Ask Slashdot: What Kind of Societies Will the First Mars Colonies Be? 305
New submitter nyri writes: I'm making a two-part study in what kind of societies humans will build on Mars when we start to colonize the red planet. In first part, I'm trying to approach the question sociologically as rigorously as possible. Sociology being what it is, this also includes informed speculation. So, what does Slashdot think: What sort of colonies will humans build on the red planet? How large will they be? How will they make decisions and select their leaders? What kind of judicial systems will they use? What happens if a colony's population grows larger than they are able to sustain? Will they be religious and if so, how? How will their internal and external economy work? And so on...
A second part of the study is of psychometric nature to explore the kind of personalities be present in first colonies. I also encourage you to take the survey.
A second part of the study is of psychometric nature to explore the kind of personalities be present in first colonies. I also encourage you to take the survey.
You know what they say... (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of months of research can frequently save a couple of hours in the library.
Your questions are not new, to science or to science fiction, and have been covered extensively by people with relevant PhDs. Instead of tracking down their research and reading their conclusions and the reasoning for them... you're asking Reddit. Anonymous, probably ignorant and wish-based responses with the occasional gem you won't be able to reliably distinguish from the giant manure pile.
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you're asking Reddit
Did you forget where you are? This is Slashdot, not Reddit.
Though I will admit that it's getting harder to find the differences.
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>Did you forget where you are? This is Slashdot, not Reddit.
Ha... and I made a point of leaving Reddit a year or so ago because it was getting pretty toxic and stupid... maybe it's time to take my Internet surfing license away. :(
Kim Stanley Robinson wrote books about this (Score:3)
I mean his Mars trilogy was nearly completely about the rise of a unique Martian society over the 100-200 years since its founding.
Re: You know what they say... (Score:2)
Re:You know what they say... (Score:5, Informative)
OP here. Thank you for your feedback. I've been doing extensive literary review and I continue to do so. I'm also having discussions with people with "relevant PhDs." What makes you think that this is the only way I try to gather ideas, information and understanding?
Anyhow, it would be great if every reader took the effort and fills the survey: https://togowhowants.net/ [togowhowants.net]
Please also consider filling the long version. It would be really heplful! Thanks! :)
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Idiotic books. Exactly how it _won't_ be done.
Chanting over plants won't make them grow in near vacuum. Socialism doesn't work for frontier societies. Nationalizing another planets investments would result in Mars starving, not becoming a 'workers paradise'.
Re:You know what they say... (Score:5, Interesting)
I found one interesting thing about the Mars trilogy was that he tried to make some concession to not keeping in Western-centric.
USA sci-fi is imagined through the lens of our current Western society, and whole large parts of the world work very differently. It will probably be the Chinese running the Mars colony, with Chinese-based customs.
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Pay-pe-View stream to Earth for entertainment and providing supplies from the far away planet. It's a fair exchange. Less regulations on Mars, so you don't have to be tried for Murder or anything.
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The same as on earth. Perhaps a little calmer. (Score:2)
Colonizing mars only works with technology we don't have yet. Once that tech exisits, societies will change, wether here or on mars will then make little difference. If people will be selected to live on mars, chances are we'll look for the emotionally stable to do the first wave of colonisation. ... You know, like astronauts.
Re:The same as on earth. Perhaps a little calmer. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say there are not going to be any Mars colonies. We may have research labs and possibly some vacation resorts but I don't see there being any real colonies. Not like scifi has us thinking.
The issue is not atmosphere or water, those can be addressed, but gravity. I was listening to some pod casts and reading some papers. There are a few scientists that think that our life cycle it tied very closely to a 1G gravity. With out this conception and development of a viable fetus is impossible. If this is true then there will never be colonies on Mars, or almost any place else.
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Here is a link to one of the papers I read. This one doesn't state that conception and development will be impossible but does show considerable risk in the process.
http://journalofcosmology.com/... [journalofcosmology.com]
Re: The same as on earth. Perhaps a little calmer. (Score:4, Informative)
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Holy fucking crap....
