this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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Do people really think we'll colonize mars soon?
Colonizing the bottom of the ocean would be orders of magnitude cheaper, and more practical. Same with Antarctica. And there's a reason we don't do that.
I hate to sound anal, but I don't think the public appreciates how monumentally difficult space travel is, and how it gets exponentially worse with every ounce you have to carry. Even with theoretical, morally questionable tech like fission fragment drives or whatever.
Pressure is way harder to deal with than a vacuum, not that i think mars is happening any time soon
Both have unique challenges, but overall brucethemoose is right about the overall cost comparison. For instance, we could easily have a "space elevator" equivalent to the bottom of the ocean, it'd be a fraction of the cost of maintaining a freight network to mars. Pressure is hard to deal with, but not as difficult as it is to get shit out of a gravity well as dense as Earth.
The main point is the usable resources. You'd have a damn near infinite source of usable resources at the bottom of the ocean meanwhile on Mars everything would need to be scavenged or shipped.
The ocean is a lot closer though, which helps