Should Nations reconsider colonisation of Antarctica?

Find it strange that we have such a huge landmass on this planet - which is easier to travel too, easier to get resources to build and service people working and eventually living there - than it is to send all of this to a planet in space, and yet Mars seems to be the focus.

When we're told that we are getting too big a populous for this planet, people never seem to bring up the prospects of colonising Antarctica. We have the means to live there and survive in Geodesic domes in an environment less dangerous than that of Mars.

Explore space by all means, but in the immediate term, our future as a species could be better supported here on this planet.

Aliens.

a reply to: stu119

a reply to: stu119

Pretty bleak place for human settlements.

I wonder why we don't explore the ocean depths more. Practically as unknown as deep space.

Cheers

originally posted by: stu119
Find it strange that we have such a huge landmass on this planet - which is easier to travel too, easier to get resources to build and service people working and eventually living there - than it is to send all of this to a planet in space, and yet Mars seems to be the focus.

When we're told that we are getting too big a populous for this planet, people never seem to bring up the prospects of colonising Antarctica. We have the means to live there and survive in Geodesic domes in an environment less dangerous than that of Mars.

Explore space by all means, but in the immediate term, our future as a species could be better supported here on this planet.

It has been pointed out many times before that if every person on the Earth was given 1 acre of land to live on, all 8 billion people would take up only about 5% of the area of Texas. And that's true.

However, that's a fairly meaningless fact. The Earth's human population has taken over almost all the habitable surface of the Earth because we need all that surface to produce all the food, fuel, and other goods we need to survive. We've harnessed most of the usable watershed of the planet. We're using all of the arable land. We're pulling fossil fuels out of the ground as fast as we can and putting up solar farms and windmills. We're pulling seafood out of the ocean as fast as we can. And so on.

All those activities require humans to be distributed all over the planet extracting resources and to transport stuff back and forth. If all the population were concentrated in Texas or the Antarctic or wherever we would still need all that infrastructure and all that activity to keep the population alive, except there wouldn't be anyone there to do those activities.

Artificially populating Antarctica doesn't solve any problem that we actually have.

a reply to: stu119

When was Antarctica last colonised?

a reply to: Dalamax


I will, dump this here and walk away quietly


www.metimeforthemind.com...

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: stu119

When was Antarctica last colonised?

I didn't say it had been?

a reply to: stonerwilliam

Omg fella, that was an interesting read, haven't watched the vids yet but it would make a pretty good ATS thread if it ain't been covered already!😱

a reply to: Boomer1947

It would take up a lot more than 5% of Texas. 8 billion acres is equivalent to 12.5 million square miles, whereas Texas is less than 269k square miles. Sorry, it was going to bug me if I didn't say that.

I would have to say that the resources and area available in Antarctica would help to an extent. Would it be the end all solution? No, a bandaid on a broken arm at best, but it would offer up a good portion of time and wiggle room while we figure everything else out before we all jump ship to an airless red desert 135 million miles away.

Unfortunately, we can't colonize Antarctica...

It was expose the secret entrance to our reptilian overlords' hollow earth base.

White walkers are there , commanded by the night king.

No, I don't want them to find my secret laboratory.

This is the only place Interpol has no jurisdiction over.

a reply to: Boomer1947

It has been pointed out many times before that if every person on the Earth was given 1 acre of land to live on, all 8 billion people would take up only about 5% of the area of Texas. And that's true.

Not quite.

Texas only has roughly 172 million acres and you can't give 8 billion people an acre each. The entire U.S. only has 2.4 billion total acres.

What they've said is that you could build millions of massive apartment buildings like in Judge Dredd and house the world's population. You would have to have 27,000 people per sq mile. That's the population density of New York City covering the entire state.

originally posted by: AdultMaleHumanUK
a reply to: stonerwilliam

Omg fella, that was an interesting read, haven't watched the vids yet but it would make a pretty good ATS thread if it ain't been covered already!😱

That is one very very deep rabbit hole to go down , especially the dead marconi scientists angle ? Bring plenty of flashlights for that dark hole !.

a reply to: Astyanax

At a guess..... possibly Pangea?
Rainbows
Jane

a reply to: stu119

For the sake of the ecosystem down there I'd so No , look what we've done to the rest of the Planet.

a reply to: stu119

Well aside from the other problems people mentioned i think it would be a big mess because who does it belong to and which countries get how much land and who gets what. I think it would lead to conflict.

a reply to: stu119

Just out of curiosity how much reading on Antarctica did you do before making this thread? Antarctica has some of the coldest temperatures on Earth and highest wind speed. 54 countries have treaties with Antarctica and at least 7 countries have territorial claims.

There's no trees on Antarctica and tourists get there by cruise ship, scientists fly in. It's 6 months of daylight in the summer and 6 months of darkness in the winter.

Drive across the USA, there's endless empty land.

We're a long ways off from humans living in space. Zero gravity deteriorates bone mass over long periods of time and you are exposed to lots of radiation, which will drastically speed up cancer. Sending people to Mars has so many problems. There's lots of scientific explanations about that if you look it up on the web or YouTube.

The best place would actually be sky cities like in Star Wars in a certain section of the upper atmosphere of Venus. Atmospheric pressure, gravity and temperature is almost the same as Earth. You can look that up. However may or may not be ideal to launch deep space missions from.

Everywhere else in our Solar System would be really dangerous and would require specialty space stations and space suits for each alien environment, the Moon, Mars, and Titan for example.

originally posted by: stonerwilliam
a reply to: Dalamax


I will, dump this here and walk away quietly

www.metimeforthemind.com...

You sir, are my kind of stoner 👍👍

oh god no. Leave Antarctica alone. Poor penguins. They are dying off ya' know. Leave something natural and beautiful here without humans to muck it up.