Humans should colonize Antarctica and not Mars.

Thanks for accepting! This should be a nice change of pace. Antarctica is a better candidate for colonization than Mars because: Significantly lower 1. travel costs resupply costs equipment costs risk of death by: starvation dehydration irradiation lung deflation And you can get home if you want to! The cost of travel to Antarctica is low enough that an average visit costs $5000 to $8000 dollars, and, according to my source, a high end berth on a visit would cost around $40,000. I'm guessing that spartan accomodations on the way there, plus room for all your nesseccary belongings, might be about that or double, more or less if you include fees for moving equipment for all your stuff once you arrive. That's only the price of an average house on today's American market, so a 1st world family could afford that if they really wanted to make a colony of it. But wait a minute, that's kinda expensive, and I didn't even include that much to back up my guesses! I don't think I need to: Even if it's $500,000 per couple to start a homestead in Antarctica, the price of merely launching a proposed 6 man mission to Mars for a mere visit, (video minute 30-39) would cost $144,500,000,000, using optimistic, but fairly reasonable guesses. (85,000 tons x 2000 to get pounds=170,000,000 lbs x $850 per pound= $144,500,000,000. /by three, per couple rate = $48,166,666,666.67) That doesn't include mission support, R&D, the cost of the equipment that is to be launched, and resupply shipments. And that trip only takes them there and back. They don't have enough supplies to stay on Mars for generations. +There's at least air, water, and food in Antarctica. If your equipment fails, you can get all the nesseccities to live from your enviornment for a while. Elephant Island supported some of the stranded members of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition for four months, and all they had was a wrecked sailing ship. +Mars does have oxygen tied up in other compounds, but it would require sophisticated equipment to extract. The air in Antarctica must only be breathed through a thick scarf on the coldest days, but is otherwise usable as-is. Martian air is also too thin for your blood to not boil, even if the atmospheric composition were right, and the planet's weak magnetic field allows more exposure to cosmic rays than we receive in Antarctica. Not to mention radiation exposure on the way to Mars. +Water is not readily available at the surface on Mars, except in the coldest regions of an already frigid planet. Fresh water in the form of snow and ice is plentiful throughout Antarctica. +The soil of Antarctica already supports plant life in the northernmost regions, so under a greenhouse or other climate controlled structure, some supplimental farming could be done with no leap of technology, and larger scale subsistance farming is concievable. There is strong evidence the soil of Mars is toxic, and a heavy oxidizer. +I will accept it as fair speculation that Mars may have more resources than Antarctica just because of it's size, but the nature of these mineral resources in virtually unknown. Antarctica's mineral resources are also poorly understood due to thick ice sheets, but not to the extent of Mars. We know there are usable deposits of coal, oil, and natural gas. Sea life has also already provided a living for many in the Antarctic for centuries. These resources can be managed carefully as not to irrepairably harm the ecosystem, as we have learned to do elsewhere. There is no known life on Mars. In closing my half of this round, I will put forth this standard for a serious colony to survive: It must thrive in resources, that is the colonists must be able to get more resources and energy from their work than they put into it. That is not a concievable possibility with Mars right now, but semi-permanent bases and profits have been made around the South Pole for some time, at least in the fishing business. I will also answer a few more of my opponent's arguments for a Mars colony in brief. Antarctica has been colonized, to a degree, but not a self-sustaining colony. That would be new. Innovation in at least technique, if not technology, would be required to settle there. And the lessons learned would be useful if we could ever afford to send a colony to another, cold, remote location, like Mars. We've not done either, let's do what we can do, and can afford to do, first. So Antarctica should be considered as a stepping stone to anywhere offworld, especially Mars, since it is the most extreme cold habitat on Earth. Size is not really an issue with Antarctica vs. Mars. Both are huge, and have virtually nobody there. Right now, and into the concievable future, they both have abundant space for settlements. As far as the ultimate fallout shelter, Mars is much closer to the main asteroid belt in our system, and would be more likely to suffer a planetary disater from the cosmos than Earth. Besides, a fallout shelter we can't afford, and in a location we can't reach, isn't worth anything. I'll concede it would be a better choice to get away from Charlie Sheen than Antarctica.