What would a Mars colony have to offer in the way of goods and services?

[Nibb31]

1 hour ago, Rakaydos said:

What value does an offsight backup service offer in terms of goods and services?

Nothing... if you're lucky. If not, it offers EVERYTHING. Everything left, anyway.

In what way is a Mars colony a backup of anything ?

You don't backup your household by sending one of your kids to climb Mount Everest. If your house burns down and you all die, then the surviving kid won't bring you, your family, or the house back. On the other hand, the risk of your kid dying in the Himalayas is much higher than your house burning down in the first place.

Edited January 19, 2016 by Nibb31

[Rakaydos]

2 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

In whasafetyalayass  n Mars colony a backup of anything ?

You don't backup your household by sending one of your kids to climb Mount Everest. If your house burns down and you all die, then the surviving kid won't bring you, your family, or the house back. On the other hand, the risk of your kid dying in the Himalayas is much higher than your house burning down in the first place.

And yet, shouks youre house be enveloped IN nuclear firestorm or superplague, the himalAyas may still be too close for safty.

 

Being remote IS the point.

[Albert VDS]

3 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

In what way is a Mars colony a backup of anything ?

You don't backup your household by sending one of your kids to climb Mount Everest. If your house burns down and you all die, then the surviving kid won't bring you, your family, or the house back. On the other hand, the risk of your kid dying in the Himalayas is much higher than your house burning down in the first place.

Well if that kid had a self sustaining hab and all the tools needed to keep it running then yeah it's not a bad place. Sure it won't bring the other family members back, but it would safe the family line.

[Kaos]

8 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

In what way is a Mars colony a backup of anything ?

You don't backup your household by sending one of your kids to climb Mount Everest. If your house burns down and you all die, then the surviving kid won't bring you, your family, or the house back. On the other hand, the risk of your kid dying in the Himalayas is much higher than your house burning down in the first place.

 

5 hours ago, Albert VDS said:

Well if that kid had a self sustaining hab and all the tools needed to keep it running then yeah it's not a bad place. Sure it won't bring the other family members back, but it would safe the family line.

It depends whether you think in terms of individuals or groups. If you think in terms of individuals, that is no backup at all, that is right. But if you think in terms of groups, this is a backup. The chance of the individual on Mount Everest are worse than the chance of the family at home, that is right. But the chance of  getting them all dying is smaller.

I for myself think of a compromise of both: I consider the fate of humanity relevant, but not as the only relevant thing. A colony on Mars would not save me, but was at least some kind of backup for humanity. If I would only see the backup reason for colonizing Mars, I would consider this a bit slim. But as additional reason I find it valid.

[AngelLestat]

These things needs to be seeing as long term.  Questions like: where is easy to survive?  It can be answered easily, but question like:  What place has more development potential?   Not so easy to answer, even if we are talking about Mars vs the middle of an African field.

Things to have into account:

Adventure: There is no real challenge to live in a boring place here on earth, many may go to another planet not because is easy, because it is difficult, because they can be the first, or as a way to do something meaningful with their lives.

Intellectual property: Imagine you are one of the best engineer or professional in a field, and someone said to you, we need the best, we have huge problems which need amazing solutions.. The paid is normal, the life is hard.. But the best people is trying to solve those issues,  Are you in?   (Who does not like the challenge to fulfill its ego?)
If someone studied how was the development of different cultures, is obvious to notice that harder and colder places, develop much faster than those who live in abundance, because they had the "need" to solve those problems for survive..  that encourage their tech and intellectual development, like the case of  Prehistoric Europe vs Africa, Or even Nordic countries vs others, they live better in hard conditions without extra resources.
The need makes you efficient and creative, that is the main good of those countries.  That people create wealth; selling services, knowledge, technology or just being efficient in everything they do.

Tourism: Many cities was build in the middle of nowhere in a desert without a single resource at sight, now some are very popular with millions living there (Dubai, Las Vegas, etc). 

Resources: That is something that everybody ask.. What you have to offer and at what price? Mostly asking for raw material or other commodities, as the only way to survive is selling everything you get to earth.
But does is not true, you can live without sell anything if you are able to be 100% sustainable by your own means. Or just with the help of the other 3 points already mentioned.
You will use mostly all resources for the same colony, and then you will select the most value things to sent earth, this will help you to get those things you can not get yet (or maybe never will). 

