[brindy]

What problems do you think living on Mars solves?

You’ll never have the environment we have here (even in its currently declining state).

Do you think society will be better on Mars living in indentured servitude for generations?

As Lennon said, “war is over, if you want it”. It’s the same with the problems we have down here.

[AlessandroF6587]

- Circular economy.

- Food production with low resources consumption.

- Distributed, low-scale production with high efficiency. So no need for high consumes to keep high production efficiency.

- Implementing renewable energy and the concepts listed above from the ground up in every aspect of life. That's scarcity, harsh environments and need for you together with bright minds.

- And many many things that we can't even imagine from here.

> “war is over, if you want it”

The problem is the "if you want it". That's for most of the unsolved problem we have on earth.

If you keep failing generation after generation maybe you need to change your point of view to understand how small we are and as we are not much different each other and from other living things.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

[bryanlarsen]

For a single example, the vertical farming movement branched out of "growing food on Mars" research. Vertical farming is a stupid idea, but determining all the surprising ways that crops can fail in a closed environment is likely to lead to better understanding of ecosystems and ways that our own might fail.

[bluescrn]

Mars isn't the end goal.

It's a step on the way to going even further, beyond our solar system.

[taylodl]

We're not going beyond our solar system. Ever. The nearest star is 4 light-years away. Assuming you could even travel at the speed of light, which you can't, it takes 1 year to reach the speed of light while accelerating at a comfortable 1G. But, as I said, we're not ever traveling at the speed of light. 20% of the speed of light is about the best we'll realistically ever be able to do - but that still makes the nearest star over 20 years of travel away!

How do you propose to travel for over 20 years?

It's clear then that robots will be exploring the solar system, not us. Even then it's going to take several centuries just to travel to, collect data from, and send back to earth just from the local stars we can see with the unaided eye.

When they say space is big, space is BIG.