Going to Mars, either to explore or, perhaps, to stay us all the rage these days. An eventual NASA expedition to Mars is the one thing that politicians in America of on both sides of the political divide agree on. SpaceX’s Elon Musk dreams of founding his own Mars colony and says he would like to die on the Red Planet “though not on impact.” A Dutch group called Mars One is actively recruiting potential Mars settlers. A new undertaking, called Mars Polar, has just been proposed though, like the Mars One effort it is underfunded and sketchy in details. In the meantime, a Wednesday’s post on Medium poses the question, “Shouldn’t we fix poverty before migrating to Mars?”
The question has been asked before, from the left side of the political spectrum. But the author of the piece seems to have been informed about space colonies by the film “Elysium,” a screed starring Matt Damon that depicted a space colony housing the evil One Percent while the hoi polloi are forced to wallow in misery back on a ruined Earth. But new settlements in distant lands are often places where the poor can go to make a new start. That was certainly true of the Americas. Indeed, it still is to a certain extent, as Musk and Anousheh Ansari, both who fled repressive regimes to make a new life and prosper in America, can attest.
Unfortunately, the United States is getting somewhat crowded and has more often than not been governed by people who take a dim view of entrepreneurship. Perhaps it is time to seek out new worlds in the literal sense for people to make a new start. The moon is one such place, with its treasure trove of minerals. Mars will do nicely as well, especially after we terraform the planet, making it a wet world with breathable air for the first time in billions of years.
So, by all means, let is fix poverty, by migrating to Mars and all the other new world beyond the airless sea.
