We are still a bit far from Mars colonies... But this topic is however relevant, as one of the toughest difficulties of a manned Mars mission is that the crew will have to remain locked for months or years at several into something the size of a van... Terrible psychological challenge, not to call it a torture. Russians have some more experience about it, and this experience is not reassuring: some lengthy missions resulted into severe disputes among crew members, and even in at least one instance in a fight with injury.
But don't you know, to remain locked at several people into a narrow space for years with no distractions is a common custom on Earth... in monasteries and similar places, of several religions, people undertake years long retreats in cells and narrow spaces, seeing nobody, even not speaking to nobody. And without any other kind of distraction, no games, no TV, no work other than meditation, and of course without sex in any form...
In the case I know the best, tibetan Buddhism, three years retreats (seven years at a whole) are a common practice, and when you see a lama, in most cases he did this. And there are already such retreat centers in Europe, in France, Spain, Switzerland, USA, New Zealand... not to speak of numerous christian monasteries where people use to do this for ages.
And most of the time, these people pass the test, they bear living several years into such harsh conditions, where we cannot even imagine to be able to do so ourselves. Why? because they already have a spiritual preparation: mastering concentration and emotions, having a strong motivation, and a clear purpose in mind. And also an efficient psychological discipline, and methods which allow them to cope with any kind of problem which could arise. So they are able to do this where most of us will flee after 15 days.
So the idea is to apply such methods to an eventual long duration space mission. Anyway I don't see any other solution.
Of course, as you noticed, ustrax, there are spiritual stakes into colonizing Mars. And, in the instance where a Mars mission crew would use such spiritual methods, and a spiritual master would be part of the crew, it will have much other effects than just allowing them to bear the travel...
QUOTE (Marz @ May 31 2006, 08:16 PM)
A settlement is a tougher question to address, and would have a very different feel from a limited visit. The book "Red Mars" tried to play around with these ideas. One interesting idea was that the first settlers would be emotional contradictions - they'd be persons that must outwardly exude qualities of astronauts & brilliant engineers/scientist to be selected as Settlers, but at the same time have a personal reason that makes them willing leave everything behind. The "pilgrims" seemed to have 3 main factions: those that wanted to make mars more earthlike, those that wanted to keep mars pristine, with settlements only "fishbowls" apart from the planet, and those that simply considered it an extension of earth's resources to be exploited (i.e. not a pilgrim's perspective).
Such contradictions show us how complex would be the establishment of a plan to Mars. And beyond this appear all the contradictions of manking, between those who seek for a spiritual meaning, or simply happiness, and those with much more material and short scope motives in life.
So we cannot just let a restricted team make the plan. A scientist team will have science goals, a business team will have exploitation of resources in mind, other will hope to build a better society on Mars, etc. So the discution must involve much more people.