McMurdo Station, Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, and implications for colonizing Mars
Because outposts in Antarctica are frequently sited as analogs for a Mars settlement, I assume many people on this sub have researched this. I'd like to hear opinions on the implications for Mars.
Unfortunately, after a few months of research, I've concluded that International Treaties have no bearing settling Antarctica. We simply can't do it. Same for mining. If resources could be extracted, then treaties be damned; someone would do it. Someone would "make it legal". But we can't. Not the US; not Russia; not China.
Invariably someone will argue "anything is possible with enough money". It's a lazy answer which terminates any meaningful discussion, and I'm not even sure it's true.
Basically I've concluded that getting to Mars is the easy part, but that we simply don't have the technology to live there. There's nothing even on the drawing board. The Mars rovers are impressive feats of engineering, but human life support is several orders of magnitude more difficult.