[hvb2]

Why on earth (pun intended), would you want that?

You don't want to be there? Almost every other place on earth is better. So you send a skeleton crew along with what they need.

If it is to test an actual community living isolated, sure. But I think it'll always be different because you know that help is at most a few months away and probably a lot less. I don't think you can fake that, unless you're never told you're not alone

[ActorNightly]

The point is that we don't have technology (or at least not proven) to make a habitat on earth that can reliably provide isolation from harsh atmosphere.

When you are sending people to space on an experimental rocket, with experimental supply for an experimental habitat, all of that shit better be engineered to a huge safety factor, because its not a matter of if things will go wrong, its how often will they go wrong and what the impact will be. To deal with that kind of unknown requires a level of technology that should make it possible to live in Antarctica for extended period of time without any external shipments coming in to resupply. That means heating, oxygen generation, food resources, air filtration, full medical bay capable of advanced surgery, and a bunch of other smaller things that all matter in the end.

[christophilus]

Plus insane storms and winds that I’m not sure Antarctica will properly simulate.

[mikeyouse]

Antarctica might be okay as a demo site on that front; https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QK5M_UfofRU

[hagbard_c]

Those "insane storms and winds" in an atmosphere with 2% of the density of earth's atmosphere won't be much of a problem.

[ActorNightly]

That works both ways. Sure you won't have much density for air to move things, but things moving through air also don't have the drag to slow them down.

[tlb]

Yes, for example taking off or landing a rocket on the surface blasts particles of sand out sideways at 1000s of m/s. The particles can fly in the thin atmosphere for kilometers and sandblast everything. Our intuitions about how far and fast tiny things can fly are only true in an atmosphere of similar density.

[Recurecur]

Your intuition about how far sand particles can fly at high velocity in the Martian atmosphere is way off base…

[dotancohen]

It will be when it covers your solar cells with dust.

[flohofwoe]

Are you talking a Mars or Antarctica settlement? ;)

(eg any place on Earth is infinitely better than any place on Mars, maybe a couple of scientists are ready to endure Mars for a couple of months at a time, but beyond that? It will be like living in a labour camp in (frozen) hell.

[elevaet]

No air, scarce water, radiation challenges. Comms to earth has a 3min lag on a good day, 6mins roundtrip. On a bad day it's 45mins.

We are better off at this stage of human civilization to look at building resiliency and redundancy at home. Settling margins of Earth in places like Antarctica, underground, under water is many orders of magnitude simpler than Mars, provides useful models for distant future space colonization, and also provides us with some of the civilizational redundancy and resiliency many space-colony-enthusiasts are looking for.