RE: Will Humanity Turn Mars Into Trantor/Coruscant?
I'd bet that it won't. Population growth is slowing here on Earth and likely to top out around 11 billion. Even so, people immigrating to Mars will be pretty limited by the transportation costs. Even with Musk's vast reduction, he's still talking about $500k for a ticket. Awesome! But...still very spendy and that will limit the folks able to go.
Then there is life on Mars. or rather the life people would live on Mars.
Mars is...a bit challenging to terraform as noted already just from the atmospheric POV. Then the soil itself is more than a little toxic: .5% of the martian soil is made of perchlorate salts. These are bad for people. Watney wouldn't have survived, at least as presented.
(still love the book and movie though)
Mars is pretty much a mega fund site. But not as bad as Venus.
That's a good one, wish I had though of it myself.
You are probably right. This post is mostly science speculation but who knows what will happen in the future.
I wonder if they will have a global lottery for this. Buy a ticket to fund the program and the winners (losers?) get a one-way trip to Mars. <radio guy's voice>Must be physically fit, void in states where prohibited.</radio guy's voice>
I think Mars has a lot of long term potential as another world for Humanity, but it needs some serious clean up and, honestly, we need the fusion rocket engines to make it happen. That way we can redirect kuiper belt objects to Mars to provide the volatiles it needs: turns out the locked in CO2 is only enough for the equivalent of 61k ft here on earth if released.
So, let's say you did drop lots of Quaoar or some other kuiper belt object on Mars. You'd have a good century of cleaning up from there. Dropping in raw sodium and the proper microbes to sequester all that nasty chemicals from the volatiles mixing with the perchlorates and everything else.
It would be beautiful, in the end. Just keep your hands off of Elysium Mons. It's MINE! ;)