[elvischidera]

How do you think this affect policy? Would we be likely to engage in more dangerous activities simply because we have a backup planet?

E.g: 1. Maybe we would have carried on with more risky nuclear test in the past? 2. Maybe less people would care about global warming on earth?

These questions came to mind while reading your comment. Not sure if they make sense.

[jjoonathan]

No, because continuity of civilization is nowhere in most people's decision making process. Everything they actually care about is on Earth and that doesn't change with a mars base.

[cronix]

> Everything they actually care about is on Earth and that doesn't change with a mars base.

I can see what you're saying for the first generation of people who go from Earth to Mars. I don't see that scenario for the majority of people eventually born there, and subsequent generations. Just like how I know relatively little of my European ancestors who came to the US, and I've never been there, and that's on the same planet with international travel relatively cheap compared to the first ones over. Some people will be born there and never leave or know anything other than Martian life except what they read or view on some video. Some will be able to travel back and forth. I don't think most will.

[jjoonathan]

People on Earth will care about Earth, people on Mars will care about Mars.

Do you give up on US problems just because you have lost relatives in Europe? No. Do your lost relatives in Europe give up on European problems because a lost relative moved to the US? No. Neither of us has ever met them, but I can still confidently say "no" because that's just not how people work. We have plenty of things to worry about, a mars colony altering basic psychology shouldn't be one of them.