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

[tater]

I had to google MCT, lol. 100 tons landed on Mars. Tourism requires doubling that---they need to return. So even with their optimistic estimate, that's 1 million at cost, so 2 M retail (profit is paying for the colony). Also, if you want to use the MCT instead of a magic propulsion (fusion), then the mission goes from maybe 6 months to 1.5+ years. So for a million $ profit/person, they'd need 1000 of these tourists per year just to make a billion bucks. Seems like a bad business model to me.

[Rakaydos]

3 minutes ago, tater said:

I had to google MCT, lol. 100 tons landed on Mars. Tourism requires doubling that---they need to return. So even with their optimistic estimate, that's 1 million at cost, so 2 M retail (profit is paying for the colony). Also, if you want to use the MCT instead of a magic propulsion (fusion), then the mission goes from maybe 6 months to 1.5+ years. So for a million $ profit/person, they'd need 1000 of these tourists per year just to make a billion bucks. Seems like a bad business model to me.

Actually, the half million coach price WAS for a 1.5 year round trip. It explicitly includes free passage back.

And that hundred tons to mars is a 100 passanger load. Clearly there's some form of recycling involved.

Edited January 20, 2016 by Rakaydos

[tater]

$250/kg? RT to Mars? If they quote "coach" then profit is built in... so it's actually less than that. All that means is that it would take MORE tourists to generate the needed billions. 500k and 1.5 years still means no one with a job can go, and now you need 10s of thousands to make your billion profit instead of just 1000s.

Edited January 20, 2016 by tater

[wumpus]

On 1/16/2016 at 0:50 AM, Spaceception said:

A vacation joint, Unless we develop ultrafast propulsion technology's, like fusion drives, getting stuff from Mars to Earth would be stupid and worthless. If it were the question of the Moon, and NEO's, it'd be metals.

As a vacation joint, it would be so for asteroid miners.  At a half-million a pop (from Earth), it won't be a destination for the .01%ers after the first few .1%ers scrounge up enough money to go.  The real kicker is I don't see any reasons for humans to be onsite for asteroid mining (which might barely make sense now if you drop entire asteroids on reasonably safe trajectories onto Earth).

On the other hand, there is always the question of who would immigrate to Mars, and what type of IP such a colony would produce.  I'm still in the camp that it is Vineland and we are Vikings: we really can't afford to go that far.

[RainDreamer]

Considering the point when we can seriously thinking about setting a permanent colony on another body is still very far away, I think we can't use economic calculation based on current prices. Would have to extrapolate them and considering other factors like new technology. I think it is still way too far ahead for us to make any meaningful prediction though. So just have fun with it.

[fredinno]

14 hours ago, tater said:

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?

It takes 4-6months to get to Mars, and 4-6 months to get back.

So, no, you would be going on a multi-month vacation going to Mars.

[fredinno]

12 hours ago, Rakaydos said:

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.

Even the numbers given by tater were absurdly optimistic, since Mars Direct was supposed to cost Five Billion/4 people. Granted, this includes development costs, and assumes that this is NASA doing it in a CCDev sort of way, where commercial companies also input money into. However, considering Mars Direct was already considered absurdly optimistic, let's keep the costs at about 4-6 Billion/4 people. That means 1 Billion per trip. Who has that money?

 

As I said earlier, beginning long- term habitation of Mars now is about as impossible as it was for the Vikings to colonize N.America.

Like the Vikings, we need better ships to colonize Mars.

[tater]

44 minutes ago, fredinno said:

It takes 4-6months to get to Mars, and 4-6 months to get back.

So, no, you would be going on a multi-month vacation going to Mars.

I know this, I was thinking he was talking about some magic fusion drive.

[Rakaydos]

35 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Even the numbers given by tater were absurdly optimistic, since Mars Direct was supposed to cost Five Billion/4 people. Granted, this includes development costs, and assumes that this is NASA doing it in a CCDev sort of way, where commercial companies also input money into. However, considering Mars Direct was already considered absurdly optimistic, let's keep the costs at about 4-6 Billion/4 people. That means 1 Billion per trip. Who has that money?

 

As I said earlier, beginning long- term habitation of Mars now is about as impossible as it was for the Vikings to colonize N.America.

Like the Vikings, we need better ships to colonize Mars.

Which is why SpaceX is focused on building better ships.