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Joseph has been criticized by the scientific community for embracing unorthodox mechanisms of evolution. In one instance, the biologist P.Z. Myers ridiculed a claim by Joseph that a rock found on Mars is a living organism similar to a type of fungus existing on Earth.[4] He has also made controversial comments about sex, including "Biologically, females serve one purpose: to get pregnant".[5]
In 2014, Joseph filed a lawsuit against NASA as he claimed they failed to investigate whether a rock seen on Mars is in fact an alien lifeform.[2][3]
I have a legitimate concern and to back up my issue I reference a article written by a loon. Why isn't that just ... perfect. Thanks for pointing that out.
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Fish in the sea experience ZERO gravity ...
Just saying.
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I'm not sure what this is referring too. There is a difference between sex in the sea and sex in zero gravity
Re:The same as on earth. Perhaps a little calmer. (Score:4, Informative)
I guess you think you're suddenly in zero gravity in a swimming pool too?
Seems you don't know the difference between bouancy and zero gravity. Never mind, you'll get a clue one day.
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That may prove to be the case, but what little we do know suggests otherwise. All we know for sure at this point is that it works fine on Earth (where gravity varies a bit more than 0.5%), and that "Space flight studies of pregnant mammals have shown a significant reduction in pregnancy weight gain, prolonged parturition, lower birth weights, and increased perinatal mortality" (as quoted in section 7 of your linked article), from which we can reasonably conclude that something about the combination of micr
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I actually did think of the "maternity ring" when I was posting the OP. I just wasn't sure how viable that it would be on a Mars colony. Basically the way I see it you would have to go off world to conceive and give birth.
I'm not really sure about the feasibility of a "maternity train" planet side. You would have two forces active on the fetus a the same time. Natural gravity and artificial gravity. It is a interesting concept that would merit farther study though.
Of course there is always the p
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Assuming 10km radius for the track, you'd need the "maternity ring" to move about 1100 km/hr (mach 1). Not hard at all in orbit (two habitats attached by a 10km cable would do it), and not terribly hard on Mars (get one of Musk's earth borers to dig an underground track)....
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why... what is the end goal of having a Mars base?
Redundancy, and the spreading of life.
There is nowhere to go after that in a human lifespan at current (or 10x current) velocities.
Venus Mercury Ganymede Titan Callisto Io Moon Europa Triton Titania Rhea Oberon Iapetus Charon Umbriel Ariel Dione Tethys Enceladus Miranda Proteus Mimas Nereid Hyperion Phoebe, and then a bunch of smaller stuff.
Why is one (current) human lifespan a limiting factor?
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Could we not simulate gravity by rotating stuctures? I guess those would easier to maintain zero gravity.
We can, and probably will in space. I'm just not sure how rotating structures will work on a planet service. The issue I was thinking about is the conception and development of a fetus in other than Earth gravity.
But some other posters have pointed out by the time we set up a colony on mars we might have the technology to solve this problem. So i'm not sure how much of my OP is valid any more.
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If people will be selected to live on mars, chances are we'll look for the emotionally stable to do the first wave of colonisation. ... You know, like astronauts.
Or perhaps it's much more like the early colonies in the Americas or Australia where the people selected were ones who the powers back home were sick of wanted to kick out of the country or who were completely fed up with the system and home and wanted to get out from underneath it.
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What? It's easy to ship people away on a boat when there are thousands of boats and the destination may be wild but still has the basic conditions for life. It's a much different situation when you're spending multiple billions of dollars and the people going will literally be a representative of your government/organization.
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We already spend billions to let astronauts do experiments in space. If there was a plan for a colony that grabbed the public's attention, I don't think it's a stretch. I also think a private group could do the same.
I think my main point is that on earth, it's possible to send people to a remote land with nothing more than a boat full of supplies (if that), and they could survive, even if no one else is there, and there's no infrastructure. For a Mars colony, someone would have to set up everything far in a
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...we'll look for the emotionally stable to do the first wave of colonisation.
"How would you like a one-way ticket away from civilization and everything you know to go live out your days in an isolated wasteland?"
"Sounds great! Sign me up!"
"You... Uh... Pass?"