Investments:  These are sources of money that reach your colony for free, in fact a country can sustain itself if is good attracting investments . If someone thinks that can sale or offer a service (using local resources) at better price from the current (something really probably because at the beginning there is not much competence), they will do it. They can generate electricity at lower price, or make X product, etc. The investment needs bring all the tech needed for that, paid to locals for work or to get the resources needed to start to produce.  The investor is losing that money?  No.. is a capital that can offer profits, you may reinvest those profits to keep improving your product, or you may return some to earth, he/she can also sell that company wherever he/she wants recovering its initial investment, but the money stays in the "colony", it just change owner.

So to answer that question, we need to review all these points first (I might forgetting some), now I think we are in the time where we can take the first steps into a future colony.. First as science missions, then other niches. If mars really has potential or not.. I guess that should be studied and explained by Mars advocates in the Mars-Asteroids-Venus topic. At least studying what level of sustainability they can achieve and at what cost. 
   

[Nibb31]

6 hours ago, Rakaydos said:

And yet, shouks youre house be enveloped IN nuclear firestorm or superplague, the himalAyas may still be too close for safty.

Being remote IS the point.

My point was that statistics say that your kid has much more chances of dying while climbing Mount Everest than if your whole family stays safely at home. Especially if you buy a fire alarm and a fire extinguisher.

See, the problem is that a Mars colony is a solution looking for a problem. You're taking the outcome that you want for some romantic vision of a bright future, and they trying to justify it by finding a problem that it might solve. But when you look at the problem independently, either the problem is non-existent or it can be solved by much more trivial means without your complicated solution.

You're free to go and climb the Himalaya for the big adrenaline rush, but saying that you're doing it so that you will be a backup to your family's gene pool if the family house burns down, is rubbish.

The idea of a Mars colony as a backup for humanity is rubbish. If all life on Earth is destroyed, there's no bringing Humanity back, and there won't be anyone left to be sad that we're gone, so it ultimately won't matter to anyone.

Edited January 19, 2016 by Nibb31

[Rakaydos]

1 minute ago, Nibb31 said:

My point was that your kid has much more chances of dying while climbing Mount Everest than if your whole family stays safely at home. Especially if you buy a fire alarm and a fire extinguisher.

And my point was that, the point of an offsite backup, is that it's -off site-. Fire, hacking, nuclear war, the data in an offsite backup is safe, because it's NOT THERE when the worst happens.

That the worst is unlikely to happen just means you have more time to get ready, but when the consiquences is extinction, some form of insurance is in order.

[Nibb31]

22 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

And my point was that, the point of an offsite backup, is that it's -off site-. Fire, hacking, nuclear war, the data in an offsite backup is safe, because it's NOT THERE when the worst happens.

That the worst is unlikely to happen just means you have more time to get ready, but when the consiquences is extinction, some form of insurance is in order.

But what exactly are you backing up by sending a few hundred people to Mars ? Not our gene pool, our culture, our civilization, our biodiversity, our environment, our thousands of years of history...  The only thing you're saving is a few hundred people, and they will be in a much more precarious situation than the rest of Humanity ever was.

Those things aren't replaceable, so they can't be "backed up". It would be like backing up your computer by saving a couple of files on a flaky old 5.25" floppy, and then storing that floppy on top of a loud speaker. That's a rubbish backup strategy, just as a Mars colony is a rubbish way of preventing extinction.

If you want to save those things that aren't replaceable, then your prime responsibility, is to spend as much as you can to protect them because they are unique. Then, you might want to make records of them and store those copies in a vault somewhere as a secondary measure, but you don't need a Mars colony for that. 

Edited January 19, 2016 by Nibb31

[Kerbart]

As pointed out, there are certain aspects of Mars —the low gravity, the thin atmosphere, proximity to the asteroid belt—that seemingly make it a good choice for building the heavy stuff that goes into deep space manned exploration. Obviously there's no benefit if you have to drag all resources needed to Mars, so you'll have to develop mining and heavy industry on Mars. The question is of course if the lower cost of launching stuff from Mars will ever offset the initial investment of setting up manufacturing there in the first place and I don't have an answer to that.

If such a plan ever comes to fruition, one obvious strategy would be to set up Mars as a penal colony. It's pretty much impossible to escape from and it gives its inhabitants (at least the less-voluntary ones) a "new life" like never imagined. It would also make bad work conditions and high fatality rates something that will be deemed more acceptable.

Bring on the flames, but if we're ever going to see a Mars colony I'd not be surprised it would be like this.

