[citation][nom]back_by_demand[/nom]Also increases our chance of survival in the event of a catastrophic incident, such as large meteorites, nuclear war, zombie apocalypse, etc, not limiting ourselves to a single planet will definately help. The only real bummer is playing online games with people on Mars, the lag would be terrible.[/citation]
Sorry to burst your bubble but people on Earth and people on Mars would not be able to play online games together. The very best case scenario is Mars is at its Perihelion at the same time the Earth is at its Aphelion and the Earth eclipses Mars. The Perihelion of Mars is 1.381497 AU and the Aphelion of Earth is 1.01671388 AU. The difference is 0.36478312 AU which multiplied by 92,955,807 miles in an AU gives us 33,908,709 miles. Divide that by 186,282 miles per second means light would take about 182 seconds to travel that distance. That amount of lag is unplayable. period. It's a nice thought though.
The perigee of the Moon is a much more reasonable 225,291 miles which would still take light 1.209 seconds to travel which is still terrible lag. And that's still just a one way trip. I guess we'll just have to stick with playing online games with people from Earth only.