GreatwyrmGold, it depend what you mean by "threading on someone's toe". All the land belong to government, sure. But a lot is unoccupied. And as I said, people aren't going to let you claim Mars for your own. And anything that affect the Earth is still going to let it into a better shape than Mars is.
1. Precisely. In addition to land claims, I'm willing to bet that, say, the Japanese would be a bit nervous if someone suddenly settled an island near them...to say nothing of if you tried
mining nearby...
2. I highly doubt anyone would try to evict an NGO which worked hard to set up a home on Luna or Mars and didn't cause trouble, especially since no one has claimed either of those worlds.
3. The idea is to put our eggs in multiple baskets, and to do so before we need to. I'll divide this into two subpoints for your convenience:
a. Having a colony on Luna or Mars or both would increase the chances of the survival of human civilization and knowledge in case of a war or major environmental disaster. Even if something doesn't kill every human on Earth, it could well cause the collapse of the global economy and society, which would probably lead to a loss of our hard-earned knowledge. Extraterrestrial colonies could probably keep this knowledge, possibly passing it back on to the Terrans when they could do so without getting killed.
b. Will this be needed in the next 20-30 years? Probably not. Will we be able to set it up in time once the deadline rears its ugly head? Almost certainly not.
As for ressources, we got everything on Earth.
I was refuting your idea of setting up a similar colony in Alaska for the same benefits, which is (to put it bluntly) stupid.
The problem is you were talking about using Mars as a place to store our overpopulation at first, and now you seem to present it as the ideal place to establish a free, entirely autarcic colony. I don't really see the point, unless you're misanthropic enough that you want a minimum of 0.6 AU between you and the rest of humanity.
1. I still had remnants of
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress in my head from the last time I read it. In the book, the main conflict is driven, in essence, by Luna exporting wheat (and precious nutrients and water therein). The idea that Lunar land could grow wheat is a bit silly, though, so when I realized that's where my thoughts were coming from I throttled that line of thought.
2. What does autarcic mean? Autocratic?
3. The idea is to escape the problems of Terra. Right now, Luna
does have more problems with it, but the idea is to set up a base for when that's no longer the case.
As for unclaimed land on Earth. There's a lot of it. Most isn't of very good quality though, or should be better used as a natural reserve, but anyway.
You left out how much of it is in the form of little chunks of land in the ocean.
Yes, you could make similar colonies on Earth, and it would probably be cheaper. It would just probably be smaller, almost certainly negatively affect the environment, and certainly not avoid all the problems that the idea is to get away from in the first place.
Besides, a large scale Mars colonization project isn't viable before we get space elevators, or some other way to reduce launchcosts. You just end up spending more resources/ energy on sending them up than you'd needed to store them on Earth.
Agreed. Three things: 1. Luna first. Not a big difference, but everyone seems to be assuming I'm advocating we colonize Mars now instead of getting a working colony on Luna first, to test the ideas and get our feet wet. 2. Of course you'll spend more resources getting stuff into space than keeping them on Earth; warehouses are theoretically costless. 3. Space colonization has benefits, which must also be accounted for.
A small scale scientific expedition would work better.
Gotta start somewhere...but any long-term expedition to somewhere as far away as Mars (and even ones as close as Luna, if they're long-term) should include at least the basics of the kind of infrastructure needed to sustain a colony (mostly in the form of greenhouses and such, but still).
but it's way cheaper to invest in a anti-asteroid system than settling Mars. And had the added bonus of not letting billions die.
A NEO (of sufficient size to cause mass destruction) is estimated to hit the Earth every one hundred thousand years. How large do you think the chance of some dictator / madman / whatever using your anti-asteroid system to steer an NEO on collision course with the Earth is?
If you mean "tires to use," close to 100%. If you mean "succeeds in using," a bit smaller.
Okay, 7 or even probably 15 billion people could survive on Earth. But not at our current standard of living, certainly not with our current environmental practices, not for the long run.
Not that it's scientifically accurate[1], but you put me in mind of the Caves Of Steel world of Asimov. That has a world population of eight billion! And they're forced into a "cellular and modular" underground lifestyle to squash everyone on the planet into a viable subterranean living volume, with the emphasis on communal space over personal space included.
Trantor (probably the intellectual result of the Caves Of Steel prototype, both in-universe and conceptually) is at one point posited to house 40 billion souls (and is mostly a produce importer, rather than self-sustaining, at that point). I can't guarantee the scientific or sociological accuracy of this latter case, either. I just thought it an interesting point to add. I may well be wrong. 
The thing to consider is that, in that case, the surface would likely be being largely used for food production or wilderness. Heck, I would probably support advancements that make underground cities practical for just that reason. Will such measures be needed? Not for a while. Would they help the lives of many? Probably. Will they happen before they are desperately needed? No.
Oh? How do you get enough food? (Hypothetically, you could use the same sort of greenhouses I've been proposing for Lunar or Martian colonies, but space on a cruise ship is MUCH more limited. Related:) Where will you put everything and -one? How will you get resources to make new clothes, books, whatever when the old ones wear out? What will you do, bereft of any kind of mineral or other resource, many of which are so common on Mars, when something inevitably breaks?
You have pretty much unlimited space around you in the form of ocean. Making a floating greenhouse isn't all that difficult.
...Even pretending that the ocean's surface is worthless for all causes at the moment and ignoring political consequences, weather alone will cause more problems than Luna's environment ever will (assuming a good standard of construction for the colony). And the ocean surface is pretty important for, you know, phytoplankton and such...ever hear of it? Base of the marine food chain, produces 50% of oxygen on the planet? A single greenhouse might not impact it much, but there would be impact, meaning that it's not "unlimited."
Getting resources on the ocean is pretty irrelevant since you were talking about the limits of space.
So? You'll still need resources once on-site. Are you going to ship steel and plastic to your greenhouse
I was just pointing out the absurdly bad return on investment of colonizing mars for land area, for a fraction of the cost of making people live in cramped conditions on mars you could make them live in luxury on the ocean. And we haven't even filled up very attractive landmasses like New Jersey yet.
"Live in luxury?" I doubt it. Not unless you want to spend
more resources, which you could by the way also spend to make the Lunar colony more spacious. And Earth's surface is a lot more useful than Luna's or Mars's.
If you want space then just make space habitats, they'd be vastly cheaper then mars.
Than, and space habitats have the exact same major disadvantage as floating ones: The difficulty of obtaining resources. It's worse, in fact, due to not having an easy way for the outside world to ship them steel or whatever and not being able to take
anything from outside their living space.
hey, has anyone here heard of the freedom ship?
floating city.
Note to self: Look this up when I have time to kill not consumed by Bay12.
