Hacker News Reader

Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

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.)

View on HN

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.

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 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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com