A reason to go to Mars

From: Joe Strout

> Well, Ceres is speculated to have a water-ice-rich mantle over a rocky
> core, so probably has all the stuff we need; and I seem to recall an
> estimate that Ceres alone could be converted into space colonies with
> a total living area equal to 1000 Earths (though I can't seem to find
> the reference right now -- Mike?).

I think it's Al Globus who frequently makes that comparison. (http://space.alglobus.net/) I'm usually more likely to quote Gerard O'Neill's comparison that if the entire Asteroid Belt were converted into habitats, it would equal 3,000 Earths.

> (b) somebody gets the urge to -- for example,
> because resources around Sol are starting to feel scarce, or they are
> feeling some sort of social or political oppression.

And given the resources of the solar system, I'm thinking the latter will surely occur millennia before the former.

> -- in other words, our Oort Cloud should be
> overlapping Centauri's. So the folks who happen to be living over on
> that side of things, hopping from object-to-object as they are
> fruitful and multiply, will one day find that the object they're using
> is in fact in orbit around the Centauri system, not around Sol. And
> look, there's another juicy one that's even a little bit closer. Look
> again in a few hundred years, and you've got people filling two star
> systems instead of one, without anybody you can easily point to as
> making "the big journey" across the gap --

I've heard this process called "interstellar migration by osmosis". ;)

Regards,

Mike Combs