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Exactly what tech are you thinking of that's conspicuously missing, beyond the rockets themselves? Sealed terrariums have been done for decades, and on Mars you have unlimited CO2 and water to let the plants outpace the animals and fuel expansion. I seem to recall that we've already worked out concrete based on simulated-Mars sand, and gas-impermeable sealants are not difficult, and can even be made from waste cellulose with the right equipment, so habitat domes shouldn't be too much of a problem. Airlock
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Sealed terrariums have been done for decades
I only know one that had attempts at people living in them: Biosphere 2, and it was a flop.
Airlocks, space suits, computers, etc. will need to be imported until local infrastructure has become sufficiently industrialized, but that's always been the case with new colonies.
You also need to import everything to build a sufficiently industrialized infrastructure. There's not enough stuff lying around to bootstrap an industrial base without massive amounts of equipment.
Maybe we should do an experiment on Earth first. Send a bunch of people to the Gobi desert, and see how long it takes before they can build a working toaster out of natural resources. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:The same as on earth. Perhaps a little calmer. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it was a great success - they had a couple of *major* problems with the first experiment (especially unexpected CO2 loss to the concrete), but were able to make it through by the skin of their teeth - though admittedly it was pure stubbornness that kept them going to the end of the mission. And I seem to recall a lot of people problems as well. Basically the problem (beyond the unexpected) was they had too many people for the size of the ecosystem - and not enough people for healthy social interactions - things were basically working, just not quite well enough to quite cut it.
There's also been at least a couple long-term Russian experiments using switchgrass and the like for atmosphere recycling, though I believe they ate stored rations. And I think I've heard of a few others, though I can't recall any details.
An actual colony could address the problems relatively easily - you have a decent population of at least several dozen people and growing, and eat mostly imported food for the first few years as the gardens expand, which they will do as fast as you can manage since there's no need to keep plant life in balance with animals when you have an unlimited supply of CO2 right outside. You make absolutely no attempt to maintain a sealed environment - you import resources and dispose of waste as needed - and the most vital bulk ecological resources, CO2 and H2O, are in plentiful local supply.
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Last time I checked we had submarines around 1890 ... most certainly during WW-I which was around 1914 ... give or take.
So: what technology are you exactly thinking we are missing?
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With those ping times, playing StarCraft is going to be less fun.
We will all be dead before then... (Score:2, Funny)
Humanity is far too stupid to achieve a society of any real population on Mars before things like CRISPR, 3d printed plagues, and atomic warfare reduce our societies to a shadow of their former glory.
Heck, even the overuse of antibiotics is about to reduce our medical field to some sort of 1800's vintage joke.
"Sir you have appendicitis. Back in the good old days you would have lived, but now we can't even do surgery without you dying of an infection. Here is enough morphine to ride out the rest of your d
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Having a "bad appendix" already is an infection. ... mankind did that since millions of years. ... the fact that you still were able to post is a proof that you don't need antibiotics to survive it.
Surgery would not make it worse.
Infections can be survived without antibiotics
Every fucking "common cold" is an infection
Re: We will all be dead before then... (Score:3)
Not really. So-called "super-bugs" are objectively no "worse" than regular infections were prior to the development of antibiotics.
Arguably, most of them are at least slightly LESS-bad, because few of them are LITERALLY 100%-resistant... in most cases, it just means bacterial infections that USED to be easily cured with a few days of a single cheap antibiotic like penicillin or tetracycline now require multiple-drug combos like sulfamethoxazole + trimethoprim.
The situation is worse than it was a few years a
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I think that's part of the reason people like Musk want to rush the game - throw lives and resources at the problem while we still have them in abundance to spend. This next century could start getting pretty grim, and even a minimally self-sufficient Mars colony could serve as a repository of life and knowledge to help rebuild.
Life might get pretty grim for a while if supplies from Earth got cut off before they were really ready, but it's unlikely much would impact them any more directly. As long as they
Well.... (Score:2, Funny)
It will start out as a Democracy with enlightened leadership. Eventually, factions would develop and then devolve into a barbaric society where there will be one despotic leader, science will be forgotten and folks will be just getting by until they all die-off from thirst.
