New Mars Forums

To make any colonization effort practical or even plausible, I think you would need a dedicated method to transport lots of people from one location to the next - kinda like a space bus

I imagine that in the future there will be dedicated cargo carriers and dedicated ferries from tranporting people. ATM, one craft carries a limited amount of cargo, scientific instruments and 2-7 astronauts. Obviously that not a runner for space colonization.

On Earth, Cargo and Public Transport tend to seperated!

I'd like to throw open this thread to wild speculation as what could acheive that!

I'd like to know what are the difficulites?

How do we transport 20 or 100 people across space?

depressing

Perhaps we can build a mosque in geostationary orbit over Mecca!

No one really said what type of fusion powered craft.

There are several possible ways to do a fusion powered craft.

When the time comes to colonize large amounts of the Solar system, I think we'll want a pretty integrated approach to the manufacture of electronics, lighting, computer parts etc

Most of these technologies are based upon sillicon semi-conducters and photolithographic printing techniques, so the same facilty could be utilized to produce them

A large factory in a location where its easy to obtain the materials in bulk and produce all these parts could supply ALL the colonies. 

As long as the first colonies/bases are very small, Its very likely that all hi-tech supplies will come from Earth. It just makes no sense to locally produce LEDs/Lightbulbs for only 100-1000 people. They don't do things this way anywhere on Earth.

Thats bullshit. Even when you take out the factor of NASA using cost plus contracts and generally wasting money - going into space is still insanely expensive. Putting just about any commerical satelite into orbit costs a fortune.

If you want to do space realistically and economically, there needs to be an economy of scale to offset the high price or breakthrough in energy and propulsion. There also needs to be something in space that can be obtained cheaper and in greater bulk than here on Earth. 

This could be done, but there has to be an infrastructure for it based mostly in space. This is an area that needs massive R&D and funding.

Space tourist buisness hasn't taken anybody ever out of low earth orbit....

Putting anything into space for time being is just inherently very expensive. There is no "colonization aproach" because its just not a practical prospect for time being. If it were, it would have been done years ago. The ISS has done very little in the way of science, but maintaining that space colony has been insanely expensive.

There is nothing out there that couldn't be obtained more easily on Earth in this century.

If you think putting stuff into orbit is expensive, think about how expensive maintaining even a small colony will be! They will be dependent on Earth for decades, probably even centuries.

Some day , we'll put a man on Mars and Beyond but I think it's better to get to know the Solar system in depth before we piss all over it

Robotic missions have been very successful at that, and they will be insanely sophisticated in 2-3 decades. Improvments in AI, Nano-Tech, Photonics, CPUs etc etc

A practical effort at space colonization will need either:

1) A Breakthrough in energy+propulsion, like Fusion Power, Mass Drivers..

2)A massive goverment financed infrastuctural program to transport and exploit space resources, by moving the manufacturing base off Earth.

This is just my ridiculous over the top idea, but how bout we use a type of catapult?

Drop a very very heavy weight a short distance and use hydraulics to transfer its energy upwards into a smaller craft.

NASA is not allowed to kill people.

sounds horrendous

a wierd corporate monopoly over an entire planet

we have enough of this shit on earth, we don't want to compound the original error.

There is nothing Misanthropic about it. If the only intention to go to Mars is to cynically exploit it, that begs the question - Why bother?

Mars is a planet with a seperate history that we should learn about first before embarking upon any "terraforming" projects. It deserves a degree of respect and patience. It has great stuff to teach us.

If the planet has any form of life on it - this puts a great question over human colonization. We would have to deal with this.

I've to agree with what c1clops has said.

The public support is just not there.

If the people in the goverment wanted to make it happen, they could probably drum up public support but those in goverment are not interested.

They would have to set a goal like going there in 5-8 years. If its too far away the public will loose interest. THe only way the public will get behind it is if its now.

I would certainly prefer that the money that was wasted over the last couple of years on invading Iraq was spent on Mars colonization and human exploration. It was nearly a TRILLION. Thats enough to do a Mars Direct style mission nearly 50 times over!!

The people in goverment won't get behind that idea because there is not much money to be made from Mars and it doesn't give the US a millitary advantage. There is also no rival nation for the US to get into a pissing contest with like the former USSR.