[Rakaydos]

1 hour ago, Kerbart said:

As pointed out, there are certain aspects of Mars —the low gravity, the thin atmosphere, proximity to the asteroid belt—that seemingly make it a good choice for building the heavy stuff that goes into deep space manned exploration. Obviously there's no benefit if you have to drag all resources needed to Mars, so you'll have to develop mining and heavy industry on Mars. The question is of course if the lower cost of launching stuff from Mars will ever offset the initial investment of setting up manufacturing there in the first place and I don't have an answer to that.

If such a plan ever comes to fruition, one obvious strategy would be to set up Mars as a penal colony. It's pretty much impossible to escape from and it gives its inhabitants (at least the less-voluntary ones) a "new life" like never imagined. It would also make bad work conditions and high fatality rates something that will be deemed more acceptable.

Bring on the flames, but if we're ever going to see a Mars colony I'd not be surprised it would be like this.

It worked for Australia...

[DBowman]

2 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

But what exactly are you backing up by sending a few hundred people to Mars ? Not our gene pool, our culture, our civilization, our biodiversity, our environment, our thousands of years of history...  The only thing you're saving is a few hundred people, and they will be in a much more precarious situation than the rest of Humanity ever was.

It seems like you could sure 'back up' the information about our history, civilization, and culture - it's just information. We'd probably be able to save much more than was lost from the classical civilizations and during the dark ages (if we ignore the spectre of DRM). If the colony survived and grew it wouldn't be 'the same civ' or 'the same culture', but it would be a continuous evolution of our culture and civilization - which is about as much as you can hope for even from generation to generation here on Earth.

Current tech could store a massive sample of our gene pool in 'frozen germ cell form', like the current 'seed bank's. Soon we'll have the information and genome printing machines that we could store it all as information+manufacturing tech, which would be cheaper and more resilient. That could ensure a small physical colony has huge genetic diversity, up to the full content of sampling done on Earth. 

It's a bigger ask to preserve Earth biodiversity, but it seems in principle do-able - problems include scale and understanding biology well enough. Lets leave this one aside as it's a big discussion on it's own - but it would be terrible to save humanity and loose the living history of earth.

Depending on the disaster the Earth environment may or may not need saving (accidentally released slightly bugged 'targeted' military/terror virus kills off specifically humans - ( reaching ...) ) but I don't think anyone would scope 'backing up Earth environment' into the project.

The Mars Backup would be in a precarious position, but they'd be better off than all the dead billions. I'm not sure if they'd be more precarious than humanity ever was, I think there is evidence for a genetic bottle neck in our past that implies we got down to a (few) hundred thousand at one point, Mars Backup would have less numbers but more diversity and tech to draw on.

If you want a Mars Backup you'd have to structure it as a backup and invest in it's backup nature, if it was just some random science base that got 'let behind' by a disaster it could go either way (they'd sure be motivated to give it a shot...).

[tater]

5 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

The idea of a Mars colony as a backup for humanity is rubbish. If all life on Earth is destroyed, there's no bringing Humanity back, and there won't be anyone left to be sad that we're gone, so it ultimately won't matter to anyone.

That is simply by definition not true. If humanity were to permanently colonize another world (or deep space) with a genetically viable number of people in a way that required no trade/connection to Earth, then by definition that is a backup of humanity.

We can agree that Mars is not that place, and we can agree that it will not happen (be an actual "backup") in the next X hundred years. It is none the less not something that is fundamentally impossible. As it turns out, I think some of the required technology for real space colonization is also useful as a very cost-effective way to prevent or at least mitigate the risk of certain catastrophes (comet/asteroid impacts of the mass-extinction variety). Disease is another issue altogether (since if space travel were that cheap, we'd end up with some pathogens inoculating space travelers, then we have plague ships, in effect).

I'm clearly not sanguine about Mars as a colony, but you dismiss the notion of humanity off Earth very categorically, which makes no sense to me.

Edited January 20, 2016 by tater

[Finox]

Has anyone here read "The Case for Mars" by Robert Zubrin?   I would think with a group like the one surrounding KSP, with it's intense interest in space, that more people would have read that book.

I bring this up because there is a section in the aforementioned book that answers this threads primary question.   What can Mars export?   Well any metal with a value to weight ratio equal to or better than silver will be profitable, which includes gold, all platinum group and the rare earths, just to mention a few.   Also deuterium, essential in the future for fusion reactors and useful now in heavy water fission reactors.   A material which is light, 5-6 times more abundant on Mars than Earth, and a byproduct of the water electrolysis a mars colony would need for its life support.   Keep in mind you could export all the products I just mentioned profitably with current technology.