Or, they will argue among themselves so much that a decision will never get made and they all die from thirst because of their inaction.
Or, the Martians come out of hibernation and eat all of them.
Nothing good will happen because humanity
There wont be societies (Score:3, Insightful)
Because there is no fucking reason to go there other than bragging rights. Its a dead planet. The only time people migrate is when there is something to migrate for, be it a gold rush or self preservation. The reasons to go to Mars are............ Yeah
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The reasons to go to Mars are............
To get away from all these shit-hole countries!
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But if humanity cannot survive on this rock, then maybe we shouldn't get to move to another one.
They'll be scientific research stations (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, nobody is going to Mars for a lot longer than most people think. Costs too much now. Costs will drop slowly, And second, once people get there, most exploration will surely be done by robotic rovers -- probably controlled from orbit. AFAICS, there won't be any colonies until some terraforming is done. At the very least, getting rid of the toxic perchlorates that are said to be prsent in the soil. And hopefully some Oxygenation of the virtually nonexistent atmosphere. There may be a (very) few research stations on the surface and those will likely be militaristic. Think Antarctica -- which, BTW, is what the Martian climate will be like except that Antarctica is warmer and you can breath Antarctic air if you are careful about frostbite.
Re:They'll be scientific research stations (Score:4, Funny)
Just last year I saw a documentary on how to grow potatoes in Mars on shit.
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Antarctica is not warmer.
In winter it is around -90C and in summer around -20C.
Mars has about +20C at the equator ...
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Although I agree there will be research stations, Antarctica is indeed warmer. Those record warm +20C days on Mars are high temperatures only slightly warmer than Antarctica's record highs, but the nights are incredibly colder. That's because the thin atmosphere allows heat to escape far more easily than on Earth. In fact, Mars' atmosphere is so thin that while it's +20C at your feet it's well below freezing at your head.
Wrong Question (Score:3)
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If a global catastrophe happens to/on Earth, our only hope will be a self-sustaining colony somewhere. Mars seems to be our best possible chance so far.
Re:Wrong Question (Score:4, Insightful)
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None of the catastrophes on earth the last billion years has ever made the Earth less habitable than Mars. Your scenario is nonsense.
Sure, but plenty were mass extinctions that left only lichens and small animals alive. Earth won't become uninhabitable, but that doesn't necessary means that it won't be inhabited without humans. Unless, you know, there are some humans living elsewhere that could come back when the dust settles.
Re:Wrong Question (Score:4, Informative)
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You aren't making any sense. Even the worst case scenarios (just lichen can survive) are magnitudes more livable than Mars.
Is wiping hard disk makes it unusable? No, you can keep using it without issues. However, the data that was there is gone. How do you make sure that your data is safe from getting wiped? You copy it elsewhere, then you bring it back if your main drive got wiped.
The same idea applies here. You are complaining that tapes are clunky to use. Sure, they are. However, they serve one purpose very well - store data so it can be retrieved when needed and copied to a medium that is easier to use.
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You didn't really just equate planet-scale disasters with accidentally deleting your homework, did you?
Goddamn.
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Build a bunker deep inside a mountain, and have a bunch of people hide there until the dust settles. That is, if you care about such a thing in the first place.
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The real question is 'why' we would colonize Mars
Offsite backup for Humanity.
and it has to make some kind of economic sense because it will be an expensive endeavor.
What is the total economic value of humanity's existence?
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Dinosaur killing asteroid + total thermonuclear war Earth would still be more habitable than Mars.
Sure, but would there be any humans left alive? Dinosaur-killing asteroid did a very good job wiping dinosaurs.
Re:Wrong Question (Score:5, Insightful)
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In any scenario why would we divert resources to attempt to go to Mars instead of finding a way to 'back up' on earth which will always be more viable than mars? It doesn't make any sense.
This is good question. Multiple reasons.
Reason 1: Disaster Scale. Catastrophes that can wipe life on multiple planets are a lot more massive in scale that catastrophes that can wipe a single planet.
Reason 2: Isolation. If the nature of such disaster is contagion of some kind, then 6+ month trip offers perfect and on-going quarantine.
