[DarthGhandi]

There's small areas at the poles which are called peaks of eternal light, but for the most part you are entirely correct.

I find those pushing solar on Mars to be more perplexing, for humans to go there we are going to need nuclear, there's simply no way around this.

Many have an understandable aversion to nuclear but for anything on other bodies the alternatives can't compete.

[iso1210]

Latest evidence is that there are no peaks of eternal light on the moon -- some craters may get upto 90%, and a fair few polar crater rims are 80%

https://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/selene-data-suggests-no-per...

[IAmEveryone]

We shouldn’t ruin Planet A in our attempt to switch over to Plan B.

The amount of geoengineering needed to make Mars hospitable would solve all environmental problems on earth five times over.

[subjectsigma]

If you try a terraforming experiment on Mars and it fails, nobody's life/house/country/etc is ruined, which isn't true of geoengineering on Earth. I agree with the sentiment that there really is no Plan B to fixing climate change but that doesn't mean the goals of space colonization and fixing climate change are contrary.

[Mediterraneo10]

Terraforming on Mars would take millennia, and over that long amount of time, settlement would presumably continue and the amount of colonists would grow. Thus, eventually flaws in the terraforming effort would eventually impact on local people.

[jelliclesfarm]

This assumes that there aren’t other life forms in space/planets.

[imhoguy]

Only if the entire process is self-sufficient. For now we are burning precious Earth resources to do anthing in space.

[giantrobot]

Precious? The primary elements "wasted" in space exploration are aluminum, silicon, hydrogen, and oxygen. All of those things Earth is just lousy with. Even launching a rocket a day wouldn't put any sort of dent in the availability of any of those elements. A rocket a day also wouldn't meaningfully add to levels of harmful pollution. The Earth is really big. It has lots of pretty much everything.

Doing stuff in space is expensive in an economic sense but it's not really all that resource intensive. Most of the cost is paying people to design, test, fabricate, and operate the hardware.

[imhoguy]

Ok, but to put a rocket in space you need a surrounding economy on a specific technological level which is costly resourcewise. Could SpaceX or NASA happen in e.g. Congo, Nepal or Papua New Guinea alone?

[jjk166]

Well okay, we can stop exploring space when we dismantle the entire industrialized world.

[garmaine]

It’s because the people interested in exploring and settling Mars are private citizens. Nuclear power is the domain of governments and/or highly regulated entities.

[SahAssar]

What? You don't think national space agencies are interested in exploring and settling mars?

AFAIK no private company or individual has ever sent anything to mars while national space agencies have launched or tried to launch 147 missions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Mars

[garmaine]

C’mon, the obvious context here is SpaceX which wants to make a colonist of 1M people on Mars with solar power.

[SahAssar]

The parent comment said:

> the people interested in exploring and settling Mars are private citizens

which is what I argued against.

Also I'm pretty sure the national space agencies would like "colony of 1M people on Mars with solar power" too, and looking at the progress made they seem closer.