One of the big arguments for colonizing Mars is that a self-sufficient Mars colony could serve as a "backup" for the human race in case we screw things up so badly that we wipe ourselves out here on Earth.
I always thought this was a specious argument and that despite a lot of social media threads and Elon ravings, no one is really taking it seriously. The reason I think this is because no one ever brings up the idea of having a self-sufficient colony in Antarctica.
I mean to build a proper threat model you need to understand exactly what threats you're trying to mitigate I guess. But let's say it's the usual doom and gloom stuff, a) climate change, b) nuclear war/winter, c) meteor strike.
If anything an Antarctic colony stands to benefit from climate change. A nuclear war is scarier, but none of the fallout is going to reach the South Pole, and to be self-sufficient you had to solve your energy needs without much sunlight anyway (there are surely tons of undiscovered hydrocarbons down there waiting to be dug up and refined).
A meteor strike, well as long as it doesn't land on the colony, the problems are similar to nuclear winter.
So if you want to have a "backup" for the human race - the Antarctic Plateau is sufficiently remote, and about 10,000x easier than anything off-world.
But we don't even talk about it because everyone knows life on Antarctica is pretty depressing and PEOPLE JUST WANT TO DO SCI-FI IN SPACE.
An antarctic base/colony would not solve a number of issues:
1. A meteor strike can be big enough to obliterate anything on what was once the surface. It can heat the entire globe to 100 degrees Celsius due to tektites bombarding the surface.
2. Due to millennia of snow and ice covering it, the surface of the continent is just bare rock. Nothing will grow there without significant amounts of soil moved to it. Yes, this is also a problem for Mars, and a boat is more proven tech than a spaceship, but the removal of all ice off the surface will not change Antarctica into a bountiful oasis. Making a self-sufficient colony there is going to be extremely hard.
Musk is using SpaceX to drive down the cost of sending things into space. This greatly reduces obstacles for going to space, and makes a self-sufficient Antarctic base a bit obsolete.
Still mars colony will not be a colony, it will be an outpost.
I dont think we are even close to be able to make it self sufficient.
Self sufficient sounds nice in principle but is way more complicated. You need industry for every single part used to build colony - that is replace everything you rely on.
Soil enrichment, material wear, silicon chips... you need to have uranium mine and processing to sustain energy production.
The scale of the operation is massive. And all done underground.
Not impossible, just unlikely we will ever get there.
> You need industry for every single part used to build colony - that is replace everything you rely on.
That's actually much, much harder than it sounds, and this is the key part that everyone just hand-waves away.
On Earth, it is already unaffordable to move to many places for even relatively rich westerners. As in, your own personal economic output is unable to pay for the cost of moving the materials there, setting up a habitable abode, and then keeping you alive until the age of retirement. That's with normal-ish housing in normal-ish conditions.
We can only afford our current lifestyles with the "cheat codes on": free oxygen, free water, free temperature control, and free energy growing out of the sky[1].
On Mars, you have two compounding challenges:
1) Every aspect of staying alive is harder. Housing has to be air-tight. Instead of a mere air conditioner, you need a life support system. Instead of just food, air and water also need to be made. Space suits are needed to go outside. Etc...
2) Productivity itself is lower. The supply chain is tiny, raw materials are much harder obtain, cooling water and air is not available in bulk, and so on. Just think about how dependent modern technology is on plastics, which are made from oil. Mars has no oil!
The combination of both lower productivity multiplied by higher cost of living and ridiculous supply-chain issues for the first century (or more!) means that self-sustainability will be out of reach well past all of our lifetimes.
Fair point on #1 but I imagine the probability of a meteor strike that literally boils the planet is a lot lower than a strike in general.
Regarding #2, the solution for self-sufficient agriculture in Antarctica and on the Moon/Mars is the same: hydroponics.
Only it's much easier to do hydroponics in Antarctica. You can melt that ice for fresh water. You can harvest all kinds of nutrients from the ocean. The Antarctic seas have huge oil deposits to provide limitless energy. An Antarctic colony pretty much just needs lots of weather-hardened infrastructure, it's tough, but well within reach of current tech.
Self-sufficient Moon/Mars hydroponics is way harder. Water is far more scarce. Where do you obtain the nutrients for plant life in situ? Not sure it will all require exotic systems that haven't been invented.
My premise is basically that the political will for a self sufficient colony that "backs up" human society doesn't exist. If it did we would just have some countries agree to amend the Antarctic treaty and do it. It could probably even pay for itself by exporting oil. But no one genuinely cares so we just write scifi stories on the Internet instead.
If there is a self-sufficient colony there, and it consists of people from a single nation, it will be targeted. Only a non-political, mixed-heritage colony of scientists and farmers might be overlooked.
I always thought this was a specious argument and that despite a lot of social media threads and Elon ravings, no one is really taking it seriously. The reason I think this is because no one ever brings up the idea of having a self-sufficient colony in Antarctica.
I mean to build a proper threat model you need to understand exactly what threats you're trying to mitigate I guess. But let's say it's the usual doom and gloom stuff, a) climate change, b) nuclear war/winter, c) meteor strike.
If anything an Antarctic colony stands to benefit from climate change. A nuclear war is scarier, but none of the fallout is going to reach the South Pole, and to be self-sufficient you had to solve your energy needs without much sunlight anyway (there are surely tons of undiscovered hydrocarbons down there waiting to be dug up and refined).
A meteor strike, well as long as it doesn't land on the colony, the problems are similar to nuclear winter.
So if you want to have a "backup" for the human race - the Antarctic Plateau is sufficiently remote, and about 10,000x easier than anything off-world.
But we don't even talk about it because everyone knows life on Antarctica is pretty depressing and PEOPLE JUST WANT TO DO SCI-FI IN SPACE.