Reason 3: Crabs in a bucket & distance. If disaster doesn't quite wipe humanity, it can still destroy our technological society. As our society collapses, any resourc
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Quarantine? We could just have them orbit the earth for six months. Better yet, why even launch the space capsule into space when we can park it in a warehouse on earth.
Social disorder will make it less likely we can cobble together a mars colony. (see my first response)
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Probability of disaster is inversely proportional to scale. The last time something like this happened was billions of years ago when the moon was created. Why would we worry about the most unlikely events.
We have an infinitely valuable asset, our civilization, and no good way to assess risk. We don't know enough to estimate probability of extinction-level events. However, we do know that ice age nearly wiped humanity. We have seen massive epidemics. We also know that Earth went through multiple mass extinction events.
Short-term thinking is not the right tool when you are dealing with humanity's history. Costs of creating self-sustaining base on Mars are dwarfed by the opportunity our civilization would spr
Re:Wrong Question (Score:5, Insightful)
The last time something like this happened was billions of years ago when the moon was created. Why would we worry about the most unlikely events.
And even if you want to worry about those things, there is no rush. If our society will continue to advance in the next 1000 years, they will be in a much better position to colonize Mars. And if society collapses in the next 1000 years, it would have been futile anyway.
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That was a lucky hit!
They all were at the same place holding their "ting"!
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Rising children does not make economic sense. ....
People do it anyway
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The real question is 'why' we would colonize Mars...
Because the Earth, including antarctica, and nearby space, including the moon, have become too crowded.
All Hail The Elon! (Score:4, Informative)
"The Martian government was directed by ten men, the leader of whom was elected by universal suffrage for five years and entitled 'Elon.' Two houses of Parliament enacted the laws to be administered by the Elon and his cabinet."
Wernher von Braun
The Mars Project [wlym.com], Page 177
Re:All Hail The Elon! (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait what? Is there some connection between Elon Musk's name and an old story by von BrauN?
we hate those guys, SPLIITERS! (Score:2)
Valles Marineris is a Musk-ratocracy.
But in Schiaparelli, they're an autonomous collective
And in Olympus Mons they're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. They take turns to act as a sort of executive-officer-for-the-week-- But all the decisions *of* that officer hve to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting-- By a simple majority, in the case of purely internal affairs--But by a two-thirds majority, in the case of more major--
First colony (Score:2)
We need to do everything we can to ensure that the first and subsequent colonies are successful. That said, the first colony will definitely fail badly maybe even horrifically and we better have the stomach for that. There will be events or situations we didnt prepare for.
Exploration and pioneering is difficult but we need to do it or fall back into the tribalism and stupidity that plagues humanity.
Authoritarian, with no privacy. (Score:2)
And they will most likely be speaking Mandarin.
Unless the US can get rid of the cancerous politics called Trumpism, China will be the next imperial colonial power.
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And they will most likely be speaking Mandarin.
Unless the US can get rid of the cancerous politics called Trumpism, China will be the next imperial colonial power.
I'm mixed on Trump but he really is more a symptom than a cause. To "get rid of him" you need to address the causes. Otherwise you'll just get another person like him - or worse.
Communism! (Score:2)
Like Antartica (Score:5, Insightful)
Short-lived (Score:2)
They will be just like Star Trek (Score:2)
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you can do that anytime you want to. There is a such thing as dye you know.
(insert snarky comment about OP being a virgin and living in parents basement)
Depends who does the colonizing (Score:2)
If it's commercial interests, it'll probably be governed by a board of directors. If it's by governments, it'll probably be essentially a military dictatorship (although it will probably be phrased more politely). In any event, given the conditions of living on Mars, highly centralized government is almost a certainty. A lot of things have to be coordinated, such as production of breathable air, creation of food and shelter, etc. Given that any mistakes could be catastrophic, there probably aren't going to
the gop system people will need pay life support (Score:2)
the gop system people will need pay life support fees (but get it free in jail)
Look first at the "colonies" in Antarctica (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there are a lot of similarities between the exploration of Antarctica and of Mars. Sure, I'll get to some important differences, but I think it's the right starting point.
