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Ask Slashdot: What Kind of Societies Will the First Mars Colonies Be?
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.
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.
..at first.
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.
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?
Wait what? Is there some connection between Elon Musk's name and an old story by von BrauN?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
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