The Master himself asks this question. So, the question stands, if NASA called you today and said that they wanted you to leave for Mars in five years and that you’d most likely have to spend the rest of your life there, attempting to terraform Mars (a project that would at best take a couple of thousand years) would you be willing to go? You’d be able to take a couple hundred pounds of personal possessions and immediate family/SO, but that’s it. Your diet would most likely be vegetarian (since it’d be too expensive to send food animals), and you’d have to spend the rest of your life inside of a space suit or plastic bubble. There would, however, be regular contact with Earth, thanks to communciation satellites, etc, so you’d have access to the internet and cable TV. There would also be “regular” supply runs between Earth and Mars (every year or two), so there’d be fresh imports of people and other supplies. Would you be willing to go? Me? I can have my bags packed in twenty minutes.
If they had asked me when I was young, free and single then yes, but not now; Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Tuckerfan *
…you’d have access to the internet…[/QUOTEI imagine the ping times would be something quite atrocious.
Yeah, but what the hell does Elton John know about raising kids? Don’t think he has any of his own.
What could my answer possibly be…
Mighty dammed presumptious, if you ask me! Tars and I might decide we don’t want you sumbitches terraforming Barsoom, and kick yo’ booties off OUR planet. 
Maybe we should consult David Bowie… he seems to know a lot about Mars for some reason.
Well I have always had a sense of adventure; Give me 15 minutes to pack my bags and a way out of my prior comminments to the government, and I will be at the rocket. The mostly vegitarian diet doesn’t bother me, as I will eat just about anything, and as to living in a space suit or plastic bubble, well I plan on going into the submarine service anyways once I get my commissioning(I am in Naval ROTC) so I was planning on spending a good deal of time in a cramped, enclosed structure anyways.
And if you hook us up with some of those hot Barsoomian women, we’ll forget all about terraforming!
Sure thing Man, take your pick. Red or green?
On second thought, I would caution the novice lover against selecting the green. Picture an eight-foot tall, 400 pound green chick with four arms and with certain, ummm, expectations. If you fail to deliver, the consequences will be very, very, ugly. :eek:
Ohhhnoo… I read The Sirens of Titan! Didn’t think I’d fall for that didja’? And stay away from me with that antenna and scalpel!
Sign me up.
There are a few things I’ve been meaning to do in one third gravity. Might take several years…
Sure, I’ll go. I’ve always wanted to explore and go into space…
And it’s not like anything is going on around here that I can’t do on mars.
Tristans shows up in the thread, bags in hand.
Where’s the Taxi?
Oh wait… this was hypothetical.
I’d go in a heartbeat. Hopefully, however, they’d do this after they dumped the NH3 asteroids/comets down to the surface. Could get rough there during that phase of the terraforming project.
And no, not thousands of years. Many hundreds, but not more than 2000 years at most.
Yes! I’d go in a minute. Mars, the Moon, the asteriods, an orbital habitat, anyplace off earth! Where do I go to sign up? It’s what I’ve wanted all my life.
Yes. I’ve always wanted to go into space. Sign me up.
yes
Oh . . . I thought this was going to be about a new Fox reality show . . .
Well, I have a few ethical objections to terraforming Mars, but if you want me to spend the rest of my life building low-impact habitats and wandering around collecting rocks and watching Phobos and Deimos go 'round & 'round, sign me up!
Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Imagine never being able to go on a long hike through the mountains, with a breeze bringing the scent of pine trees, or never body-surfing in the warm waters of the Atlantic in September. It would be initially fascinating, but I think after a few months, I’d be bored to tears.
On a more serious note, I always find discussions of colonization of other planets (or of colonies floating out in space somewhere) a bit puzzling, since we haven’t even colonized the oceans on our own planet, yet.
Our oceans have oxygen - true, we’d have to extract it from the seawater, but that’s a minor technical problem to be solved. Our oceans have water - true, it’s salty, but there are various ways to get the salt out of it. Our oceans have food, more than there is on land. The ambient temperature in our oceans is well within the range necessary to sustain human life. The water pressure is high, but you don’t need a special suit to survive it - you just can’t surface too quickly. Finally, if something goes dreadfully wrong, help is only a few hundred feet away, rather than millions of miles.
By comparison, the environment on Mars, the Moon, Europa, or any other planet or moon you care to name, is almost completely incompatible with human life. No oxygen to breath, no water to drink (maybe, just maybe, there’s some in icy form, buried somewhere, but it’s certainly not readily available), no food to harvest, killing temperatures, deadly pressure (or lack thereof), and no rescue.
If we think that living underwater would be too difficult, or too strange for us, what makes us think that we’d do better on Mars?