Do you believe Mars is gonna be our second home in the future?

Well said.

@Alex1610: ty ma'am *bows*

@firefall: Yes exactly. It would be difficult for sure. So therefore we shouldn't try. 😒

@sarabee1995: difficult is understating things enormously. Do you think there is no threshold where the titanic amount of resources involved might be considered a waste compared to the miniscule chance of achieving anything? It would literally be easier to make a habitat on airless Luna than on Mars, given anything like our current technology.

@firefall: Agree completely. And in my answer below, I said the moon would be first. That doesn't mean we won't eventually get to Mars. Her question didn't limit us to current technology.

@sarabee1995: OK .. although by the time we have the technology to colonise Mars, I think we'll have interstellar colonies established :/

@firefall: Really? Wow. You think we'll crack travel before colonizing unfriendly environments? That's interesting. My brother is seriously into all this stuff.

@sarabee1995: so am I. Partly, I hold that opinion because of the way money gets invested in research - pure physics questions get vastly more funding than environmental manipulation. In my most optimistic moments, I can see some breakthrough that gives FTL travel of some sort; I can't really see any way of making Mars habitable, with so many factors needing to be alleviated. Easier to tow Europa or Io into a lagrange with Earth, maybe.

@firefall: Terra-forming Mars, FTL travel, towing moons around the solar system... The primary impediment to all of these is simply the energy required. Yes, each has other technical challenges, but we know enough to know that each of these will require enormous energy input. The next great breakthrough that will propel scientific achievement is going to be in the energy area. And I'm not talking patchwork solutions like wind or solar. I'm talking about outside the box crazy stuff like zero point energy or dark matter/energy or who knows ... maybe warp field generation. But it will be something we cannot imagine today. When we crack that, then terra-forming Mars will be child's play.