EagleMan wrote:
I don't see how the children would be much affected.
Humans for most of history have been raised through some pretty terrible and squalid conditions.
If the child's born there, they won't miss what they haven't had. And if they're actually allowed to have children (they would obey orders of course), then obviously the situation they have at their base is an incredibly positive one for it to merit the go-ahead for allowing children.
And Sentios if a full-fledged colony is actually established.. then clearly transportation between the planets will be easy. Separation movements are incredibly harder to achieve today compared to previous centuries. They'd have even less of a chance in the future. A fresh start would also count for a lot too. We wouldn't have to go through the Industrial Age again and reinvent "green" technology, we'd arrive there technology and knowledge in hand.
If the parents have homesickness they can pass it on to their children easily enough, all the child needs to be able to do is compare stories of a lush green Earth, with oxygen a plenty to a barren red Mars.
Except that our space travel tech is currently one way, those on Mars would have to be cooperative to send anything back to us. The only reason it's hard to secede here is that we dominate Earth, there's almost no where that we can not go quickly. Dominating interplanetary space is a still a long way off, and even if you did what would you do? Send the Earth military to Mars? That's not even getting into interference from other countries, covertly striking at your distant colonies.
Any effort that is not a unified effort by humanity as a whole is only going to recreate the conditions we all ready have.
Casmiricus wrote:
I actually think that a colony on Mars is more feasible long term than space stations. In the first place, stations have no effective shielding from solar radiation, one of the larger problems of space travel. Second, bone-mass-loss in a zero or near-zero gravity environment is highly accelerated, which leads to all sorts of medical problems. Beyond that we have the utter lack of any way to gain useful materials (Vacuum not being either valuable or easy to transport) renders space stations zero-gain and total drain.
You'd need radiation shield to get to Mars to begin with and we can in all theory simulate gravity NASA is just too busy humping their colonization dreams to do something that beneficial. As far as space stations being no benefit, we're not yet at a stage where we can haul massive amounts of materials back and forth from other celestial bodies to begin with, even the moon isn't feasible to my knowledge. Our fuel type for one takes up what should be cargo space.
However in terms of hauling materials around the solar system, space stations are logistics points at the crucial point between outer space and planet. They're even more neccessary when you consider the how ease it would be for a space ship to sustain damage cruising around the planet. They would hold crucial materials and tools for repairing such damage (which would otherwise eat up your cargo space) and even back up means of re-entry for personnel should that fail.
