[relativ575]

> The Earth has plenty of space, we're limited by resources, and there are no interesting resources on Mars

There are new discoveries on Earth even today, after hundreds of thousands year of mankind history. What make you think we have known all we need to know about Mars?

> I wouldn't be surprised to find out that we'll have a colony outside the solar system before a colony on Mars.

Mars is a 8 month journey. Alpha Centauri, the nearest star, is a 296,000 year journey using the current propulsion technology. We'll have colonized every single colonizable planets in the Solar System before then.

> it's much more interesting from a profit perspective than a future of humanity perspective.

Future of humanity depends on advance in science. Space exploration has always been a major force that drives science forward, asteroid mining included. So many examples to list, but just to pick one:

https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2019/06/how-do-scie...

[tsimionescu]

> Mars is a 8 month journey. Alpha Centauri, the nearest star, is a 296,000 year journey using the current propulsion technology. We'll have colonized every single colonizable planets in the Solar System before then.

Sure, but there is nothing on Mars. We have no reason to colonize places that lack even the basic resources necessary for life, or some precious resources that are scarce on Earth. At least with a different star system, you can imagine that in some far flung future we may need to escape the expansion of the Sun (though assuming humanity survives for some billions of years is indeed unlikely).

> Future of humanity depends on advance in science. Space exploration has always been a major force that drives science forward, asteroid mining included. So many examples to list, but just to pick one:

I'm not sure what the article was supposed to show, is spectroscopy a technology invented as part of the space program?

It's true that a product of the spave program are advanced materials and other factors that can be re-used on the Earth. But this is more a question of the vast resources which were invested in the space race, which could as well have been invested in Earth programs and would have likely yielded similar results.

Teh most valuable results of the space programs have been communications satellites and things like the hubble space telescope - which has done far more for scientific space exploration than the entire Apollo program, as have the Voyager probes, Mars rover etc.

Manned space exploration may still serve an inspirational purpose, though. I absolutely admit that the social and inspirational impact of seeing a human on the Moon/Mars/in outer space is hard to beat.

[relativ575]

> Sure, but there is nothing on Mars. We have no reason to colonize places that lack even the basic resources necessary for life, or some precious resources that are scarce on Earth

You don't know what Mars can offer. Not without extensive exploration that can only be done effectively with human presence. We still don't fully understand Earth.

Human once couldn't survive on the desert. We might still not if we never explored it in the first place. Technologies or knowledge we take for granted today may never exist either. The same will happen with Mars. I don't know what the future hold thousands years from now. We may have terraformed it, human body may have adapted to Mars environment, or we may have found it indeed not suitable. We'll however have permanent presence on Mars, and we'll make major leap in science and technologies thanks to Mars exploration.

> I'm not sure what the article was supposed to show, is spectroscopy a technology invented as part of the space program?

You wondered the role of space exploration in the future of humanity. I reckon that our future lies in the advance of science. Spectroscopy would be much less developed without its application in astronomy.

> Teh most valuable results of the space programs have been communications satellites and things like the hubble space telescope - which has done far more for scientific space exploration than the entire Apollo program, as have the Voyager probes, Mars rover etc.

I'm not sure what points you're trying to make it here? some programs have more short term return than others? We are doing both, right? not only that, investment for something like communication satellite dwarf that for outer space programs.

[AngryData]

What is the benefit of living on Mars, rather than a space based habitat that can attach to and mine asteroids or small moons for extra resources? Living in a "large" gravity well seems like all negatives to me in terms of expansion and resource extraction.

[tsimionescu]

To be fair, living in 0g is even less plausible than living in 0.3g long term. In particular, there is a good chance that animals can't reproduce in 0g - those that have been tried have definitely been unable (including insects and chicken - there is still a chance mammals could).

[AngryData]

You can spin for artificial gravity out in space though, which would be relatively simple to do provided you had any sort of space manufacturing capabilities.

[tsimionescu]

It's not actually simple at all. You need a massive station to actually spin in such a way that humans don't get dizzy just by crouching (you need the acceleration to be almost constant for the ~1.5m difference between a person lying down and a person standing up). You also require lots of fuel to actually maintain this constant acceleration. The larger everything is, the more problems you have with shielding and energy expenditure. Any malfunction of the spinning mechanism is likely to be catastrophic, as suddenly losing 'gravity' is can easily cause massive damage if people are living without care for this constant possibility.

Not to mention, this would not feel like living on Earth - there are many effects of spinning that do not approximate gravity well, such as the fact that forces acting on you depend on the direction of your movement relative to the direction of spin.