Spaceception

I didn't have time to add this to my post earlier, but I meant to add that the price per-person would enter the 1m range or beyond for the first decade or so.

Added, that's a good question. I edited the OP to make it more realistic, and after reading through this forum post, I guess I was to hasty with this. I was only pointing out that if we put our minds to it, we can achieve big things within a couple of decades or less, as well as pointing out that NASA originally wanted to begin research on a Lunar colony with the Apollo program. Yeah... again, reading through this post, I guess it is.

I haven't played it, I just liked the pie chart

We might begin Terraforming by the end of the century, granted, it'd take well over 100-1000 years, but we'd likely start before 2100 to make things easier for the colonists.

All good points, and in a sci-fi world, we make highly efficient self repairing solar panels, irl, we make redundant systems and backups (And a flat area to put them). Hydroponics can grow food, and replace CO2 with O2, plus, since Mars puny atmosphere is almost 100% CO2, you can suck in the outside air, run it through an oxygenator, and poof! Breathable air, humans recycle N2 pretty well, so that's not to much of a problem, we mostly need to keep CO2 levels down.

Depends, if it's all manpower, a lot, if there's robots, it'll still be a lot, but humans won't need to expend as much energy, so it'll come from mostly Solar, and not calories, but you also have to factor in Mars' gravity, which could make things easier for both the robots and people, as the lighter weight could save significant amounts of energy on both sides.

500k would likely only pay for the resources to keep them alive, the rest of the funding would come from commercial satellite revenue, and Elon's "Fast internet idea" (http://gizmodo.com/elon-musks-space-internet-plan-is-moving-forward-1711008007) (Assuming it gets of the ground), and whatever else SpaceX can get between now and 2024, also, rapid reusable rockets will lower the cost per-launch dramatically.

Depends on what you mean by sustainable, if it's a sustainable colony, then when the population reaches at least 10,000 and has the ability to mine for resources/Turn those resources into useful stuff, if it's a matter of launching people, not very in terms of the resources used to get them there. In the WBW article (In the SpaceX Mars colony prediction OP) I think it said they plan to launch a "Colonial fleet" 1 year prior, and then end a huge amount of people all at once to Mars in the optimal launch window, and continue doing so until the population reaches 1,000,000 (Which is sometime before 2100), after that, people will either vacation there, or just wait their turn to go to Mars and expand the colony with smaller "Colonial fleets". If they have robots to help out, it may take a matter of years until they're self-sufficient in making complex items, after that, SpaceX won't need to send as much (Or none at all) Backup resources.

If the movie looked like it came from the 60s, it was October Sky.

As soon as I can afford it, I'm getting one

:| You're right, I was prying too much.

Plants are green (And Kerbals are green) And Minions are yellow (And the sun is Yellow), and without the Sun, plants die, Wait... where was I going with this?

Where are you going? Or rather, where are you now (Seeing as you'll reply to this in 3 hours)?

Since when did this discussion talk about MO? I know I'm sometimes really optimistic, but MO is WAY too optimistic, for 4 things, 1st: the amount of people they want to send to Mars per year is way to low for colonization, 2nd: The amount of people they're employing is ridiculously low, 3rd, while the budget may work with rapid-reusable rockets (If you perhaps double it for wiggle room), they have absolutely no way of funding it, and 4th, on the note of rapid-reusable rockets, even if they're around by the time they're ready to launch, (Which they probably will be), they have no way of guaranteeing that they'll be able to get a rocket launch every 2 years, much less rescue ships in case something goes wrong (Which it probably will). So... Lets not talk about them

Yeah, I think so. Also, look at our post counts

That was only because the Gov't didn't want to fund the Apollo program anymore since it was getting to expensive for their liking, we could've easily put a colony on the Moon by 1990-2010 (Maybe even before) if we continued the Apollo program. Also, isn't it '=/='? EDIT: Around Apollo 20, NASA planned to send astronauts to the Moon for Months at a time, which would've helped with Lunar colonization efforts.

Well, I'm not an expert on this stuff, so I can't help you, maybe Wikipedia can help?

Maybe a SABRE engine that works as a Nuclear air-breathing engine, as long as there's enough air, it produces thrust. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto

Is the area geologically active? That's the only explanation I can think of right now.

Like a scaled-up Skylon.

I was just pointing out that we progressed fast from the time we put a satellite into orbit to a man on the Moon, And I agree, we could've had a satellite around Earth before 1957, but we didn't, because of reasons.

Alright, I edited the OP, but to be fair, we went from satellites in really low LEO to people on the Moon in about 12 years.

Actually, Hyperloop would be a good transportation system on Mars because it needs a near vacuum environment to go to the extremely high velocities You'd need a lotta RTGs.

What about transportation with stuff closer to you, and not across the city, or another one entirely?