So I’ve heard in the news that some people are proposing a 600 person colony on Mars, which inevitably got me thinking about the bottom line.
How on Earth do you make enough money to make a Martian colony profitable? Sell novelty Martian rocks in exchange for food and water?
Realistically speaking, there are many potential sources of income from having a colony on Mars, but I just cannot imagine any of these turning a profit given the enormous distances, the incredible start up costs and the inevitable slow rate of initial colonization.
Even if we find vast quantities of minerals and need overseers to keep mining machines operating, it would take decades to break even.
So, is it even possible by today’s standards? I want to believe, but alas…
It sounds more like a scam. Collect a bunch of people that want to be colonists -way more than 600- and get them to donate to the project. The project still wouldn’t get anywhere near the billions you’d need, but after a few years when it all collapses, the organizers can cry about it over endless mojitos in some tropical paradise.
Theoretically, a Martian colony wouldn’t have to be profitable – just self-sustaining.
But frlankly, I’m with FuzzyOgre on this one.
It would be a heck of a lot easier to colonize Earth’s oceans, or maybe the Arctic ice sheet, than it would to colonize Mars. (EDIT: I would have suggested colonizing Antarctica, but by international agreement colonies on Antarctica are forbidden. You can set up a couple of scientific research stations, but that’s it.)
Mars One estimates their program will put 4 colonists on Mars for $6B.us. I will be believing that when I sees it. That is one quarter of what NASA spent on Apollo – in dollars of the day, the inflation adjustment would make it one twenty-eighth.
By colonizing, they save the expense and difficulty of doing a return trip. And, yes, they do not have to develop a lot of new technology. But those two things will not account for a full $164B.us in savings. It, umm, sounds too good to be true.
The Mars colony’s biggest export will, of course, be Survivor: Utopia Planitia, because, you know, those other survivor shows were so realistic :rolleyes:
Scientific knowledge has monetary value, although there are very few customers who are willing to pay for it. Governments routinely pays for research through grants and contracts. Some private foundations too. But that’s about it.
No they were not. To build or outfit a ship for an Atlantic voyage was incredibly
costly in the pre-industrial era. The government of Spain could not build 3 tiny ships
for Columbus until they finished a war with the Cordoba Caliphate.
Going to Mars now is a fool’s errand. The Chinese know that. The first “foreign colony”
of the Chinese will be on the Moon. Yes we can go to Mars, if the American people elect
another president having the mentality of George Dubya Bush.
So, if they are starting to talk about making a small colony on Mars, does that mean they have already perfected, or at least have the sufficient confidence, in the understanding and demonstration of creating a fully stable, controllable, self-sustaining, and closed-loop biosphere ?
Nobody was sending colonists, they were going. And setting up shop in the Americas didn’t require any technology which wasn’t already being used back home.
The Cordoba Caliphate had fallen centuries prior, Granada wasn’t a Caliphate but the last of the Taifas, there was no such thing as “the government of Spain” (Spain existed as a geographical entity equaling the Iberian Peninsula, but it wasn’t created as a political entity until 1841), the First Trip was financed by Isabel personally rather than by Castille…
Wouldnt the moon be a far more practical place to start for colonization and or study on life in space. Once we have a working infrastructure there I would think launching from the moon would be far easier/more practical with a small fraction of the escape velocity of earth.