bmks270 said:
Living on Mars is a pipe dream. We're not evolved for it. We can't even populate the poles. We're not going to populate Mars. A handful of humans on a suicide mission, sure. But even so much as a small village or tribe? Never, at least not for another few centuries.
All resources will have to shipped from Earth. That's going to take a looong time to build up infrastructure to have a permanent human presence.
There is also no incentive for any government or private entity to fund building Mars infrastructure or terraforming of Mars. Without incentive it will never have enough support to occur. Maybe if you can play Bitcoin miners or data centers on Mars, then you'd get some incentive, but wouldn't Earth's orbit be lower cost for those?
I think you are way off on your timescale. If I had asked you in 2010 how long would it take for somebody to develop a rocket that could take off and land in the same place, be fully reusable, launch dozens of satellites at a time, and for one company to launch over 100 launches of a reusable orbital class rocket without a failure in the same year, would you have guessed that was less than 1.5 decades away?
We are not going to fly to Mars and setup a fully sustainable colony by 2030. But I fully expect it before 2050 and hope I am alive to see it. But you are accurate in that if we relied on NASA to accomplish it, your timeline would be accurate and we would never be able to afford it.
All of the tools to survive on Mars are there and what is needed can be imported. The use of underground tunnels for housing and ability to use robots and self driving vehicles for many of the tasks makes the previously unthinkable much more possible. Instead of sending out 5 guys in a capsule with some limited supplies and telling them to setup a mine for the raw materials we need; you send up a couple dozen starships with dozen of robots custom built for the tasks and have them set it up for you. All they need is power to recharge periodically, either through solar or nuclear and they can continue working without the need for food, oxygen, etc. They can build structures for gardens, plant seeds, drill for water, etc. All the things that will be necessary to make the place livable for humans can be done before we ever send the first colonists there. That future is coming much faster than you think. I don't feel like it is the "future of mankind" or any of that nonsense, but Elon has the money to make it happen, and the reusability/return capability of starship will make it feasible/economically viable.
