Yes, but they will be closer to Earthers than the Belters will be, sa sa?

(The Expanse covers ideas like this; inner planets (Earth and Mars) are more like-now human, but those who grew up on space stations and asteroids, aka 'Belters', are physically different, taller, lankier)

The idea of colonizing another planets is so surreal it makes me wish I would live another 100 years. Having mars as our launch pad, I wonder where we could go from there.

I highly recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. Great scifi books about a vaguely realistic Mars settlement, and the cultural/biological changes that occur.

A different question altogether, but interesting none the less, let's say Russia or China get to colonize Mars first, then let's say they find a safe way to thrive there. could they then by extension manage new colonization of Mars the same way we colonized earth? That is the colonizer could regulate who might get to further colonize Mars --ie require a kind of interplanetary visa (if we allow many people from many places on Earth have the means to get there)? Are there treaties which require any colonizer to allow other people to set a foothold there? And what if the new Martians just declare independence? Do we cross our arms?

This is absolutely correct from a perspective of bog-standard evolutionary biology. A "fork" of a species into two very different environments with limited gene flow between them is virtually guaranteed to eventually lead to speciation event.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. :)

Could Mars ever be terraformed to the point a human, or human derivative, could operate comfortably in the open atmosphere? It seems pretty cold, air pressure is low, and there's little-to-no protection from solar radiation.

It looks like we have to overcome the technological hurdles of creating gravity and some kind of shielding (invisible) that can protect humans from radiation. Steady power would be required. Curious if wind power could be used. If Musk could send a rocket to Mars that was basically a huge wind turbine that would anchor itself and unfold its blades, couldn't it create enough power to provide for a small contingent of people? Add some solar and there could be an abundance of power. With a good source of plentiful and steady power it would certainly make this endeavor more possible.

I suspect the truth is that we wont' be truly settling Mars for any length of time, and if we do it will be with automation rather than humans, or humans who have been extensively modified, maybe even bred for the role. The alternative is a series of technological breakthroughs which are nowhere apparent on the horizon.

Reminds me of The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov. The third part of the book takes place on the moon where there is a divergent human species / society. Great book, and there are some really interesting thoughts on how two divergent human species would chafe against one another in that part of it.

I'm surprised at how little criticism I hear about the colonization of Mars. Interfering with the evolutionary development of an entire planet should be a huge consideration. But it's colonialism as usual.

> The harsh conditions on Mars might make such unlikely events more probable if the outcome—say, bright orange skin—was very beneficial.

Make Mars Great Again.

This is pretty backwards. We will genetically engineer humans to live on Mars. This is the only way it can work. Any genetic drift would be optimized and changed by the same biotechnology, so there's no chance that a new species would be created in less than a millenia.