Moving to Mars

[andrewducker]

I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people setting the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach.

Says Bruce Sterling, who is right in every way.

Comments

[whiterabbitt.livejournal.com]

Only five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach? At least moving to the Gobi Desert involves an oxygen-rich atmosphere the entire way--not to mention the comparative ease of air travel versus space travel.