Will the first colonization of mars be a disaster?

[Danceofmasks]

Why would you build a colony on Mars?!
Ok, mining possibly, but as far as living conditions go, being on that planet is a lot more dangerous than being in orbit.
Between dust so fine that machinery of any sort wouldn't function for long, weather conditions that would rapidly ruin most constructions that would be considered sturdy in space, and the lack of a magnetic field or an atmosphere thick enough to protect you from space rocks or radiation ... Mars is just a shithole.
Admittedly safer than any other planet, but still way more dangerous than space.

Heck, we haven't even figured out that building structures by sticking a bunch of rectangles together is dumb as bricks - it only works on earth because we don't really give a shit about structural strength.
Well, actually, we do that because it returns the most amount of usable space, but it's still dumb as bricks.

(Yes, I'm talking as someone who has built rockets in the past. Yay rocketscience)

So, I would say the benefits of building anything at all on mars is not worthwhile.
At least until we're able to do the easy stuff without much hassle, such as living in the asteroid belt.

 

[Friendly Lich]

It might not be a totally reliable example, but I think all the guys who were stuck in the simulated Mars-journey capsule in Russia came out the other end of it OK alright didn't they?

Don't make the mistake of confusing yer typical space-horror film/videogame/TV show with more mundane reality. We already have and have had space stations after all, which are themselves little tin boxes which you can't escape from for months on end (floating space prisons with no exercise yard, pretty much), and no-one has yet gone crazy and murdered the rest of the crew before blowing up the vessel. Sailing ships sometimes suffered mutinies or wrecks, it's true, but the vast majority didn't. Space travel, like old timey sea travel (and indeed overland treks) is far from risk-free, something bad may well happen, and there have been some well known fatal space accidents (plus the survival-from-the-jaws-of-death story of Apollo 13), but that's no reason not to give it a go. It didn't stop us in the wooden ship days, why should it stop us now?

Anyway, if we're going to go for that kind of analogy, shouldn't you be bothered about the far more worrying threat of Space Pirates?

But the people on mars cant make an emergency landing to earth like the people in the space station can. It takes 3-5 YEARS to travel between the two. And there were plenty of disasters in the wooden ship days.

 

[Nouw]

I think it'll have a few hiccups but it won't be a disaster.

I see no reason to just assume the first colony will be a disaster. I think it's more plausible that the second colony will be.

The first colony will be a grand, world-collaborative movement with billions of dollars behind it, constant scrutiny, and attention to every detail. After that first colony, it's going to be catch-up from then on. Mars is absolutely a challenging environment, but every challenge can be overcome. What's going to screw the colonists is when we get comfortable enough with the idea that someone on the project says, "relax, we got this."

Clever thinking. I'm inclined to agree.