There are people who are willing to live on Mars even as is it. Many
more would likely be interested, if it could be quilckly terraformed
into something passably Earthlike.
Frank Glover,
I have no problems with any number of folks migrating off to our
sub-frozen and cosmic TBI naked Mars where you could also get physically
pulverised at no extra charge, that is as long as it's on their fully
taxable nickel, of taking countless billions of dimes, and/or otherwise
taking thousands upon millions of their supposedly hard earned and thus
fully taxable dollars per soul, and that they each pay for their fair
share of all the unavoidable environmental impact on behalf of the rest
of us village idiots that are not sufficient billionaires.

No matter how bad things might be here, most humans don't want to
emigrate. Will you force them? Which ones, and how? And even if they
did... What would they ride?
Good point. I'd use very powerful stun-guns in order to get as many
folks as possible onto a fleet of fat-waverider "tomcat" spaceplanes,
such as perhaps something that's made by the skilled and affordable
expertise of China.

Even if you could make travel to Mars as cheap as intercontinental
air travel is today, and had the same number of spaceships, with the
same capacity, as all existing wide-bodied jets, can you even remove
people *fast enough* to keep up with population growth? (and will they
continue to breed after arrival?)
That's no longer our problem. It's strickly first multi-billionaire
come, first multi-billionaire served. The more of such dumbfounded
folks we manage to get off of the Earth, the better.

I don't have numbers, but I seriously doubt it. (and there's still
that willingness issue, and I'm completely ignoring the questions of
what to do with them on arrival, or if it's ethical to terraform Mars
if there's native life)
Again, so what's the difference, as long as we have all of their loot
and they can't possibly come back alive to complain, nor would they ever
be allowed back on Earth. Therefore, it's strictly a one-way 'Mars or
bust' ticket to ride.

There may be a great many reasons for space colonization and
terraforming, but population relief's the least likely or practical
one.
I totally agree, that we'll need to stick a whole lot closer to our
polluted and badly global warming Earth that's losing it's magnetosphere
by roughly .05%/yr, and otherwise about to go WW-III postal no matters
what. Although, technically Venus could become doable in more ways than
you'd think, and of every 19 months at least it's extremely close by.
Otherwise, we should be able to terraform our moon on behalf of better
accommodating surface robotics, and of establishing deep underground
habitats for accommodating our frail DNA. Of course, you'll also need
my LSE-CM/ISS in order to pull off much of any of that moon stuff
without your otherwise having to die for it.
-
Brad Guth


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