Why did you visit such places if they were so horrible? Resources? Curiosity? We’re you a pioneer, trailblazing through uncharted lands machete in hand or the locals showed you around? Get it? The locals?
Archi
I suspected that this was directed at me, but thought it presumptuous to reply without that being confirmed.
For 12 years the wife and I lead "expeditions" to Racetrack Playa, the dry lakebed where rocks dash about for no apparent reason.
We went on St. Patrick's Day, because the weather then is usually endurable - and Halloween, be cause it is in Death Valley you know.
3 day weekends gave us 2 nights in the desert with little other than some emaciated coyotes and a few very raggedy ravans for company. Some times there were just 4 of us, once there were 27.
The newspaper in Las Vegas got wind of our activities and wrote up a few "B" section articles. Our S. N. Mensa Chapter grew with the free publicity, and after 10+ years we believe we solved the mystery.
So curiosity is probably the answer to your first question.
We weren't pioneers in any sense of the word. We were there to solve an unsolved riddle, to gain a little local recognition for our group, to film a short documentary, and to have great stories to tell for the next 6 months.
You won't find machete wielding "locals" in the area because there have been no locals since Spanish horse thieves killed or enslaved the one family that had lived off "Hunters Trail" a little after the Spanish set up the Mission Slave Culture much closer to the coast. There are places not so far away where people had and do live, but some places just have never enticed anyone to take up residency.
We had some wonderful adventures there - but nobody even considered going when it was hot, with less than 2 spares/vehicle, or horror of horrors actually colonizing such inhospitable places.
Weekend rubbernecking can't be compared with colonising.
Will someone stay for a short period on the moon? That's not predicting the future, that's reading history. Will something similar occur on Mars - probably. Will anyone colonize either location - not in a thousand years. That's Fantasy.
Terry