So who thinks this will end badly?

UAC to build first city on Mars

The Mars 2117 Project was announced by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, and His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces.
As part of a 100-year national programme, the UAE will set a plan to prepare national cadres that can achieve scientific breakthroughs to facilitate the transport of people to the Red Planet over the next decades.
The 100-year plan will involve scientific research programmes to nurture national cadres specialised in space sciences at universities in the UAE. It will also entrench a passion for space in younger generations.
The announcement was made on the sidelines of the World Government Summit in the presence of representatives of 138 governments, six major international organisations, as well as leading international tech companies.

It's actually pretty cool sounding. As an American, I'm envious, as our space program has been dead for decades.

So, UAC actually stands for United Arab Corporation?

That explains the blue carpets. They're actually prayer rugs, and these tiny arrows on them point towards Mecca.

Say what you want, at least these people still have some visions, that part appears to have entriely gotten lost in the Western world - and look where it's heading us.

JudgeDeadd said:

So, UAC actually stands for United Arab Corporation?

That explains the blue carpets. They're actually prayer rugs, and these tiny arrows on them point towards Mecca.

Those are some innovative carpets for all those arrows being able to point to a specific location on a different, non stationary, planet.

Graf Zahl said:

Say what you want, at least these people still have some visions, that part appears to have entriely gotten lost in the Western world - and look where it's heading us.

Right - I laughed at the "100 year programme" part but this is my takeaway from it, too. It's sad that the US once sent manned missions to the moon but that kind of aspiration has now been buried under a hardline ideology that says "government can't do anything right".

fraggle said:

It's sad that the US once sent manned missions to the moon but that kind of aspiration has now been buried under a hardline ideology that says "government can't do anything right".

But space exploration as far as the US government has ever been concerned was never about "boldly going where no one has gone before". It was "fuck the soviets" and mine-shaft gap thinking.

People with ridiculous money need to do ridiculous things.

According to wiki UAE has hot summers and warm winters and the country is mostly desert. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Mars just a vast desert or at the very least an uninhabitable wasteland. While an Earth desert is hardly a Mars wasteland, they've flourished in the desert and now they can flourish on Mars in a mere 100 years.

Personally I'm still looking forward to the day when Phobos collides with Mars. Sure its another 10 million years, but that's pretty soon when you think about how long it takes any of the planets to do anything.

Graf Zahl said:

Say what you want, at least these people still have some visions, that part appears to have entriely gotten lost in the Western world - and look where it's heading us.

*Slaps face

geo said:

According to wiki UAE has hot summers and warm winters and the country is mostly desert. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Mars just a vast desert or at the very least an uninhabitable wasteland. While an Earth desert is hardly a Mars wasteland, they've flourished in the desert and now they can flourish on Mars in a mere 100 years.

you do realize that a night on mars goes below -100 °F, right?

roadworx said:

you do realize that a night on mars goes below -100 °F, right?

As does the Antarctic, yet there's scientists out there getting stuff done. Mars can also reach over 30°C - really the problem lies with the atmosphere itself rather than the temperature.

roadworx said:

you do realize that a night on mars goes below -100 °F, right?

Sorry if I neglected those specifics. I assume they'll have space suits on rather than walking barefoot or in parkas. Places on Earth get that cold as someone above me specified.

I'm pretty sure they won't be invaded by demons. They might want to watch out for efreet, though.

Gez said:

I'm pretty sure they won't be invaded by demons. They might want to watch out for efreet, though.

Unless they harness the hellnology.

I for one am looking forward to using argent energy to power my toaster.

In 200 years, the sentence "I was born on Mars" will become legit.

But I seriously don't see the point in building a city on Mars. It's barely got any atmosphere, takes a long time to get there (too long if you ask me), only people that are fit for space travel would be able to go there. If something like a dome is built, it'll take a lot of man/machine power to build and maintain a filtering system.

Of course anything can happen in the future, that could make all those things easier to manage. I've got friend from the UAE. Maybe he has different thoughts on this. Only one way to find out.

Personally, I don't think it's a good idea.

Voros said:

It's barely got any atmosphere,

And the atmosphere itself is like 98% CO2, right?

Kurwa said:

And the atmosphere itself is like 98% CO2, right?

More like ~1%. I assume you mean Earth's atmosphere?

Voros said:

More like ~1%. I assume you mean Earth's atmosphere?

I was talking about the atmosphere of Mars.

Kurwa said:

And the atmosphere itself is like 98% CO2, right?

Yup.

Conservapedia said:

Mars' atmosphere is quite thin and has an average pressure of 6.36 mb or 0.636% of that of earth. Its chief components are 95.32% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, 0.13% oxygen, and 0.08% carbon monoxide. In addition it has trace amounts of water (210 ppm), nitrogen oxide (100 ppm), neon (2.5 ppm), hydrogen-deuterium oxide (HDO) (0.85 ppm), krypton (0.3 ppm), and xenon (0.08 ppm). Winds on Mars vary in speed from 2–7 m/s in summer to 5–10 m/s in fall, though the Project Viking landers have recorded winds varying from 17–30 m/s during dust storms that have swept past the landing sites.

It probably just needs a bunch of GMO Earth plants.

In the Doom movie, it was implied that due to excessive global warming, they all migrated to Earth. *smug*

JudgeDeadd said:

So, UAC actually stands for United Arab Corporation?

That explains the blue carpets. They're actually prayer rugs, and these tiny arrows on them point towards Mecca.

Comment of the year. Extremely underrated.