>>12247230We are not close.
If humans are still politically dominant when it happens then offworld colonisation will be like new world colonisation, because human nature has only changed on one occasion: the spread of sedentary agriculture.
In new world colonisation people were only paid to move there if they represented their nation and would develop into a geopolitical asset. Otherwise, they had to pay the high transport costs up front to leave their home country. This was a worthwhile decision for people who had nothing in the old world, because in the new world they could have their own land.
Once all the good land of a region was snapped up then immigration numbers dropped sharply.
So, on Mars you get three groups:
Government-sponsored settlers and troops looking to put their flag down before anybody else does.
The lower class of the place they came from looking for the chance to own their own land.
Political refugees, like the losing side of the English civil war in the 1700s who founded most urban areas in Virginia and the Carolinas.
