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Comment by BurningFrog | Hacker News Reader

To me, the 2 day vs 6 months commute outweigh that. Then again I haven't done the math.

In the long run, there should of course be settlements on both bodies.

When the pilgrims originally sailed to North America from England, it took on the order of two or three months. A six month trip to Mars seems reasonable in that context.

Yeah, but they went to fertile land.

A space colony would have much more need to get supplies from Earth.

Once we've learned how to run a space colony on the Moon, building a second one on Mars would be much easier.

The pilgrims didn't have to worry about being subjected to deadly cosmic radiation. They could also bring various tools with them and build habitats in their new home using readily-available materials, and grow food there from seeds (though they should have picked a more southerly landing spot...). They also didn't have to worry about having pressurized environmental suits just to walk around outside once they made landfall.

No, they just had to worry about weird diseases, storms destroying their boat en-route, not having any clue where they'd land or what the territory would be like, and being attacked and killed by angry natives. Oh and they were doing it all with pretty basic "science".

None of those problems exist on Mars. Others exist, but you can't just directly say it was easier.

The commute may be long, but at least there is an abundance of lanes.

Once you get there, what do you do? Just go back?

I assume different people do different things...

Tourism would be an obvious sustainable Moon industry. That does fit your description :)

Will it really be sustainable? How many people will want to go twice?

highest hike in our solar system - Olympus Mons!

How many tourists visit Admundsen-Scott, and what percentage of its operating costs do you think it covers?

What do people do on Earth? Live, thrive, expand, explore. All that stuff.

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