They could make a local internet on Mars!
Where are you going to get games from?
Mars gets as close as three light minutes from Earth according to my extensive research of googling for approximately 30 seconds. There could be inaccuracies in my otherwise unassailable methodology 
You can probably fill it up from the start with a lot of games and then you can download more if you donāt use TCP/IP but some other streaming protocol with redundancy or something
There are protocols developed that are designed for ultra-high-latency links like intra-solar-system communication. Iām not familiar with any of them other than that they have tons of data redundancy and error correction built in.
Hmm, my bad. I didnāt expect the orbit of Mars to be that elliptical. Soā¦ 6-44 minutes it is!
As for having a speedy internet, theyād just need to bring a snapshot of the current internet and plug it into their LAN. Caching is the solution to every problem.
44 light minutes? That canāt be right, thatās over 5 AU, and Mars is only roughly 1.6 AU out. (Ohhh right, round trip, opposite sidesā¦ math is hard)
Letās just say you wonāt be Skyping your folks on Earth.
That seems about right.
But hey, if there is a corrupt lead on mars and people overthrow it, its a free planet !
Actually that brings me to an interesting point: What laws would apply on Mars ?
Who owns Mars ?
Maybe I really should be the first, to create that initial Mars Societyā¦ A chance of actually creating a working systemā¦
I didnāt do the math, but when Mars is at one side of the galaxy and earth on the other, gotta be long. Of course cannot be > 2 AU, but you cannot send data straight through the sun of courseā¦
Unless you use the āinstantā messaging feature. Oh, there it is:
āUnlimited access to email and other communication channels to keep in touch with friends and family back on Earth;ā
The inconveniences just add up! D:
Thereās international treaties regarding territoriality of the Moon (basically, no one owns it) but howās that saying go? Possession is 9/10ths of the law?
Yeahā¦ so we really should go =D
I sure hope that Mars will never be on the other side of the galaxy, relative to earth. Perhaps our solar-system, but not galaxy 8)
Oh yea
With all that playing Mass Effect, I just assumed the galaxy isnāt that big =D
Of course, solar system, not galaxy =D
I find this very interesting and perhaps exciting, but I definitely agree with a lot of the negatives posted on here. A six month trip to prison says Riven, and I think thatās totally true to some extent. Youāll be staring at the same 20 cubic feet of walls for the rest of your life, that much is the same. But I think being in charge of your own destiny and being able to call your own shots changes that. Think of settlers in the western United States - they got in a wagon and traveled across the country for months before finally arriving in some forest area with almost nobody (or nobody around). They had to cut down trees and clear areas to build, and wandering far from home was almost certain death due to the animals (bears!) and the natives. Although itās different because theoretically you could wander and survive, itās also very similar.
You wouldnāt be a prisoner, youād be a modern day pioneer. Lewis and Clark. Magellan. Columbus.
The biggest sacrifice would be being broken from the instantaneous all-enveloping communication we have all become so used to. I hate waiting 15 seconds for information, 45 minutes might seem a bit intense.
And I would really miss my family. And the other 3 people could potentially drive me crazy, but then again Iām a pretty easy-going guy, and I have a lot of skills already that could be useful.
But Iām married and would never be able to have kids, and probably couldnāt go with my wife either.
Then again, starting a completely new society, having such a strong sense of being importantā¦ wooee, complicated choice, no?
Settlers of the American Frontier moved to a place where you could walk outside for an hour and not see your neighbor. Seems rather the exact opposite of the sort of hive experience youād have in the tin can colony on Mars. Even Magellan made landfall now and then. Youād be a trailblazer, but you damn well better enjoy your confinement.
pretty sure they can eventually build suits and buggys and shield you sufficiently
I think we can all agree this aināt happening in ten years.
About the social/psychological aspect, the Russians recently finished an experiment simulating this with some astornauts which spent 520 days in a āMars tripā:
oh, I have seen a documentation about that project on Television
But I think these people had in mind, that they will get back on Earth one day, or, they even ARE on Earth all the timeā¦ But being on Mars is kind of another thingā¦
That were the things, which went through my mind, watching that documentation.
But also, they are kind of trapped on that planetā¦ foreverā¦