[tater]

37 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Even the numbers given by tater were absurdly optimistic, since Mars Direct was supposed to cost Five Billion/4 people. Granted, this includes development costs, and assumes that this is NASA doing it in a CCDev sort of way, where commercial companies also input money into. However, considering Mars Direct was already considered absurdly optimistic, let's keep the costs at about 4-6 Billion/4 people. That means 1 Billion per trip. Who has that money?

 

As I said earlier, beginning long- term habitation of Mars now is about as impossible as it was for the Vikings to colonize N.America.

Like the Vikings, we need better ships to colonize Mars.

I was intentionally optimistic ('cause I think it's silly). Obviously I was also only talking about immediate costs, I wasn't amortizing the many billions required to create a destination---Mars is only someplace for people to visit if people build someplace for people to visit. Mars is no less a built envoronment for people than an O'neil colony would be. Every cubic meter of inhabited space on Mars will be... a space station, just on the ground (which has pluses, but also minuses).

[Finox]

On 1/20/2016 at 1:33 AM, fredinno said:

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.

Is your entire reason for being in this thread to convince yourself or others that space colonization is a mistake?   It just doesn't seem like you're willing to accept any view that colonizing Mars or anywhere else is possible.   It's a point I rather strongly disagree with, sure the startup costs are enormous but they were for the Virginia Company as well.   Sure the distances are far and the journey dangerous, but so it was for the Pilgrims.   We can go back and forth over why this commodity may or may not be profitable, but the first pioneers won't go to Mars to make a buck, they'll go for the chance to settle a new world free from the old.   Money would really just be the icing on the cake.

Also; 95% of the worlds platinum comes from South Africa and production isn't great so if you found a decent deposit on Mars (the bar being quite low), it would be profitable today.

Also, Also; the viking didn't fail to settle North America because they lacked the technology they failed because only the Greenland settlements knew about North America and they had less than 1000 people combined.   There just weren't enough people available to settle the new world.   Furthermore they didn't spread the word back to Europe, or Iceland for that matter of the existence of this new land.   It's alot more complicated then just saying the viking didn't have the technology.

[Robotengineer]

31 minutes ago, Finox said:

Is your entire reason for being in this thread to convince yourself or others that space colonization is a mistake?   It just doesn't seem like you're willing to accept any view that colonizing Mars or anywhere else is possible.   It's a point I rather strongly disagree with, sure the startup costs are enormous but they were for the Virginia Company as well.   Sure the distances are far and the journey dangerous, but so it was for the Pilgrims.   We can go back and forth over why this commodity may or may not be profitable, but the first pioneers won't go to Mars to make a buck, they'll go for the chance to settle a new world free from the old.   Money would really just be the icing on the cake.

Also; 95% of the worlds platinum comes from South Africa and production isn't great so if you found a decent deposit on Mars (the bar being quite low), it would be profitable today.

Also, Also; the viking didn't fail to settle North America because they lacked the technology they failed because only the Greenland settlements knew about North America and they had less than 1000 people combined.   There just weren't enough people available to settle the new world.   Furthermore they didn't spread the word back to Europe, or Iceland for that matter of the existence of this new land.   It's alot more complicated then just saying the viking didn't have the technology.

The primary difference between Mars colonization and early European settlements in North America is that the European settlers had valuable commodities (furs, tobacco, etc) that they could sell to Europe for a profit, whereas a Mars colony would have no such resources, and even if it did the cost of getting it off of Mars and on it's way to Earth would be rather large, unless it had a reusable vehicle that required minimal maintenance. If the vehicle is not reusable, it would be like the colonists having to build a new ship every time they send stuff back to Europe. The MCT is supposed to be able to do this, but I have my doubts as to who reusable it will actually be. 

Why would you mine platinum on Mars when you can access platinum rich asteroids for much less ∆v? 

[Nibb31]

1 hour ago, Finox said:

It's a point I rather strongly disagree with, sure the startup costs are enormous but they were for the Virginia Company as well.   Sure the distances are far and the journey dangerous, but so it was for the Pilgrims.   We can go back and forth over why this commodity may or may not be profitable, but the first pioneers won't go to Mars to make a buck, they'll go for the chance to settle a new world free from the old.   Money would really just be the icing on the cake.

You can disagree with reality as much as you want, it's not going to change. Anyone who uses analogies of the colonization of America in the 17th Century as a point of comparison to today's world is completely delusional. People emigrate for only two reasons: safety and comfort, in order to provide a better life for themselves and their family. The Pilgrims were poor and persecuted, therefore they sought a better life that awaited them in America. There is no better life awaiting anybody on Mars. It is not safer or more comfortable, and it's a pretty bad place to want to raise children.

