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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 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.