I could go on but others like new innovations, and the fact that most products an asteroid mining operation will need can be launched more cheaply from Mars than Earth have already been covered by others.   I'm just amazed that nobody else in this thread has brought that  book up before me. 

[fredinno]

8 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

These things needs to be seeing as long term.  Questions like: where is easy to survive?  It can be answered easily, but question like:  What place has more development potential?   Not so easy to answer, even if we are talking about Mars vs the middle of an African field.

Things to have into account:

Adventure: There is no real challenge to live in a boring place here on earth, many may go to another planet not because is easy, because it is difficult, because they can be the first, or as a way to do something meaningful with their lives.

Intellectual property: Imagine you are one of the best engineer or professional in a field, and someone said to you, we need the best, we have huge problems which need amazing solutions.. The paid is normal, the life is hard.. But the best people is trying to solve those issues,  Are you in?   (Who does not like the challenge to fulfill its ego?)
If someone studied how was the development of different cultures, is obvious to notice that harder and colder places, develop much faster than those who live in abundance, because they had the "need" to solve those problems for survive..  that encourage their tech and intellectual development, like the case of  Prehistoric Europe vs Africa, Or even Nordic countries vs others, they live better in hard conditions without extra resources.
The need makes you efficient and creative, that is the main good of those countries.  That people create wealth; selling services, knowledge, technology or just being efficient in everything they do.

Tourism: Many cities was build in the middle of nowhere in a desert without a single resource at sight, now some are very popular with millions living there (Dubai, Las Vegas, etc). 

Resources: That is something that everybody ask.. What you have to offer and at what price? Mostly asking for raw material or other commodities, as the only way to survive is selling everything you get to earth.
But does is not true, you can live without sell anything if you are able to be 100% sustainable by your own means. Or just with the help of the other 3 points already mentioned.
You will use mostly all resources for the same colony, and then you will select the most value things to sent earth, this will help you to get those things you can not get yet (or maybe never will). 

Investments:  These are sources of money that reach your colony for free, in fact a country can sustain itself if is good attracting investments . If someone thinks that can sale or offer a service (using local resources) at better price from the current (something really probably because at the beginning there is not much competence), they will do it. They can generate electricity at lower price, or make X product, etc. The investment needs bring all the tech needed for that, paid to locals for work or to get the resources needed to start to produce.  The investor is losing that money?  No.. is a capital that can offer profits, you may reinvest those profits to keep improving your product, or you may return some to earth, he/she can also sell that company wherever he/she wants recovering its initial investment, but the money stays in the "colony", it just change owner.

So to answer that question, we need to review all these points first (I might forgetting some), now I think we are in the time where we can take the first steps into a future colony.. First as science missions, then other niches. If mars really has potential or not.. I guess that should be studied and explained by Mars advocates in the Mars-Asteroids-Venus topic. At least studying what level of sustainability they can achieve and at what cost. 
   

Sure, you can make up reasons why Mars is a great place for investment with lots of potentail, but  a long term benefit can't be seen by most people if it takes longer than their lifetime to materialize, which is the case with Mars.

4 hours ago, Finox said:

Has anyone here read "The Case for Mars" by Robert Zubrin?   I would think with a group like the one surrounding KSP, with it's intense interest in space, that more people would have read that book.

I bring this up because there is a section in the aforementioned book that answers this threads primary question.   What can Mars export?   Well any metal with a value to weight ratio equal to or better than silver will be profitable, which includes gold, all platinum group and the rare earths, just to mention a few.   Also deuterium, essential in the future for fusion reactors and useful now in heavy water fission reactors.   A material which is light, 5-6 times more abundant on Mars than Earth, and a byproduct of the water electrolysis a mars colony would need for its life support.   Keep in mind you could export all the products I just mentioned profitably with current technology.

I could go on but others like new innovations, and the fact that most products an asteroid mining operation will need can be launched more cheaply from Mars than Earth have already been covered by others.   I'm just amazed that nobody else in this thread has brought that  book up before me. 

Sure, but could you compete against other sources, like the oceans, Greenland, or the Moon?

I would say no.