You would never be "free" because, even in a self-sufficient colony, you would be dependent on technology, supplies, and energy to keep you breathing and alive, which would all have to be supplied by someone else, either a corporation expecting to make money out of you, or a government for who knows what reason.

If you want to settle a new place, you can set up a homestead in the Australian outback, in the middle of the Sahara, or set up shop on an oil-rig in the middle of the ocean, like these guys. Nowadays, the poor and persecuted want to emigrate to the EU or the USA, not Mars.

Quote

Also; 95% of the worlds platinum comes from South Africa and production isn't great so if you found a decent deposit on Mars (the bar being quite low), it would be profitable today.

Platinum is used for 2 things: catalytic converters on petrol powered cars and jewellery. As personal transportation is probably going to switch to renewable sources over the next 20 years (we can't keep on burning stuff forever), demand for catalytic converters is going to decrease. The reason platinum is valuable for jewellery is because it's rare. If you increase production by importing it from off-world, you crash the market and it is no longer valuable, and soon it becomes unprofitable.

Unless we find some source of free energy in the future, the energy required to extract hundreds of tons of minerals on another planet, to get it out of the gravity well of that planet and to transfer it to Earth will always be immensely expensive. You're better off recycling catalytic converters or even extracting platinum traces from seawater.

Edited January 24, 2016 by Nibb31

[Bill Phil]

On January 19, 2016 at 10:29 AM, 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.

The thing with Mars is that it has an alien environment to our biology. Heck, pretty much all of the biosphere. At least the Americas had grass, air, potable water, food resources, etc already present. It's completely different from Mars, or any other place in the solar system. Yeah, the elements are there, and some of the molecules and compounds. But you need to use a lot of energy to build the colony, the machinery it needs to use the resources, and the people to watc it and push papers. It's expensive. And not very beneficial. That needs to change for colonies to be likely.

[tater]

This is the question the thread is about:

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

The answer is "nothing." No goods, and no services that could not also be offered outside of a gravity well.

This doesn't mean humans cannot colonize space, it just means that Mars as a target is not viable from an economic/trade standpoint. Perhaps at some point terraforming Mars might become a possibility, which would make it far more attractive, obviously. 

Resources? More, and cheaper resources in space. 

Power? Endless solar in space.

Human factors? This largely leans to space as you could make 1g spun habs, but there is something certainly to being on a planet. Of course people on an L5 station can simply visit earth for a real planetside experience.

One transformative technology mentioned above is space elevators, though. 

[Exploro]

On 1/19/2016 at 4:46 PM, 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.

The point of moving humanity off-world and into the Solar System is not a way to "bring humanity back"; rather its to ensure Our continued existence. Part of the reason we have gotten where we are today as a species has been the fact that we have spread ourselves out across the Earth; so while local cataclysms may cause the destruction of some of us; the vast majority of humanity continues on unaffected. Much is the same rational for pushing deeper into the Solar System. 

To concede a single Mars settlement alone would not be enough to ensure our species survival in the event of some future cataclysm that results in the destruction of humanity on Earth. However a thriving Martian community comprised of numerous outposts and settlements certainly might. Further Mars would be one of many suitable places to start that process; emphasis on "one of many ". There are other places like the Moon; Titan, and large asteroids that would make for potential places for humans to colonize. However Mars has certain advantages over some of the other locations. Unlike say Titan or asteroids; Mars reasonably close enough for us to reach with our present level of technology in a reasonable period of time. And while the environment of Mars is far harsher than that of Earth; it is more hospitable than locations such as the Moon. Thus Mars represents a good starting place to initiate the transition from a terrestrial civilization into a interplanetary one and one who's destiny is not tied to that of the Earth's.

[fredinno]

3 hours ago, Finox said:

Is your entire reason for being in this thread to convince yourself or others that space colonization is a mistake?   It just doesn't seem like you're willing to accept any view that colonizing Mars or anywhere else is possible.   It's a point I rather strongly disagree with, sure the startup costs are enormous but they were for the Virginia Company as well.   Sure the distances are far and the journey dangerous, but so it was for the Pilgrims.   We can go back and forth over why this commodity may or may not be profitable, but the first pioneers won't go to Mars to make a buck, they'll go for the chance to settle a new world free from the old.   Money would really just be the icing on the cake.

