Ask Lemmy

Aside from scientific research (which can be mostly or entirely done remotely by machines), there is exceedingly little reason to inhabit Mars, or any other planet for that matter.

There are sociopolitical implications of extraterrestrial missions (think: space race), but in terms of human habitation at scale, what would be the point? In science fiction, there is usually a major impetus: the earth is dying, the earth was stolen by aliens, etc etc. In these cases, though, the fiction part handles most of the stuff that would be hardest in real life.

From a practical standpoint, anything that can be done on Mars can be done for mere fractions of the resources here on Earth. At some point, it just comes down to the economics. Even if there were major issues with pollution or resources shifting the planet towards uninhabitability, fixing or mitigating those problems is likely to use orders of magnitude fewer resources than going to Mars. If such problems were beyond fixing, it wouldn't mean Mars gets cheaper. It would mean humans go extinct.

Now, there are charlatans who will say we absolutely need to inhabit Mars and will give you a barrage of tenuous reasons. Musk comes to mind. Usually this is done to drive investment in companies or technologies which have been nudged into seeming Mars-adjacent, but at the end of the day, they're just raising funds for regular rich people stuff here on Earth.

Never because there will be no middle class within a couple of years

Hahaha

Fuck mars.

Why would they ever need to ship corpses that far?

Professionally (like Apollo and Artemis)? Possibly within this century. And the first person setting foot on Mars will likely be a middle-class professional astronaut like Armstrong or Aldrin.

Privately? It's going to be a while. Middle class people in any country still can't even go to low Earth orbit, let alone the Moon or Mars.

I read A City On Mars and came away convinced that questions like this one are pretty silly.

Show us a Las Vegas that thrives on its recycled water alone. Show us an airtight building, made of materials that can be recycled into new building parts. Show us a self-contained arcology in Antarctica that's so appealing, ordinary families dream of moving there to raise their kids.

Then we can talk about Mars.

Never. I don't think large-scale habitation of Mars or any other planets will ever happen.

Why would they want to?

Even in a best case scenario the only thing to do on Mars is to sit inside some kind of bio-dome drinking recycled urine hoping that the destillation process didn't remove all of the alcohol from yesterday's batch.

80% of earth's surface is still uninhabited. All of that (including the seabed) is vastly better suited to human settlement than Mars, and it's right here.
There simply isn't a reason to settle Mars at scale right now.
Once the oceans, the Sahara and Antarctica are full of overpopulated cities, we're growing our food in low earth orbit and are desalinating oceans for drinking water, it might look different.
But I don't think we'll make it to that kind of population before we commit collective suicide.

When the rich billionaire fuckers who will have moved there need someone to clean their martian mansions or mow their space lawn.

the billionaires will need a slave class so probably as soon as going to mars is viable at all. Id think an earth middle class is a martian slave class

As soon as we can digitize our consciousness and stream ourselves there through the intergalactic routers.

Not in my life span thats for sure.

We lack the tech for it.

People can claim they can do it all they want but, even under the assumption we can get there properly, we lack the life support capabilities and the terraforming capabilities to actually make it habitable on a larger scale.

realistically, we need to do baby steps. I think getting someone landed and returned from mars is a much more reasonable milestone then getting someone there and then colonizing/terraforming. This will also give the chance for tech to catch up to the required capabilities we would need. Like we haven't even colonized the moon and people want to go to mars?

how this relates to the question is: Middle class won't be going to any celestial object until it's cost effect to do so, which won't be until there's a economical reason for it, which will require a colonization & an economy driver there.

What resources does Mars have that we would really want to build something there? I know the moon has HE3; what does Mars have? I don't expect humans to live anywhere they aren't getting some material benefit from. Especially when it is extremely hard to do so, like a space colony.

Never.

Poor and desperate people will go before middle class people.

Middle class people weren't homesteaders.

As soon as the billionaires figure out a way to monetize it, you can bet your ass you'll be on the next coach seat headed that way.

We would need to be able to teraform Mars we can't currently teraform earth (intentionally) so the journey is only a portion of the battle.

When going to work on Mars is a middle class job.

Middle class people can only afford to go on a vacation to another continent if they save for a decade. If Mars is ever inhabited it will only be by the wealthy because they killed the planet and left us to die

Quite awhile; despite what some popular scifi depicts mars isn't really the best target out there for space colonies (and is too long a trip for short duration tourism), so first the technology and infrastructure to do those would need to be developed, and then the more convenient or economically attractive locations to set one up would have to be already taken, and then someone would need to have set up a mars colony and developed to the point where it isn't just a research base and actually has the capacity and use for a growing population, none of those steps are short things.

Especially that first step is tough, because launching large amounts of mass to space, let alone all the way out to mars, is incredibly expensive, so getting any of this started requires either a way to get to space without rockets (like space elevators or similar ideas, which require better materials than we currently can mass produce and would represent hugely expensive infrastructure investments to build once we have the ability), or the ability to extract and use raw materials in space to build, well, almost everything except the actual people to be sent there. Which is also something where the technology hasn't quite been developed, though progress has been made, and in any case is a bit of a chicken and egg problem because launching all that heavy mining and processing and manufacturing equipment to get it started is so expensive.

I would not personally expect things to get to a point where a middle class (or even typical rich person for that matter) can go to mars for several centuries, unless you count scientists sent by a government and not on their own dime. I do believe we'll get there, someday, but it's an incredibly long and difficult process, much more complicated than people like, say, Elon Musk make it out to be when they make wild claims about building a city there in a matter of decades.

There is no business case to be made, so no country is trying to settle on mars.

Probably never. It's not habitable. If a single rock flies into a building, everyone dies. It's extremely far away and costs a lot of jet fuel. We are only draining our oil, not preserving it.

Either (voluntarily) 50 years after Earth has been rendered uninhabitable by the upper class who has since moved to Mars or (involuntary) 50 years before that.

Whenever there's an engine available that is basically the space equivalent of a high-bypass turbo fan. Oh, and it'll have to be powerful enough support single-stage-to-orbit.

In other words: Whenever travel from the surface of the earth and to mars is cheap enough that a couple of hundred middle class people can fund the transit cost. Meaning, not any time soon.

They'll start shipping hookers and criminals as soon as they find a way to sustain human life other there

Never. By the time average people get there it will be as prison space labor.

After we nuke this planet

Rich vampires would even subsidize it, because it will be a hellhole, due to it being an extremely controlled environment with alternative being death.

Never.

1000 years after middle class people can afford to go to another continent.

If they can reasonably be made into fuel... I suspect middle class people could go to Mars in the very near future!

If robots become too expensive to manufacture/send, our billionaire role models (and soon to be our official overlords) will need humans to replace them. We're kinda cheap and very much expandable.

Otherwise, it probably won't happen. They have no choice but deal with the 8 billions of us on planet earth but why would they want to allow us to spread on their brand new planet if they can avoid it?

/s (?)