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danielweber

why not start with, say, underwater cities on Earth?

Because they don't want to live on underwater cities on Earth. They want to live on Mars.

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Who wants to live on Mars?

"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact."

http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/elon-musk-and-the-giving-...

This is a legitimate question, so I don't think downvotes are warranted. Elon Musk may want to live on Mars (and in fact I have at least one friend who would abandon everything and take a one-way ticket to Mars in a heartbeat), but the sentiment expressed here of using a Martian population as insurance against an Earthborne cataclysm requires a functioning, self-sufficient civilization composed of more than just a cadre of explorers and thrill-seekers.

You'll need to find a way entice doctors, farmers, miners, and other specialized professions to leave everything behind and consign themselves to death on a dark and barren rock. Historically, colonists have been motivated to such lengths for religious and political reasons. For example, perhaps libertarians will flock to Mars for freedom from oppressive governments. (Hey Bioshock developers: hint hint.)

The relative unpopularity of colonizing places like Alaska says a lot though. If you don't want to be hassled over your political or religious beliefs and are willing to go a year between supply runs, there are entire towns in Alaska that are perfect for you, or you could found your own. Curiously, few people do this.

Alaska isn't another planet, and therefore lacks the allure that living on another planet has for many people.

It really is that simple.

Alaska is relatively inhospitable, cold, distant from main human cultural centers. Mars is vastly more so. While science fiction might give an imaginary fantasy of life on Mars appeal, if there were somehow a fact rather than a fantasy of some kind of habitation being possible there, the reality wouldn't be pretty. I'd imagine we'd use the planet as a penal colony for the dregs of society if it were a reality rather than a fantasy.

Also, I wonder how your version of "many people" compares to the population of Alaska.

So people only think they'd like to live on Mars, but you know they really don't?

No, I don't know, just imagine it would be different than how they imagine it. I don't see living there through the lens of science fiction so much as biology.

There are people I think should live on Mars, who wouldn't agree.

I curretly live in a small town in Alaska. No mater where you go, some people will still hassle you over political and religious beliefs. We even have internet access (where I live it maxes out at 22MBps) And while supply runs do happen infrequently, we have Amazon (or any other online provider) to provide us with resupply.

I don't know if I would go as far as relating Alaska to Mars. Certainly the appeal to Mars is something more unique than just living in a small town.

I hardly doubt Elon Musk would want to live in Mars his remaining life time.

That's speculation. What if there were significant mineral resources, attractive tax rules, a large, highly motivated labor pool, and a lot of solar energy that could be harvested to drive that economy?

Could be a playground he couldn't pass up.

Of course, he might just be pushed out the airlock as soon as he annoys "the labor pool". Idealists who create remote colonies are in for disappointment. It were ever thus.

All of this, obviously, prophecized in Total Recall.

or any Tomino fiction, or really any fiction involving space colonization.

if a coup of some sort isn't spilling blood on the colonies, we can rest assured the tremor-like mars aliens will take care of them.

There's a big difference between insisting that you want to live on Mars, and actually wanting to live on Mars.

What percentage of your friends want to live on Mars? If it's more than a ten of one percent then that sounds like there are plenty of people who want to live there.

I want to live on Mars

Me, for one. I've wanted to since I was a kid, and was quite vocal about it before StartX even existed. Friends of mine know that if I only had myself to consider, I'd take a one-way ticket in a heartbeat and live there the rest of my life. Factors such as a significant other mean that I don't just have myself to consider anymore, but I would still love to live there.

I do. I've wanted to get off of Earth and into space for as long as I can remember. I would grab a one-way ticket to Mars with only the merest moment's hesitation.

I also have zero interest in an underwater city.

Who is this "they"? Jacques Cousteau would have loved to live underwater, and built the Conshelfs in part to experiment with the possibility. I've watched documentaries about marine biologists who visit one of the undersea labs, and want to be able to live there. A quick search even finds http://underseacolony.com/prime/mainhub_revA.html , of people who want to establish an undersea colony.

Finding people to inhabit the doomsday refuge is the least of the problems with building it.

Agreed. For people to survive on Mars, earthlings would have to build the sealed cities there using drone technology, then trial them out by first populating them with animals controlled with that same technology. Earthlings would need the experience learnt by doing it on the Moon first, with its more workable one-second response time to drone commands. The sealed cities would be built like new Chinese cities today, the drone operators having learnt their skills on actual huge building sites like Luozhangmen. If there's nuclear devastation in the Mideast or annihilation by disease in Africa in the near future, such remote drone operation skills will likely be learnt by many competing players in those places. The encryption technology used in the droning must be unbreakable, so players must design and manufacture their own chips. And the people who do inhabit such cities on the Moon and Mars will probably have been specially bred in a country not subject to the restrictive laws governing biological innovation prevalent nowadays in the U.S. and Europe.

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