[bonafidehan]

I think the ultimate goal with space travel is to reduce the risk of human extinction, which is a distinct possibility when we are confined to a single planet or planetary system.

Transporting and then returning humans to a "distant" destination will be a worthy milestone that will teach us a lot. We have to start somewhere.

Perhaps you're right: maybe we can more quickly achieve distribution of humanity by solely focusing on robotic exploration. But I just wanted to point out that satisfying science fiction fanboys isn't the only reason to travel to Mars.

[hawleyal]

It seems incredibly arrogant and short-sited to assume that humans would be able to somehow survive outside of their original environment. There isn't a grocery list of things we need to bring into space or to another planet. Everything on this planet is interrelated and inseparable in largely unknown ways.

[imaginenore]

You don't need that much to just survive - food/water, atmosphere, low enough radiation, manageable temperature.

All of these problems can be solved with our current level of technology on Mars. After you establish the base near a water source, you can grow your own food, you can make oxygen, you can mine for whatever elements you need.

Nobody says it's easy, but it's doable.

[tripzilch]

(replying to pond_lilly, who appears to be shadow/hellbanned)

> pond_lilly 4 hours ago | link [dead]

> Exactly, like bacteria in our guts that gets replenished by consuming foods grown in Earth soil. On Mars this stuff will die out right away, and to replicate it you will need to create another Earth.Gut bacteria is just a tiny example, there is other stuff like bone problems, vision problems, etc. I am appalled that instead of fixing mess here on earth, the only known planet to support life, we waste brains, time and resources on these idiotic fantasies

Well there's one thing, if we can manage to build a survivable habitat on a planet like Mars--relatively mild as it may be, compared to other space places--surviving on a planet on the verge of some global climate catastrophe is going to seem like a piece of cake ;-)

[mullingitover]

I get the sense we're going to need to do some heavy genetic engineering before we're able to survive long-term on other planets. Probably more than anyone from this generation will be comfortable with. This of course will raise the question, have we really saved ourselves from extinction if what we save isn't exactly human?

[pcrh]

Given how far away other earth-like planets are likely to be, the more immediate challenge is long-term survival off earth, either in a spacecraft or on mars.

Once we learn how to survive "on our own" then one could envisage making the journey to some Earth II.