars
February 12, 2019 at 5:15 pm
(This post was last modified: February 12, 2019 at 5:20 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Might also be useful to point out that colonization is rarely, if ever practical in the immediate term. The first colonists to america forgot to bring any means of producing food, and it wouldn't have mattered if they did because they didn't bring farmers with them, nor would their old world knowledge have been all that useful in the new world. Those colonists (and more broadly the entirety of european colonization) was dependent on continued contact and shipment from the old world and the standards of living in the nascent US were pretty godamned terrible compared to "home". Those standards vastly favored the wealthier colonists, too. Not for a few seasons, or a few years, or even a few decades. The main reason to go at all, for centuries, was an attempt at extraction with minimal manpower and local production - or if, for whatever reason..it was even worse for you at home. Bunchof castoffs and criminals. In balance of what we know now..it didn't end up being practical for those that funded the initial effort, either.
The eventual inheritors of this immense outlay of capital where as far removed from home as a people as they were in time and geography. Our eventual foray into offworld colonization is likely to follow that pattern regardless of when (or where) we go. Not just in the broad strokes, but in everyday lived experience. A shit months-long boat ride where some don't make it (and some boats don't make it). Correspondence by mail (can't videochat or have a telephone call with your martian cousin) and even the complete isolation of kinship. Garbage jobs in horrendous conditions working just for the basic necessities controlled by agents of wealthy backers..back home. Plenty of labor but enough specialists. The whole bit. Then...eventually, you know, they start flinging missiles back our way, lol.
Personally, I'd book my family in a heartbeat. Who wouldn't want to get in, first, on the lucrative food and water market on mars? Give it a few hundred years and that initial bit of adventurism could yield dividends much like it did for some of the older colonizing families of the US. I've got my path laid out ahead of me here, and I'm better off than most of the world (and most of the us) - but given the opportunity to widen that gap even further while going to motherfuckin space!...well......can't say that it doesn't tickle at something in the back of my brain. I'm already the kind of guy who packs up and moves on a whim here on earth, though.
The eventual inheritors of this immense outlay of capital where as far removed from home as a people as they were in time and geography. Our eventual foray into offworld colonization is likely to follow that pattern regardless of when (or where) we go. Not just in the broad strokes, but in everyday lived experience. A shit months-long boat ride where some don't make it (and some boats don't make it). Correspondence by mail (can't videochat or have a telephone call with your martian cousin) and even the complete isolation of kinship. Garbage jobs in horrendous conditions working just for the basic necessities controlled by agents of wealthy backers..back home. Plenty of labor but enough specialists. The whole bit. Then...eventually, you know, they start flinging missiles back our way, lol.
Personally, I'd book my family in a heartbeat. Who wouldn't want to get in, first, on the lucrative food and water market on mars? Give it a few hundred years and that initial bit of adventurism could yield dividends much like it did for some of the older colonizing families of the US. I've got my path laid out ahead of me here, and I'm better off than most of the world (and most of the us) - but given the opportunity to widen that gap even further while going to motherfuckin space!...well......can't say that it doesn't tickle at something in the back of my brain. I'm already the kind of guy who packs up and moves on a whim here on earth, though.
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