Once upon a time, Antarctica sounded like just about the most harsh, alien, abandoned and adventurous place one could go. The world's boldest men organized heroic expeditions to reach the ultimate bragging right: being the first to visit the South Pole. In time some succeeded, but not before others miserably died. The sheer adventure and alienness of Antarctica captured our fantasy. H. P. Lovecraft's best fantasy horror story takes place there.
But then, Antarctica was replaced in our imagination by Mars, the new go-to setting for our fantasy and horror. We got to the point where we knew just enough to fire up our imagination about what Mars is like, but we could still fill in the many gaps in knowledge with our fantasy. Just like "conquered" Antarctica with bold expeditions, we will eventually "conquer" Mars. Human footprints will get made, photographed, instagrammed, and gushed about. And then what?
Then Mars will start to seem a lot more like Antarctica: a place where we could survive and even build cities, with great effort and great expense, but ... why? The reason why no settlements are being built on the Antarctic continent is not because of international laws. If those laws expired, it's not like villages would start springing up. We have some scientific stations in Antarctica, and will will have some on Mars. I think their governing principles will be almost identical. But we have no Antarctic immigrants, and I don't expect Martian immigrants, beyond a couple of very rich weirdos. Once the place is covered with footprints, the exoticism will have worn off, and we'll see it for what it is: a strangely beautiful but also profoundly inhospitable cold place that's hostile to human habitation, and that probably should be preserved rather than bulldozed for space condos. The scientists there will complain of terrible food, terrible ping, terrible odors, terrible crampedness, annoying cancers and terrible shipping charges on anything they want to buy. At that point, who will be signing up to live there? The same people now dying to live in Antarctica.
Probably not in our lifetime, and not successful.. (Score:5, Interesting)
As much as I'm wired to look at what can go wrong with things (because ignoring that could be disasterous), I really hate to have to be that way with this subject. However there's so many things that can go wrong, most of them fatal, that you really can't ignore it.
The first few attempts at human colonization of Mars will likely be disasters where all the participants end up dead for one reason or another; sadly, anyone who agrees to go has to accept that it's very possibly a suicide mission. There is no rescue from Earth; there likely won't be any way of escaping back to Earth; the Martian atmosphere, such as it is, isn't breathable, and it's thin enough that (if I understand it correctly) radiation from the sun is a problem -- as is radiation exposure just getting there in the first place. Any habitat built there has to be 100% self contained, 100% self sufficient, essentially like a spacecraft except rooted to the planets surface, and with some notable exceptions: you have to be able to grow your own food in a sustainable way, you're not bringing all your food with you like you would for a LEO mission or to go live on the ISS. And so on, and so on. A whole list of things that, if they aren't done right, can kill everyone in the colony. That's not even taking into consideration the unknown unknowns that could also kill everyone. Assuming we stuck with it, there'd have to be several attempts at a Mars colony, before you got one that actually didn't end up with everyone dead. At least at our current level of technology, that is. Fifty years from now might be a different story entirely. Of course, fifty years from now, we might not even be capable of putting anything in LEO, for all we know.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: We need to learn to walk before we can learn to run. We need Training Wheels on this particular bike -- and luckily for us, we've got the perfect place to practice right in our local neighborhood: the Moon. We should be building a permanent human presence on the Moon first, with all the infrastructure that implies, followed by industry to support space operations. We can make all our mistakes on the Moon, first, where it's possible to come up from Earth to fix them and/or rescue inhabitants. Industry built there can support any Mars missions (or asteroid missions, or whatever) easier than having to launch from Earth all the time. There would be many more advantages to this than I can easily list here.
Is there any such things a Benevelent Dictatorship (Score:2)
Any far-off colony will likely be a Corporate Entity, and exist under the totalitarian rule of the Board and its dictates.
After all, who else is likely going top be able to fund such an endeavor? The chances of survival will be closely tied to the colonists adhering to carefully calculated "laws for survival", Supply and demand quotas, with food and energy supplies generated with the lowest possible bottom line (and quality to match). Good producers will be rewarded, and less than expected output will suffe
A dead one (Score:2)
Because something just has to go seriously wrong, otherwise how will they make a movie about it?
