Last things first – – a few thoughts on the Mars conversation and on 21st century futurism in general.

There's a certain kind of "planning" that people indulge in when talking about things they know they will never do. It can be traveling to an exotic location, changing careers to a glamorous profession, or even leaving one's spouse for an attractive coworker. We've all seen people make these "plans." Chances are pretty good that we've made them ourselves at one time or another.

You don't have to delve deep into the psychology to see the appeal. It gives daydreaming the illusion of seriousness and productivity while making the daydreams themselves feel more real. Of course I'll have a house in Tuscany someday; I've already picked out the drapes.

Watching individuals do this can be sad (of Mice and Men comes to mind), but it's mostly harmless. When societies engage in this, the stakes are much higher. Though I have no objective metric to point to, it certainly feels like there has been an uptick. God knows we're not hurting for examples, with every serious news organization from the New York Times on down is pumping out bullshit analyses of how we need to prepare for the world of tomorrow.

There is almost invariably a powerful air of self-satisfaction around these articles, a sense of palpable pride in their scientific literacy and willingness to face the future. This would be bad enough if they actually had these qualities, but more often than not, the level of scientific and engineering ignorance is embarrassing and the "future" being faced consist entirely of some half century old science-fiction tropes.

Sometimes the technology is simply not viable (as with the Hyperloop), a fact that is often briefly acknowledged then completely ignored for the remainder of these pieces. Other times, the potential is real but is so far off in the future as to hardly be worth discussing (3-D printing of living organisms, AI middle managers). Then there are those cases as with the Atlantic monthly piece on policing Mars, that are simply based on a vacuum.

Productive planning always starts with knowledge and reasonable assumptions. We can't even begin to have a real discussion of issues like crime and law enforcement on Mars until we have some idea of what the economy, population density, and sponsoring institutions will look like, not to mention questions like terraforming. Are we talking about government bases, corporate outposts, billionaire vanity projects? Will the economy be based on mining, tourism, scientific research? Will there be a large, permanent population, a handful of engineers and programmers rotating in and out to keep the machines running, or perhaps no humans at all, just teams of autonomous and semiautonomous robots doing the work for us.

It's usually not difficult to tell the difference between real planning -- doing the hard work necessary to move forward with the project-- and "planning," dressing up fantasies and daydreams with serious looking details. What we've seen increasingly with discussions of Mars (perhaps hitting a plateau with the infamous Mars one scam) is a preponderance of the latter. What would the former look like?

The first priority would be to learn more. While our knowledge of the planet has exploded in recent years, it still fall short of what we need to mount a serious effort to do something with the red planet. If we're talking about permit human settlements, where should we put them? Given the radiation levels, habitats will probably need to be underground. What engineering problems should we expect with this kind of extraterrestrial excavation and tunneling? If we are interested in mining, where are the major mineral deposits of interest? How easy are they to get to?

We could keep adding to this list for a long time, but as varied as the questions are, the initial steps needed to answer them are relatively few and straightforward. We need to learn more remotely by putting survey satellites around the planet and launching a new generation of surface probes. (While we're at it, we should probably be doing something analogous with the asteroid belt as well.) We need to focus on developing relevant technologies like robotics and AI.

I will admit an ulterior motive here. The things that we should be doing if we are serious about human settlement of Mars are the same things we should be doing anyway. The data we gather looking for landing spots and mineral deposits on Mars will more than justify the effort in terms of scientific knowledge. The advances we make developing the machines to work the planet's minds and building structures will have enormous and immediate impact on life here.