Living So Far Away

On almost a daily basis I say to those around me, "I wish I could just go live in the woods".  I tend to get very annoyed by most of my college peers, customers, bad drivers, irresponsible parents...the list goes on...For most of us, deep in the mountains and forests is the furthest from civilization we can imagine.  And to be honest, that is the furthest I think we'll ever reach.  The episode about colonizing Mars was a bit far-fetched for me.  For as long as I can remember the rover being on Mars, all I have heard is: "There COULD have been water here at some point." or "If the atmosphere changes in these ways, we MIGHT have sustainable oxygen levels.".  All of these assumptions about how some day, if things changed just perfectly, and we all wished really hard, we could maybe live there some day.  Sorry for the absurd amount of sarcasm...The researchers and scientists in this episode did not convince me in any way that it would be worth the time and money to settle on the red planet.  I believe what makes me most bitter about the subject is the fact that most of the reason we are looking to settle elsewhere is because we have nearly drained this planet and are looking for the next thing to suck dry.  Don't get me wrong, I am no tree-hugger, but there is no practical reason for living on another planet.  Can you imagine the prices of anything if we were to live on Mars?  Everything would have to be made synthetically or shipped from Earth.  There are too many factors dragging this theory down in my opinion.