[jpxxx]

I would sprint through a minefield to be on that first boat out. My wallpaper at one point in life was panoramic prints from the Opportunity rover. I wrote Kim Stanley Robinson a fan letter, signed with a chewed up gelly pen. I am utterly delighted.

But the hard part is extremely, extremely, extremely hard. It's not getting there, it's staying there. And scant few people are focusing on what it would actually look like and how it would actually work if we actually sent people offworld, which I very much want to happen. Mars500 needs to be Mars5000000 before this dream is real.

Honestly, if we could airlift people into the Sahel with a real-world replica of what would be going to Mars and they could make it a few years, I could die happy.

Elon Musk has the easy job in all this.

[waterlesscloud]

I can answer all your questions:

Some people will be happy with the life.

Some people will be unhappy with the life.

Same as it is in every single other living situation.

[koide]

I'm not convinced. After all, colonization of far away lands has been done throughout history and in many cases the return trip was as hard as it would be on Mars.

I picture the confinement problem as the most troublesome, but astronauts spend months in orders of magnitude tighter spaces and surviving in relatively good condition.

There's no reason at all you should send untrained people on those first missions and there's also no reason at all not to schedule yearly trips to bring back the people who couldn't stand the pressure.

Now, of course it will be insanely hard, there will be highly complex issues with no apparent solution that will have to be solved via improvisation without the proper means. But humans seem to have done it again and again.

[InternetUser]

I have to say that I definitely agree with your point--and your writing style is great. Do you happen to have a blog or contribute material to any other website (aside from this one, of course)?

[jpxxx]

Soon, thank you. But I doubt I'll connect it to this or any of my other sour and shitty identities. Time for a fresh start.