Also; 95% of the worlds platinum comes from South Africa and production isn't great so if you found a decent deposit on Mars (the bar being quite low), it would be profitable today.

Also, Also; the viking didn't fail to settle North America because they lacked the technology they failed because only the Greenland settlements knew about North America and they had less than 1000 people combined.   There just weren't enough people available to settle the new world.   Furthermore they didn't spread the word back to Europe, or Iceland for that matter of the existence of this new land.   It's alot more complicated then just saying the viking didn't have the technology.

Colonize NEOs and the Moon, then we can talk about the deep gravity well that is Mars.

 

I'm not saying we shouldn't colonize Mars, I'm saying the near future is not the time to. Doing so would only create a money Vaccum that would ultimately discredit expansion into space.

[Finox]

2 hours ago, Robotengineer said:

The primary difference between Mars colonization and early European settlements in North America is that the European settlers had valuable commodities (furs, tobacco, etc) that they could sell to Europe for a profit...

Why would you mine platinum on Mars when you can access platinum rich asteroids for much less ∆v? 

No, they really didn't have anything to sell in North America for decades.   I read about the Virginia colony trying to export all sorts of stuff like clapboard and sasparella root to try to make money for the colony.   Ultimately they found tobacco but it took decades for that to make a profit, and only for the southern colonies.   The Mid-Atlantic and New England generated their wealth through trade, mostly by selling common items like food, construction materials, naval goods and similar such mundane articles to the Caribbean.   Mars could do something similar with asteroid colonies as it would be far cheaper to lift common bulky goods like food and mining equipment from Mars then from Earth.   I guess our viewpoints are totally different here, I regard Platinum or something similar as a bonus to colonization while others seem to see it as a prerequisite.   As for why you would mine platinum on Mars as opposed to the asteroid belt... let me turn it around and ask why you wouldn't?   One doesn't have to be the lowest cost producer to make a profit.

I'm curious; do you regard the prospects of Mars colonization as impossible without an already existing business plan?   I really don't think one is needed, Mars won't need much in the way of imports (some semiconductors and medicines) to survive, that's why its so attractive.   

 

[tater]

Mars would require literally everything to be imported for a very long time. As 3D printing matures, this could obviously change as long as you have a robust capability to produce printing stock. 

As I said above a ways, the idea of an "off site backup" of humanity is not absurd, but the definition is a wholly self-sufficient colony with appropriate population for genetic diversity. If it requires any contact with earth at all, it's by definition not a backup.

[Finox]

21 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Colonize NEOs and the Moon, then we can talk about the deep gravity well that is Mars.

 

I'm not saying we shouldn't colonize Mars, I'm saying the near future is not the time to. Doing so would only create a money Vaccum that would ultimately discredit expansion into space.

Respectfully sir, I think you underestimate the advantages of Mars.   It has easily exploitable supplies of Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Iron and other materials in its air and dirt.   Combine that with its 24 hour day-night cycle and you have a fairly easy place to start living on.   We can settle Mars now with current technology, I have seen no evidence refuting this and much supporting it.   Feel happy, the future of space colonization is bright and not as far off as you think!

[Nibb31]

33 minutes ago, Finox said:

I'm curious; do you regard the prospects of Mars colonization as impossible without an already existing business plan?   I really don't think one is needed, Mars won't need much in the way of imports (some semiconductors and medicines) to survive, that's why its so attractive.   

Mars will need to import pretty much everything for many decades. You seem to be seriously underestimating the supply chains that are needed to build pretty much anything our modern society relies on. Something as simple as an electric motor requires several different materials (copper, ferrite, plastic, grease, etc...) which need to be extracted, processed, packaged, cleaned, etc... Something as simple as an air filter is based on fibers, which are extracted from paper, which relies on plants, which relies on agriculture, which relies on fertilizers and machinery, and rubber, which relies on hydrocarbons, which relies also on machinery, and a bio-geological process that never existed on Mars... 

On Earth we have supply chains for everything that you need to run a factory (power, supplies, parts, tools, cleaning fluids...). Every part of our economy relies on other parts to work. On Earth, you can't build a single self -sufficient factory on Earth that extracts dirt from the ground and turns it into cars (including engines, seats, tires, air-filters...) or mobile phones. Building something like on Mars that is a pipe dream, and an engineering nightmare.

