firestar464 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 10, 2025 10:26 pm
This article presents some interesting arguments on the benefits of crewed Mars exploration:
https://www.marssociety.ca/human-and-ro ... ploration/
Worth noting that such an endeavor would take years of planning; at that rate, one wonders whether it would be better to focus on improving robotics so that we don't have to send people.
My take for about the sunny side of a decade now is that space exploration in the vein of pulp sci-fi esque "Wild West frontiersmen but on Mars/other worlds" is almost certainly not going to happen, at least not in reality, barring some uber-libertarian types who just want to fulfill their sci fi frontiersmen fantasies.
It's just absurdly unsafe on every conceivable level, with no real benefit other than looking cool and appealing to 20th century macho fantasies envisioned by an era of sci-fi artists and authors who, understandably, severely underestimated just how hostile space really is. We can barely even expect to
get to Mars without the effects of prolonged low-gravity and deep space radiation causing negative biological effects.
We long fantasized about terraforming the moon and Mars, and the latter is still feasible with the right tech (mainly magnetic shielding), but we never really thought much about how low gravity would affect us beyond either handwaving it or vague spec-fi art (not many sci-fi movies before the 2010s even acknowledged Mars' lower gravity for example, and you probably straight up couldn't even get an Earthlike atmosphere on a celestial body as low-mass as the moon)
ADD moment: I like watching videos of lunar phenomena, and one such phenomena is what's colloquially known as lunar lightning. These are actually impact events from asteroids and meteors. With no real atmosphere to protect it, even small space rocks that would otherwise burn up in our atmosphere wind up proving to be explosive hazards on the moon. Imagine setting up a big, advanced lunar city, but a random space pebble takes out a whole city block.
Sending humans first and building infrastructure later worked on land, on the temperate parts of Earth, because we already know how to utilize the land, with our bare hands, with the bare resources given to us.
You can't do that on Mars. You can't even walk on Mars unprotected; you need a space suit at the current moment. Almost any suit we wear limits our mobility and dexterity. But it's not like we'd be using our hands for much anyway, because, as far as we know, there's no usable organic material on the surface. No water to refine, no wood, nothing but dust and stone. You're dependent on imported materials from Earth.
And at that point, the question remains: why not just send robots down first to build the infrastructure BEFORE you ever set foot there? Why make it needlessly harder on humans, and jeopardize the whole morale behind the effort at that (because realistically if someone dies on Mars from some accident or deprivation as soon as we get there, inevitably the controversy is "Why are we wasting resources sending people to die on another planet?" Last thing we need when we eventually do start making moves towards Mars is for the first outpost to be
Space Roanoke)
Almost literally every aspect of space exploration/colonization is made exponentially easier if you automate it extensively. This is the same reason why we haven't colonized Antarctica or any sort of sea surface. We COULD have done more in Antarctica, or underwater, or underground, but that requires resources and manpower we aren't willing to commit, labor that borders on the insane, and a reason to do so that doesn't exist (because realistically, what benefit beyond pure will-to-power nonsense is there creating a city in Antarctica, unless machines already created a heavily climate controlled city first?)
Ironically, space frontiersman fantasy actually becomes more feasible in that case, if you already have development beforehand so you're not just sending a bunch of people into the middle of space nowhere with virtually no backup plan if anything goes wrong.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