7 hours ago, Kerbart said:

As pointed out, there are certain aspects of Mars —the low gravity, the thin atmosphere, proximity to the asteroid belt—that seemingly make it a good choice for building the heavy stuff that goes into deep space manned exploration. Obviously there's no benefit if you have to drag all resources needed to Mars, so you'll have to develop mining and heavy industry on Mars. The question is of course if the lower cost of launching stuff from Mars will ever offset the initial investment of setting up manufacturing there in the first place and I don't have an answer to that.

If such a plan ever comes to fruition, one obvious strategy would be to set up Mars as a penal colony. It's pretty much impossible to escape from and it gives its inhabitants (at least the less-voluntary ones) a "new life" like never imagined. It would also make bad work conditions and high fatality rates something that will be deemed more acceptable.

Bring on the flames, but if we're ever going to see a Mars colony I'd not be surprised it would be like this.

Venus would be better, but you might be more limited in terms of space.

[fredinno]

5 hours ago, DBowman said:

It seems like you could sure 'back up' the information about our history, civilization, and culture - it's just information. We'd probably be able to save much more than was lost from the classical civilizations and during the dark ages (if we ignore the spectre of DRM). If the colony survived and grew it wouldn't be 'the same civ' or 'the same culture', but it would be a continuous evolution of our culture and civilization - which is about as much as you can hope for even from generation to generation here on Earth.

Current tech could store a massive sample of our gene pool in 'frozen germ cell form', like the current 'seed bank's. Soon we'll have the information and genome printing machines that we could store it all as information+manufacturing tech, which would be cheaper and more resilient. That could ensure a small physical colony has huge genetic diversity, up to the full content of sampling done on Earth. 

It's a bigger ask to preserve Earth biodiversity, but it seems in principle do-able - problems include scale and understanding biology well enough. Lets leave this one aside as it's a big discussion on it's own - but it would be terrible to save humanity and loose the living history of earth.

Depending on the disaster the Earth environment may or may not need saving (accidentally released slightly bugged 'targeted' military/terror virus kills off specifically humans - ( reaching ...) ) but I don't think anyone would scope 'backing up Earth environment' into the project.

The Mars Backup would be in a precarious position, but they'd be better off than all the dead billions. I'm not sure if they'd be more precarious than humanity ever was, I think there is evidence for a genetic bottle neck in our past that implies we got down to a (few) hundred thousand at one point, Mars Backup would have less numbers but more diversity and tech to draw on.

If you want a Mars Backup you'd have to structure it as a backup and invest in it's backup nature, if it was just some random science base that got 'let behind' by a disaster it could go either way (they'd sure be motivated to give it a shot...).

It would be cheaper and easier just to build underground bunkers, or prevent the disaster in the first place...

4 hours ago, tater said:

That is simply by definition not true. If humanity were to permanently colonize another world (or deep space) with a genetically viable number of people in a way that required no trade/connection to Earth, then by definition that is a backup of humanity.

We can agree that Mars is not that place, and we can agree that it will not happen (be an actual "backup") in the next X hundred years. It is none the less not something that is fundamentally impossible. As it turns out, I think some of the required technology for real space colonization is also useful as a very cost-effective way to prevent or at least mitigate the risk of certain catastrophes (comet/asteroid impacts of the mass-extinction variety). Disease is another issue altogether (since if space travel were that cheap, we'd end up with some pathogens inoculating space travelers, then we have plague ships, in effect).

I'm clearly not sanguine about Mars as a colony, but you dismiss the notion of humanity off Earth very categorically, which makes no sense to me.

THAT would make sense, but making a Mars Colony for that reason make no sense.

[kerbiloid]

Martian colony is a bunkhouse at a price of penthouse.

[fredinno]

You know, Robert Zubrin himself compared Mars to North America, and the Moon/Asteroids to Iceland and Greenland. I think that was a great comparison. Iceland and Greenland have less potential than N. America, like the Moon to Mars (keep in mind that Greenland was able to support grain farming when it ward first colonized).

And yet, the Vikings colonized only Greenland and Iceland- they never could gain a foothold on N.America because ships could not carry enough people there to sustain it. Vikings might have imagined a N. American-Viking colony, but it was centuries until long-durations sells carrying lots of people sailed the Atlantic, and the first European N. American colonies were built and sustained.

And that's the thing. Right now, we are like Vikings, in terms of exploration potential. We can't really sustain a Mars colony because we can't get there economically, and with large amounts of material to build a colony, or bring material back. Vikings ended up pouring into Iceland (and to a lesser extent, Greenland) despite those places having much less potential because it was economical. Like the Vikings to N. America, we have not found a killer app to colonize Mars. Did the Vikings know that N. America have huge amounts of precious metals (something that might have actually made a colony last a lot longer?) Not really, and neither have we found something that would be of sufficient value on Mars. We're just speculating on what we know. An eventual colony will take far longer to eventually materialize, and be far different than we could imagine.

