Creating a permanent human settlement on Mars by 2025 will require serious training. To prepare its future astronauts for the task, the Netherlands-based private spaceflight project Mars One announced its plans to construct Earth-based outposts that replicate the cramped, isolated, crazy-making conditions of a Red Planet colony. (1)

Such projects makes one realize we are having all the wrong priorities. We spend so much time considering what to do with preserving life, that we have forgotten what life is. What is most important in such a mission is not the oxygen supply, but the systems or processes that will keep astronauts sane. The systems or processes that will preserve our culture even when we are going to another planet.

Culture preservation “systems”.
Psychology preservation “systems”.
Life preservation systems.

In descending order of importance…

After all, what is meaning to colonize a different world only as a lifeless set of flesh and bones? It is the culture of Parmenides and Aristotle that Mars needs, not our dead lifeless bodies.