Interstellar Transitions...

Space.com: The Spaceships of 'Interstellar' Explained

Topics: Colonization, Evolution, Exoplanets, Founder's Effect, Interstellar Travel

Part of the reason we became a "United States of America" was in the coming to America.

I'm sure the Native Americans would have looked far more Asian had they stayed from the land bridge into Alaska. I'm sure if the colonists were not so, if they had stayed in Europe (or, kidnapped from Africa), they probably would know how to survive in their typical environments and predictable weather. The first winters were brutal; the Native Americans who helped them survive were repaid sadly, with a distasteful brutality.

However, the first Martians will likely be former Earthlings that will not have alien natives to push around. They will however, have 1/3 g and a completely different weather environment - i.e., far away from the sun; no air outside their habitats to breath, no green grass or blue skies. Like the colonists to the Americas, there will be substantial mental changes that will occur, hopefully directed and positive. Distant from the former home world, they will no longer have close ties to it. In one hundred years of colonization - four generations - might want to be "on their own," independent, establish their own economy, product and trade to barter with. The farther from home we venture, warp drive or sub light, the more likely aliens we encounter will eventually be us.

One of the more prescient things - which featured the many talents of its actors - was the crew of the Enterprise seemed to be always doing something: plays, harps or Holodecks. The Terran analogy would be life on a submarine - literal death, either crushing ocean pressure or the cold vacuum of space - is outside the hull of your vessel, so keeping your mind busy is imperative to not going stir crazy (submariners can disagree with my analogy freely). We also may not become the "United Federations of Planets" utopia Gene Roddenberry envisioned,  unless our current self-centered, selfish philosophies don't change as we venture forth. Lighting a "candle in the darkness," we should consider where our next steps fall.