And yes, going to Mars will require some sort of business plan, because going there will be expensive. It will have to be paid for by corporations or governments, and you don't get corporations or governments to spend billions of dollars without some sort of return on investment. 

This is how humans do things: Problem => Solution.

Your Pilgrims didn't go to America by accident. They had a Problem: they were persecuted. Their Solution: find a way to escape persecution and create a place where they could live in peace. Then they figured that a good way of doing that was to find a place in this new world that people were talking about.

In the case of colonizing Mars, you are trying to find a Problem that suits your Solution. The trouble is, there is no Problem that a Mars colony solves, therefore there is no rational reason for any rational organization to invest billions of dollars in a Mars colony.

 

Edited January 24, 2016 by Nibb31

[Robotengineer]

 

2 hours ago, Finox said:

No, they really didn't have anything to sell in North America for decades.   I read about the Virginia colony trying to export all sorts of stuff like clapboard and sasparella root to try to make money for the colony.   Ultimately they found tobacco but it took decades for that to make a profit, and only for the southern colonies.   The Mid-Atlantic and New England generated their wealth through trade, mostly by selling common items like food, construction materials, naval goods and similar such mundane articles to the Caribbean.   Mars could do something similar with asteroid colonies as it would be far cheaper to lift common bulky goods like food and mining equipment from Mars then from Earth.   I guess our viewpoints are totally different here, I regard Platinum or something similar as a bonus to colonization while others seem to see it as a prerequisite.   As for why you would mine platinum on Mars as opposed to the asteroid belt... let me turn it around and ask why you wouldn't?   One doesn't have to be the lowest cost producer to make a profit.

I'm curious; do you regard the prospects of Mars colonization as impossible without an already existing business plan?   I really don't think one is needed, Mars won't need much in the way of imports (some semiconductors and medicines) to survive, that's why its so attractive.   

 

I refer to Nibb31's answer, except for one thing. On the platinum issue, a large amount of platinum from space entering the market would crash the platinum market. You would want to get your platinum as cheaply as possible, so getting it from the asteroid belt makes more sense than getting it from Mars, unless Mars had something that would make it cheaper in the long run to do it there rather than at an asteroid.

Also, the only reason the Pilgrims or any colonial venture could establish a colony was because investors would fund them with the expectation that they would get a return. A Mars colony doesn't offer any near term returns on investment. Of course, Elon Musk isn't your typical investor and his goal isn't the same as the earlier colonial investors. 

1 hour ago, Nibb31 said:

Mars will need to import pretty much everything for many decades. You seem to be seriously underestimating the supply chains that are needed to build pretty much anything our modern society relies on. Something as simple as an electric motor requires several different materials (copper, ferrite, plastic, grease, etc...) which need to be extracted, processed, packaged, cleaned, etc... Something as simple as an air filter is based on fibers, which are extracted from paper, which relies on plants, which relies on agriculture, which relies on fertilizers and machinery, and rubber, which relies on hydrocarbons, which relies also on machinery, and a bio-geological process that never existed on Mars... 

On Earth we have supply chains for everything that you need to run a factory (power, supplies, parts, tools, cleaning fluids...). Every part of our economy relies on other parts to work. On Earth, you can't build a single self -sufficient factory on Earth that extracts dirt from the ground and turns it into cars (including engines, seats, tires, air-filters...) or mobile phones. Building something like on Mars that is a pipe dream, and an engineering nightmare.

And yes, going to Mars will require some sort of business plan, because going there will be expensive. It will have to be paid for by corporations or governments, and you don't get corporations or governments to spend billions of dollars without some sort of return on investment. 

This is how humans do things: Problem => Solution.

Your Pilgrims didn't go to America by accident. They had a Problem: they were persecuted. Their Solution: find a way to escape persecution and create a place where they could live in peace. Then they figured that a good way of doing that was to find a place in this new world that people were talking about.

In the case of colonizing Mars, you are trying to find a Problem that suits your Solution. The trouble is, there is no Problem that a Mars colony solves, therefore there is no rational reason for any rational organization to invest billions of dollars in a Mars colony.

 

A Mars colony does address the problem of making our species a multiplanetary one. This isn't a traditional problem like the ones we've faced before because nothing immediate is on the line, and the benefits of making our species multiplanetary will not be reaped by our generation.

