> Permanent means self sustaining. I.e biodome completely isolated from outside with its own atmosphere.

According to whom exactly? For me, permanent means "permanently without breaks".

Why on earth (pun intended), would you want that?

You don't want to be there? Almost every other place on earth is better. So you send a skeleton crew along with what they need.

If it is to test an actual community living isolated, sure. But I think it'll always be different because you know that help is at most a few months away and probably a lot less. I don't think you can fake that, unless you're never told you're not alone

> Permanent means self sustaining.

No it doesn't. "Permanent settlement" just means it's not temporary, only intended for a short-term mission.

According to this, New York is not permanent settlement because it's not self sustaining.

Nobody’s tried because they are a short flight away from South America. No point. It’s cheaper and easier to fly it in.

There are skeptical arguments against Mars settlement but the Antarctica thing is kind of a weak one.

To point out one more problem with it: there’s legal and treaty restrictions in play for that continent. You can’t just go. That’s another limiting factor.

There's an argument that Earth, as a biodome completely isolated from outside with its own atmosphere, also isn't self sustaining.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day

I'd keep the Moonraker film in mind as a metric for self sustaining colonies created by billionaires. They can't be trusted unless they are also working to fix what we already have.

America still isn’t self sustaining and it’s been hundreds of years.