Comment Re:Groovy ... (Score 1) 236
Someone going to a small colony on Mars would be no different from Polynesians crossing oceans or people packing up and moving across the continent in 1800s.
If Mars was like California, that would be true.
If you are going to use California as an example, keep in mind that the original Spanish settlement of Buena Vista (modern-day Los Angeles) completely died out because everybody died from starvation and thirst from a lack of water. The only way California is able to sustain its current population is strictly because it can import a large amount of its food from elsewhere (in spite of being a net food exporter as a state) and because of the technology which sustains the current population of the state.
California is in fact proof that through the use of advanced technology we can take an inhospitable wilderness which is determined to kill off everybody who lives there and turn it into a place where morons and idiots can survive and thrive.
Perhaps my ancestors (who were some early residents of California) did too good of a job teraforming California and making it a nice place to live. I promise that the Polynesians traveling from Tonga or Samoa and made the trip to Hawaii would not have been capable of setting up a survivable settlement in the Los Angeles basin at the same time Hawaii was first being settled.