1 hour ago, Finox said:

Respectfully sir, I think you underestimate the advantages of Mars.   It has easily exploitable supplies of Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Iron and other materials in its air and dirt.   Combine that with its 24 hour day-night cycle and you have a fairly easy place to start living on.   We can settle Mars now with current technology, I have seen no evidence refuting this and much supporting it.   Feel happy, the future of space colonization is bright and not as far off as you think!

It has all of the essential elements yes, but how are you going to turn those into the complex chemicals, alloys and molecules that go into the things we use everyday? Define settle. Do you mean settle as in establish a semi-permanent base, or do you mean settle as in create an actual city on Mars? I believe we can do the former with current tech, but not the latter. 

Please do not take my statements as being anti-colonization, I am for colonization, I simply do not think that blind optimism is a good substitute for skeptical realism. 

[tater]

BTW, anyone serious about colonizing Mars should start off by buying a couple Bigelow BA 330s, tethering them, and spinning hem up to martian equivalent gravity, then putting people there for ISS long duration mission timespans. We have basically zero data on the long term consequences of living anywhere between 1g and ~0g. It's not certain people could live on the Moon for long periods without health consequences. If deterioration is extremely slow, it might not be a huge problem for people born on Earth, but people who were never on Earth in the first place, this could be a real issue.

So until we characterize a range of acceptable gravitational acceleration for human wellbeing, we cannot even accurately list candidate worlds. It might turn out that the best choice is in fact to fix Venus for such a venture (if 1/3g turns out to be profoundly bad for people). 

Meanwhile, space habs can be spun to provide what we know is sufficient for people to live.

[Wjolcz]

Martian Jersey Shore?

I would imagine it would be a nice place for a mining colony/company in the distant future. You could go grab asteroids and bring them back to Mars to sell materials to the new-comers, or use the materials extracted from asteroids and the planet itself to build small cities and rent them to space agnecies (or to people with amnesia and mutants for whatever reason).

Unless there are no materials to build spaceships and colonies on Mars.

[Finox]

5 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

Mars will need to import pretty much everything for many decades. You seem to be seriously underestimating the supply chains that are needed to build pretty much anything our modern society relies on. Something as simple as an electric motor requires several different materials (copper, ferrite, plastic, grease, etc...) which need to be extracted, processed, packaged, cleaned, etc... Something as simple as an air filter is based on fibers, which are extracted from paper, which relies on plants, which relies on agriculture, which relies on fertilizers and machinery, and rubber, which relies on hydrocarbons, which relies also on machinery, and a bio-geological process that never existed on Mars... 

On Earth we have supply chains for everything that you need to run a factory (power, supplies, parts, tools, cleaning fluids...). Every part of our economy relies on other parts to work. On Earth, you can't build a single self -sufficient factory on Earth that extracts dirt from the ground and turns it into cars (including engines, seats, tires, air-filters...) or mobile phones. Building something like on Mars that is a pipe dream, and an engineering nightmare.

And yes, going to Mars will require some sort of business plan, because going there will be expensive. It will have to be paid for by corporations or governments, and you don't get corporations or governments to spend billions of dollars without some sort of return on investment. 

This is how humans do things: Problem => Solution.

Your Pilgrims didn't go to America by accident. They had a Problem: they were persecuted. Their Solution: find a way to escape persecution and create a place where they could live in peace. Then they figured that a good way of doing that was to find a place in this new world that people were talking about.

In the case of colonizing Mars, you are trying to find a Problem that suits your Solution. The trouble is, there is no Problem that a Mars colony solves, therefore there is no rational reason for any rational organization to invest billions of dollars in a Mars colony.

 

I would refer you to Zubrin's "The case for Mars" to refute most of what you say, read it and let me know what you think.   The problems you layout are not as big as you think they are, I know things like agriculture and manufacturing are foreign to the majority of westerners who aren't involved in them on a daily basis.   However it is possible to harvest materiel's and make things without the full spectrum of modern technology.   Human's are creative creatures they can improvise with limited resources, its what we've done throughout our entire history as a species, why not on Mars?

I must ask if you think going to Mars for the sake of science is worthwhile?   I think what we can learn a great deal from studying another planet, isn't that reason enough to go there?   With what we spend maintaining bases in Antarctica, surely we can maintain a base on Mars for research purposes.   With Martian launch windows occurring about every 2 years, the incentive to produce as much as you can locally will be immense, you'll be surprised how creative people get in solving those problems.   It's not like a new Martian base or colony would be anything like what you're used to on Earth.   It would be a fairly spartan.