What makes you think children born on Mars would have any inkling about what an "Earth" may or may not be? Or for that matter, what makes you think any of them would care?

Creepy

More irresponsible parenting. This time, on another planet. This is such a bad idea. Madness will rule Mars.

They said the same thing about settling Utah. They were right.

So, Elton John was correct?

I could think of a lot worse places. Starting with Zimbabwe.

Actually, Bernie Taupin was correct.

Bush on Mars 2023!

What the fuck to you mean little or nothing going for it? There are going to be bars with triple-breasted sex workers, don't you know?!

@9 - You might be onto something. Can we start it as a prison colony? Those sentenced to life without parole can go to Mars, especially if that guarantees that they'll never come back, and even if they do, they'll be too weak to do anything.

@11

I don't know, I was kind of looking forward to Team USA vs. Team Mars in the 2024 Olympics.

Having children in dangerous places with no possibility of returning home is just part of the historical human condition. I expect a lot of people will die before we get mars colonization right, adults and children both.

Anyway, maybe a meteor strike or war will wipe out all the things which makes raising kids on Earth the "best" thing to do. Then the colonists will have done the best things for their kids after all.

Charles, this is a pretty original troll (albeit one that incorporates your discomfort around children pretty well - hardly a new theme in your work, but a hitherto unexplored angle). I give it a 7.8.

@13 is correct. This is the natural next step of a species' worth of change. Think pilgrims in the wilderness.

"They did not ask to be born on Mars. They are being punished for a crime they never committed." Which planet is irrelevant. This is the natural fate of human kind - consciousness trapped in physical form with no direction, no god, no "north pole" to steer by. I'm surprised Sartre didn't write an existential play about this, where Mars is really just Earth, or maybe the human body itself.

Mars, the ultimate sprawl.

@15
So Mars will be a witch-burning Christian planet?

@9 Bush on Mars? All of them, please.

@15, the pilgrims (not actually pilgrims, or even technically Puritans) weren't in wilderness. They were in land that was simultaneously occupied by people whose ancestors had lived there continuously for thousands of years, or in some cases in recently emptied land (as a result of massive death from disease) that had been previously occupied for thousands of years.

Those settlers would have died without the help of the native population and their farming and harvesting techniques, not to mention an environment that naturally supported life. Settling Mars will be nothing like that. If the settlers can't do it on their own they will die. I still think they should try, and I'll celebrate their successes and mourn their failures if they try it while I'm alive, but no one should think that this is parallel in any way to any prior episode of human settlement on Earth.

@15 Yes, and what's more there will be no turkey on Mars. I was speaking mythopoetically and psychospiritually, not historically.

Still, I think you are being a bit extreme in saying that there are absolutely no parallels. The whole point of @13, to which I was responding, is that children being born in new environments, amid stories and tales of where they came from but with no actual memory, is not a new story.

Oops I meant @19.

If you were born on Mars, you wouldn't be an Earthling, you'd be a Martian. It would be your home. Exploring a new world is practically embedded in our genes and these children would have a whole new world to explore. How could they ever be bored?

I'd rather be born on Mars than in Syria. Also, I can't wait for the short story someone is going to write about parents lying to their kids about Earth.

@22,

Because it's a wasteland? Because the population will be infinitesimally small? Because any recreational activities would, by necessity, have to be shipped to them from Earth?

@13,

Anyway, maybe a meteor strike or war will wipe out all the things which makes raising kids on Earth the "best" thing to do. Then the colonists will have done the best things for their kids after all.

Given that Mars can't support life without oxygen and food shipped from our planet, I don't think so.

I think that as long as they are living in 170sq ft apartments with no kitchens, and there is rapid transit, they will be very happy. Plus, just think- there is no Beacon Hill Library, or Neo-Liberals, on Mars. Its Paradise!

oh just shut up, chuck.

Boring? Boring?!? Terrifying, more like. Every minute on Mars is a fight for survival. They have to generate their own energy, make their own air, find their own water, keep their crops alive, if they can even figure out what can be grown in that gravity and light. They have to find materials that can be used to build air-tight shelters, refine metals, build compressors and keep them operating. Even their crops need life-support systems.

When are they going to get time to be bored? One slip-up and they're dead.

@27,

Since there will initially only be four "colonists", and very likely no more until/unless private business figures out a way to make Mars mining profitable, I highly doubt that their efforts will be focused on making a colony self-sustaining. They certainly won't be refining metals or building new equipment.

They will all go insane and kill each other.

@10, I already have plans.

@28 They'd better be doing something. There's no natural biosphere there, no food, nothing particularly useful as air. (Atmospheric pressure is 6/10ths of 1% of Earth's and practically none of that is oxygen -- 1300 parts per million. Just to make things interesting, 800 ppm is carbon monoxide and most of the rest is carbon dioxide.) Even if there was an invasive weed from Earth that would grow on the surface of Mars in near vacuum, they're still going to have to water and tend it.

This is not camping out on a new shore. This is DIY Planet. Or another case of Laika in Space, except people.

... which is exactly how it feels to be gay on Planet Straight.

Now you know.

@29, that would be my $5 bet as well.

Anyone who wants to make this trip should first try living in Antarctica for a year or two as preparation for living the rest of their short live someplace much worse.

Living someplace remote with a small number of people is a much weirder experience that most people would imagine.

My "close brush" would be living on a somewhat beautiful remote island for a few months with about 40 people. Everybody went slightly crazy. Even people who didn't seem crazy, in retrospect looked back and said that nothing seemed to make sense. Several people had to be medicated for months afterwards.

@1 - I'm thinking that humans have a natural, genetically-directed pull to finding blue a relaxing, comforting color, as it is the color of the sky. Since Mars has a yellow sky, and no blue at all, it's entirely likely that any children and all adults will find the place psychologically unnerving to the core.

The reason Mars has no atmosphere is because it has no magnetosphere surrounding it to keep the solar wind from tearing the air away. Since Mars won't ever have a magnetosphere, it will never have an atmosphere; any human-generated one will simply be ripped off into space by the next coronal mass ejection. Everyone will have to live in enclosed pods, or wear space suits, and eat food shipped from Earth. Their facility will have to be nuclear powered so that dust storms don't repeatedly destroy their solar panels. Also, no easy well-water.

It sounds like a penal colony already.

Everyone should be sterilized before they go, so that they don't have kids by accident.

If the adults will be permanently biologically changed such that they can't return to Earth, wouldn't the children be that way from birth? How would they deal with our crushing gravity? They couldn't "come back". They really would be Martians.