And what a fate to impose on your children. You personally may choose the hardest road, but your unborn children would have no choice in the matter, and those future children would be essential to a permanent colony.
Moral dilemma: What if children conceived and born on Mars (if that's even medically viable) decide that Mars totally sucks, and they want to migrate to Earth?
Do we build a wall around Earth and stop them as "illegal aliens"?
Seriously, life on Earth is likely to be much better, much easier than life on Mars, so there's going to be a desire among a significant number of Martians to leave, just as there's a desire among Earthlings to move for a better life. Then what? In order to keep the Mars colony sufficiently "staffed", do you turn it into a totalitarian regime, where nobody can leave? No personal freedom?
How many of us want to sacrifice our lives and our happiness just to be a "backup plan"?
I rarely if ever hear space enthusiasts talk about the morality of a Mars colony. They act like it's just a technological problem, and it's somehow a given that we can put large numbers of humans wherever we want, whether or not the humans themselves would want that.
> Moral dilemma: What if children conceived and born on Mars (if that's even medically viable) decide that Mars totally sucks, and they want to migrate to Earth?
This is essentially the plot of Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (albeit on a generation ship heading mission to another solar system(
Moral dilemma: What if children conceived and born on Earth decide that Earth totally sucks, and they want to migrate to Mars?
Do we build a wall around Mars and tell them their shitty life on earth is all they get, and they should be happy with antarctica?
I think your moral argument can easily be flipped, why do you get to decide that we shouldnt do something because there exist people who dont want to do it? What of the the people who do?
> Do we build a wall around Mars and tell them their shitty life on earth is all they get, and they should be happy with antarctica?
I'm not personally in favor of the "colonize Antarctica" approach. It's true that if we can't figure out how to colonize someplace like Antarctica first, then it's unlikely we'd be successful on Mars, but I'm not advocating the colonization of Mars anyway.
> If you dont want to go, then dont go...
This completely ignores what I said, which was "You personally may choose the hardest road, but your unborn children would have no choice in the matter".
> I guess i see children having to deal with choices their parents made a part of life.
Most responsible parents strive to make the lives of their children better rather than worse. Not always successfully of course, but it's the goal, and going to Mars is predictably worse.
> Would the offer of a trip back to earth for any child born on mars go any way to overcoming your concerns?
It might allay the moral dilemma, but it would increase the concerns about the long-term viability of the colony.
Would you also say "shame on you" to anyone who procreates in a country with a lower standard of living than the wealthier countries on this planet? After all, aren't those parents subjecting their children to a life with more hazards / less opportunities?
Only very few places on Earth are truly that shitty that I would doubt people's sanity for raising children there. Active war zones and areas affected by climate change for example, and to no one's surprise people risk their lives to escape from those. Even in a refugee camp, their children would still lead a life that is magnitudes easier and more pleasurable than on a Mars colony.
> Would you also say "shame on you" to anyone who procreates in a country with a lower standard of living than the wealthier countries on this planet?
I would not hesitate to do so to any parents that leave a perfectly functional society to raise children as subsistence farmers in an smog-choked, irradiated, arid clime. Opting to raise your children under worse conditions than those one grew up under, and has access to is despicable and selfish.
And what a fate to impose on your children. You personally may choose the hardest road, but your unborn children would have no choice in the matter, and those future children would be essential to a permanent colony.
Moral dilemma: What if children conceived and born on Mars (if that's even medically viable) decide that Mars totally sucks, and they want to migrate to Earth?
Do we build a wall around Earth and stop them as "illegal aliens"?
Seriously, life on Earth is likely to be much better, much easier than life on Mars, so there's going to be a desire among a significant number of Martians to leave, just as there's a desire among Earthlings to move for a better life. Then what? In order to keep the Mars colony sufficiently "staffed", do you turn it into a totalitarian regime, where nobody can leave? No personal freedom?
How many of us want to sacrifice our lives and our happiness just to be a "backup plan"?
I rarely if ever hear space enthusiasts talk about the morality of a Mars colony. They act like it's just a technological problem, and it's somehow a given that we can put large numbers of humans wherever we want, whether or not the humans themselves would want that.