Trump Is Losing a Second War. The Iran debacle is accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels

[Miguelito Loveless]

52. Unfortunately,

colonizing the moon or Mars is really a non-starter. Sure we might get a outpost, but an actual self-sustaining colony is just not going to happen this century. The billionaires see this as a technological problem to be solved, when technology is the least of the problems that need to be solved behind:

Biological (humans did not evolve to live in low gravity, high radiation environments)
Political (Colonizing the moon or Mars could trigger World War III)
Legal (What legal jurisdiction does a colony fall under? Under what law/treaty are those laws supported? How are the laws enforced?)
Psychological (Attempts at simulating this kind of long term isolation have not gone well)
Logistical (No colony can exist without Earth support, and supply lines are very long for Mars)
Environmental (The bottom of the Marianas Trench is a garden spot next to the best place on Mars. Moon dust is seriously dangerous. Martian soil is lethal)
Economics (Supporting any colony on the Moon or Mars is a serious economic drain with little chance of any "profit" from a corporate standpoint).
Energy (Solar panels work for the moon if you are in the right place. Mars? Not so well because of Martian dust storms and the massively greater distance from the sun. This leaves nuclear reactors as the only viable power source, which then have to be launched into space).

I strongly recommend the book "A City on Mars", which lays out a pretty air-tight case why extraterrestrial colonies are just no happening).