Interesting- that does make sense- I've lived my whole life in the southwestern US, and while my house itself has always been in a somewhat forested area, red rocks and immense barren landscapes are nothing new to me (in fact, when I've visited New England, I've felt much the same way as those boys from Kansas, though in my case I think I would have said either "too much green" or "too much water!"), plenty of landscapes shaped by volcanic activity, and actually, even craters aren't that hard to come by in this area, both real meteor impact craters, and other craters that were created for Apollo astronauts to practice in! Maybe if Martian colonization ever does become a thing, it'll be people who grew up in the wide open deserts and arid landscapes of Earth who first take to the even more vast deserts of Mars! Could be kind of an interesting study even before then, actually... I wonder if the environment people are accustomed to here on Earth has a bearing on how willing they say they would be to resettle on the Red Planet...

That's not what I'm arguing! I think we do need to colonize other planets, other galaxies, and whatever else we can find. If we ever have advanced enough technology, let's build a colony on a black hole!
I don't think we need to be perfect! I think we need to acknowledge that we have so many flaws so that we can fix them.
What I am saying is that "we've screwed up this planet, let's move on to the next!" is a terrible reason to get off the planet.

Good reasons to leave the planet: curiosity, accomplishment, spreading out the human race so we don't become extinct from a random gamma burst or from a black hole travelling nearby. Bad reasons: "We've caused the destruction of the only known planet containing life! Time for a new planet!" That is just callous, and yelling at people for not thinking the same way is even worse.



And yet, we've seen this site, and we know what needs to be done, but we're still not doing it. In fact, we're deliberately making things worse! We're talking about an architect who is known for making homes of cheap materials just to save some money, and doesn't care when the building falls down on peoples' heads.
We don't need to be perfect, but when our mindset is that life itself is nothing more than a resource to use up and dispose of, we're far from perfect. And if we go into space with that foremost in our minds, that's the pattern we're going to set.



I agree. However, in your previous post, you said "what's to say that the society we'd build there would fall prey to the same vices and issues that plague many societies we have today?"
Which is very different from what you're saying here. Sure, we could create a society that will improve on the existing systems. But never gaining vices and issues? That's a utopia, and by nature unattainable. Human nature being what it is, the most a simple move to a new planet would give us is something a little better.

OK, THAT kind of thinking I'm behind 110%! You'd never see me supporting the idea that planets and ecosystems are just disposable either- a huge reason why I love northern Arizona as much as I do is BECAUSE of the land itself! But yeah, you're definitely right about needing to have redundancy of a sort, a protection against things that are out of our control, and while it might be a stereotypical attitude, I think the lack of any real frontier anymore DOES stifle creativity and social development, and the easiest next frontier is UP.
"These are the missing practical arguments: safeguarding the Earth from otherwise inevitable catastrophic impacts and hedging our bets on the many other threats, known and unknown, to the environment that sustains us. Without these arguments, a compelling case for sending humans to Mars and elsewhere might be lacking, But with them—and the buttressing arguments involving science, education, perspective, and hope—I think a strong case can be made. If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds.
Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze."
-Carl Sagan



I'll grant you that that may be true of society as a whole, but when you look at those groups who are striving the hardest to advance into space, I don't think it bears out anymore. And when they inevitably become some of the first people who DO settle beyond Earth, they'll be the ones laying the foundation for society elsewhere in the solar system (and eventually even beyond that, I'd hope), and it will be their thinking that at first guides that new culture. Obviously that won't be perfect, and eventually there would be people on other planets who would take a different, more negative approach, but they'll then have to work against a pre-existing culture opposed to that kind of wasteful, reckless attitude.



No, I'm sure they'd still have vices, that's just human nature! But they'd be different- a fresh start on another planet doesn't guarantee perfection, but it does give you a chance to learn from the mistakes of the past in a way that you really can't do when you're still tied to them as much as we are here on Earth. I'm certainly not thinking that Mars would be a utopian society (even if Kim Stanley Robinson does paint a lovely picture of that future in "Blue Mars" ), but I DO think that it could become a better one than societies limited to our current world stand a likely chance of becoming.

Well that's pretty much a given. Without outside resources to support us I think we've got a 50/50 chance for Thunderdome at some point, then a slow, dwindling decline as the apes enslave us.

I was watching this video What Is Genius? and I realized that the problems of survival on Mars will probably get solved by something I can't conceive of at the moment. So I don't know if the Mars One project is a scam, but some day, if our civilization doesn't descend into chaos before then, there will be humans on Mars. Wish I could live to see it, but I don't think it's in the cards.

In my opinion, I don't know. I should read about this, and return with a valid opinion.