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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.
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.
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.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
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.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
"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, Page 177
I think it will be very similar to how Antarctica is today. There is a good starting point as a study case. Several science bases (maybe even some civilians, as Chile have in Antarctica today), each base belonging to a country of origin on earth, so each base will have a "local" law depending on that country. Lots of interactions/helping between bases. Mars won't be considered a foreign territory by any country, for many years to come. As in Antarctica, claimed territories will overlapped, but should not be a problem for anyone for some time. Problems will start when countries start exporting natural resources back to earth... specially coming from those overlapped territories. Thats my 2 pesos.
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.
love is just extroverted narcissism
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.
..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.
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.
A society on Mars will be a Utopia. Because humans have done such a fantastic job of creating a utopia on earth.
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.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
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.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.