[tater]

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

THAT would make sense, but making a Mars Colony for that reason make no sense.

 

Again, I'm not defending the choice of Mars, I'm more of an orbital colony person if it came down to it (you can control radiation shielding, g level, etc). Like I said above, anyplace is a "backup" if it has a critical mass of human beings, and is 100% self-sustaining. 

The rationales proposed are mostly silly, IMO. That said, I think that most arguments neglect the likely technologies that are somewhere on the distant horizon. Intelligent systems that can build, for example. If robots could build facilities someplace like Mars, then at least there's a destination to go to (Mars is no more a destination for humans than deep space is unless there is a 100% manufactured environment in place). Of course deep space still makes more sense

The argument about preventing/mitigating disasters being cheaper is certainly true in a probabilistic sense, but there are certain plausible disasters that cannot be mitigated effectively. Certainly "extinction" level disasters are not impossible, and the only prevention is likely being elsewhere, and the warning timeframe could be too short to do anything about it. Also, it's fair to observe that cost sort of doesn't matter. People tend to discuss it as if the cost spent to colonize space could otherwise be spent on some program they happen to prefer. If it ever happens it will be because the people with the money prefer to spend it on space. It's their money to do with as they please. Anyone who prefers other spending options should pony up the money themselves.

(edited to get it out of the quote)

Edited January 20, 2016 by tater

[RainDreamer]

Probably tourism. People would probably pay to live like Watney for a day, then go back to their fancy Mars hotel.

[Nibb31]

Just now, RainDreamer said:

Probably tourism. People would probably pay to live like Watney for a day, then go back to their fancy Mars hotel.

Not sure how many people can afford a two year vacation just for that.

[SargeRho]

27 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

Not sure how many people can afford a two year vacation just for that.

Assuming we won't have brachistochrone trajectory-capable engines by then, ie, Fusion rockets.

[tater]

3 hours ago, RainDreamer said:

Probably tourism. People would probably pay to live like Watney for a day, then go back to their fancy Mars hotel.

It should be relatively simple math to figure out what such a trip would cost (including X years food and lodging), then assume that a certain % of billionaires can "work from home" on their Mars trip. How many trips can you sell? 10?

Oh, we're talking only several months? That increases the number, certainly. "Regular" people can't go on multi-month vacations, however, they have jobs. So you need to entirely fund a permanent colony with hundreds or thousands of vacations? I guess we can work out the costs and see what the profit might be. 100,000 tourists each at $100,000 is 10 billion a year... gross. What's the cost of transport for 100k people to Mars per year?

Edited January 20, 2016 by tater

[Windspren]

I suppose they could get a government subsidy for running on 100% solar power...

[tater]

Tourism back of the envelope reality check:

F9 Heavy is aiming for what, ~$3k/kg to LEO? Just lifting one person, plus 6 months of consumables (1.8kg/day) to LEO is 1.2M$. Double that as an absurdly optimistic ballpark figure (total, RT vacation is 6 months, because "magic"). Cost is 2.4 M$. The colony needs to make a profit, and likely requires many billions per year of revenue. A normal markup might be X2, so your "tourism" is counting on how many people with 5 million $ to burn on a vacation to Mars per year? Every 1000 tourists is 2.5 B$ profit. Are there really many, many 1000s of people on earth with 5M$ as "throw away" money? I think not.

Edited January 20, 2016 by tater

[Rakaydos]

17 minutes ago, tater said:

Tourism back of the envelope reality check:

F9 Heavy is aiming for what, ~$3k/kg to LEO? Just lifting one person, plus 6 months of consumables (1.8kg/day) to LEO is 1.2M$. Double that as an absurdly optimistic ballpark figure (total, RT vacation is 6 months, because "magic"). Cost is 2.4 M$. The colony needs to make a profit, and likely requires many billions per year of revenue. A normal markup might be X2, so your "tourism" is counting on how many people with 5 million $ to burn on a vacation to Mars per year? Every 1000 tourists is 2.5 B$ profit. Are there really many, many 1000s of people on earth with 5M$ as "throw away" money? I think not.

The MCT is supposedly aiming for a more efficent price point- supposedly half a million for "coach",  so call it a million or two breakeven, and tourists in first class pay more.