I recently listened to a podcast by Lex Fridman featuring Michio Kaku. Fridman is an artificial intelligence researcher and Kaku is a theoretical physics professor. Kaku mentions something along the lines that we might be closer to colonizing Mars than most people think. I am very vaguely paraphrasing him.
That got me thinking about the people that would be chosen/elect to colonize Mars. Would they be part of the genetic elite, the rich, or some other demographic? Would people with criminal records be allowed to go to Mars? Thinking about these ethical issues with the future colonization of another planet really sparked some thought in my mind. I am not sure how many people would be able to be sent there, but I was assuming the initial voyage would not be very large. Would people even want to go to Mars or would it depend on how bad life on Earth gets in 100 years?
Its most likely that the first people on Mars are very open people that are fine taking risks. Perhaps Mars will have its own gene pool, where openness and risk aversion will be high and low respectively.
Would the rich be rich on mars? Is the USD/fiat money legal tender on another planet? So many questions. Would mars be shared among governments with sovereign nations as Earth is? Tons of really great questions and I hope I get to learn some answers in my lifetime.