New Mars Forums

We don't need Mars as a stepping stone to the stars?

Sure, and we don't need America as a stepping stone to space.  Numbers aren't everything.  When humans are established on Mars, we will have a whole new economic and technological driver, with more favorable launch conditions to the asteroid belt and planets beyond.  Mars is the ultimate stepping stone to the stars, artificial habitats are the ultimate cop-out.

Yeah, I'm for Mars for exactly those very reasons. Who wants to live in a tube anyway?

I just thought that at least there'd be an alternative if Mars wasn't viable, and considering "when it's steam boat time, you steam", I don't see why you couldn't do both scenarios, at least to some extent?
Wouldn't a transport system of scale economics from Earth to the rest of the Solar System or indeed from Mars to the asteroid field and beyond, require shipyards, starbases, intergravity transit infrastructure, i.o.w habitats principally built from space material and thus moonbases etc?
The power and energy requirements for acceleration to fractions of light speed for interstellar travel, is greater than what the entire world currently consume in a whole year. Don't the magnitudes suggest things like tapping the inexhaustible power of the Sun, that is building what is basically solar power satellites, just like the high frontier crowd say?

The world needs the accumulated American research and scientific discoveries as a stepping stone to Mars, I don't see why it needs the United States per se (sorry!). If contrary to expectation, America would not lead this enterprise though, any power that did, would automatically be highly indebted to the legacy which NASA and superior US research has contributed to the world since 1945. A bit like there wouldn't have been a space program to start with without von Braun and his gang of hijacked German rocket scientists, but on a much greater scale.