Mostly female (Score:2)
It makes no sense to send males up. They tend to have higher average body mass and a higher metabolism. Both of which demand more scarce resources. Male reproductive duties can be easily replaced by sperm banks. Then there is the testosterone aggressiveness.
For genetic diversity a few select males may be allowed to reach puberty. After which their sperm would be harvested for future generations.
Then the males can be recycled for food product before the hungry years of late puberty and early adolescence kick
Dictatorship (Score:2)
At least until there are enough minions to declare most of them slaves to build the temples!
Then it becomes an evil dictatorship!
That is the plan! Baaaahaaaahhaaaaahaaaahaaaaaa!
It really depends on (Score:2)
how many female indentured servant PHD's paying off their travel/air/food fees each billionaire overlord is allowed. /s?
Military Base (Score:2)
Will have to be run like a Navy ship or Airplane.
One person will have to run it as a meritocracy based dictatorship.
Democracy will come later.
Erm... (Score:2)
A religion with a lot of money (Score:2)
What do you need to colonise a planet? The same as you need to colonise a (newly discovered) continent.
That would require a source of funds, a cohesive group and a willingness to die for "the cause". Many religious groups would fit that description - or could raise the capital. As far as the very real risk of death, it's an easy spin. Add in the prospect of escape from persecution on Earth and you'd probably have them queuing at the spaceport gates.
But why only 1 religion? Why not all of the ones with a
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Well, my money is on the first few being whackadoodle cults... and also suffering that imminent demise relatively soon after establishment.
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Probably - that's historically pretty likely with expensive colonization projects: Company towns where the appointed governor had extreme power so long as he stayed in the good graces of his superiors back home.
Re:Corporatocracy (Score:4, Informative)
You're probably correct. That's pretty much how North America was settled. See the Virginia Company [wikipedia.org]. How pretty it turned out is left as an exercise to the reader.
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Mars.... Brought to you by Carl's Jr
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My life goal is go down in the record books as the first human to die on Mars. Too bad they won't take me because I'm not in perfect health.
Although, it sounds like your health status is conducive to achieving your goals on Mars. I'd lead with that in the astronaut candidate interviews - NASA is very goal oriented.
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If you look into creating a viable colony that should be able to last then the genetical variation requires about 1600 persons. It's possible to actually solve that with passing frozen embryos and having rules set up enforcing sexual relations for maximum genetic variation.
Any candidate colonists has to pass tests to ensure that they are healthy and don't carry genetic diseases that can pose a problem. They also have to be mentally stable.
Mars will also be a challenge to colonize from the perspective of a v
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Any candidate colonists has to pass tests to ensure that they are healthy and don't carry genetic diseases that can pose a problem. They also have to be mentally stable.
Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulat
Re:Lonely... (Score:5, Insightful)
In short: humans will continue to be filled with: greed for excessive share of resources, lust to posses others for their own gratification, desire to control others, and need for others to stroke their egos. It will be wonderful!
People too young to understand this might think that technology will solve all our problems. Clue: it's not a technical problem. Or that people on Mars will be "better". Or we'll only send the "best". But the people who get to select the "best" won't be selecting for what you are thinking of. And even if they are, the problem is not an external problem. It is an internal problem that humans have and cannot overcome.
Some think that enough wealth will solve the problem. The lessons right here today should quash such notions. People are greedy. Insatiable greed. No amount of accumulation is enough. If a person has two loaves of bread and their brother has none, some people will share and some will not. The ones who will share will be exploited by the others who will not share. And wealth is nothing more than tokens that, in total, represent all of the available resources and labor. Printing more tokens simply diminishes the value of those tokens. (eg printing money) Some people have an insane amount of wealth (eg, share of earth's resources) and think they don't have an obligation to help poorer people because those people are not entitled to a share of the earth's resources. And the people who will argue this point are exactly a demonstration of why we have a problem that we cannot fix ourselves.
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The result would be a land entirely peopled with criminals!