Humans should colonize Antarctica and not Mars.

Starting off with apologies to my opponent and the audience: The hyperlinks I imbedded in my rounds so far did not work, and I just now realized it. I am away from the computer I saved my debate drafts on, but when I get back to it on Friday, I will post the links to my sources. Exploration vs. Colonization. Mars would also have semi-permanent and temporary bases as a precursor to colonization, just as Antarctica does today. Visits and surveys would be needed before colonization could occur. The European powers established military/trade posts, and sent explorers and surveyors before establishing colonies in the Americas. Entrepreneurs and adventurers (i.e. fur trappers) arrived and lived alongside the natives before official colonies with families were established. This was all an inevitability once the New World was reachable, and a necessity before colonization. So I am not belittling Con’s eagerness to explore at all. But his requirement that no one should be living in a place before it is colonized would rule out any location, because it must be explored before it is colonized. A clarification on what I mean by inhospitable: I use it in the proper sense, not the colloquial, which seems to mean “death zone,” or “uninhabitable” these days. Inhospitable merely means not friendly or lacking hospitality. Like most all colonies, an Antarctic or Martian colony would initially require supplies from the outside. But like the early New England colonies, their goal would be to learn enough about the surroundings to be reliant on as few necessities from the homeland as possible. Most of us recall how the Pautuxet Squanto helped the Pilgrims in learning to do this. The basics for any settlement are air, fresh water, agriculture and/or hunting and gathering, fuel for warmth and simple chemical processes (cooking, smelting, drying, etc.), shelter, and the ability to make tools from materials in your environment to acquire these things. +Mars probably has extractable metals, and possibly CO2 that could be used in synthetics, but the soil is too toxic for agriculture, there are no known life-forms to eat, water is elusive, no known native fuel source besides solar, and there is no breathable air. +Antarctica, on the other hand, has breathable air, abundant fresh water (frozen), usable soil, fossil fuels, edible life forms, just as probable as Mars extractable ores for metal, and animal parts for food, tools, and shelter. Furthermore, it would be profitable to trade resources gathered from Antarctica. That’s my next point: Profitability. When people arrive at a colony, they must have profitable jobs. This is true whether you’re talking dollars for a new car or storing up dried fish for winter and producing flint tools. Profit might seem like a crass motive, but if the colony wants to grow and become something other than a mining camp or outpost, it must be able to grow in material wealth to support growing families to meet the social needs of people. We already know of resources in Antarctica that can provide profitable jobs, such as fossil fuels. We only have a vague idea of resources on Mars, and no conceivable way to make a profit from them because of shipping costs to get the raw materials to people with money on hand to buy them on Earth. “A human colony would probably destroy the ecosystem Antarctica (it would essentially be another country, countries do not tend to remain frugal with their environment and want extras.” I think this is a popular belief in the West, but still unwarranted. Of course we would have an effect on our surroundings. But this does not mean all humans will always, and have always had a bad effect on our surroundings. In many countries, lots of money and effort are expended to care for our environment, and in many places it is tradition to live in a way that cultivates the surrounding nature. My father manages my Grandmother’s land, and thins out select numbers of trees in the woods to make up for the lack of forest fires, and also to discourage them, as well as provide healthy undergrowth necessary for certain animals. People also provide artificial habitats, such as purple marten and bat houses to increase biodiversity by cutting down on over-abundant insects and increasing the number of insectivores. People with large plots of land in my area often regulate what type of wild game by species and gender, can be harvested from the land to keep certain species from becoming a burden on crops, other animals, and spreading local epidemics amongst their own species. As a Christian, I don’t believe we are animals, but we were put here along with all other life with the ability to manage it in a healthy way, so in that sense, we are an integral part of nature, not a blight on it if we don’t choose to be. Furthermore, what else is a colony than a state in infancy? I think I’ve answered all my opponent’s objections except for the last one: Long term benefit to humanity. The practical colonization of any unexploited land would open up new opportunities for individuals for earning a living and access to resources. That would be the long-term benefit, because those are what every human in humanity needs for survival. Antarctica appears to be a practical target for a colony. Mars still needs exploration and technological advances to determine if it’s viable. Mars is out as a colonial candidate for the same reason Alpha Centauri is out. Current insufficient evidence of feasibility. When we are talking human lives, feasibility is important, and Mars is still in the exploration stage, and I believe the exploration itch is what my opponent wishes to scratch, not the colonial itch.