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Once We Have A Self Sustaining Mars Colony - Then What?
I've been looking at some the incredibly expensive steps which are planned for a Mars colony. From the massive rockets, massive transports and things like droves of robots that will dig out an underground habitat and so on and so on and so on... Sounds like Trillions of dollars will be needed over several decades. Of course we all know that as time goes on and cost estimates steadily rise, the goals will shrink and shrink, until in the end we land a couple of astronauts for a couple of weeks. But even if a self sustaining colony of say a 100 people is established, what will the human race get in return for all this money and effort? Finding life on Mars? NASA has made it clear that's not a primary concern. The current MSL couldn't identify life is it was sitting in a field of moss. And the next rover won't be able to either, instead looking for signs of...ancient life, and identify samples for some....future sample return mission and to support some...future human habitation. THE MSL 202O CAN DO EVERYTHING.....EXCEPT DIRECTLY SEARCH FOR LIFE. http://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/news/w...ws&NewsID=1678 It's yet another rover that's meant to get a...sample return mission and colony instead of directly searching for life. That's just another self-serving deception on the part of NASA, at the expense of science and what the public wants. For the incredible cost of a manned landing, we could send a hundred much more ambitious rovers far faster and cover far more ground than a manned landing. Allow the human race to survive an impact? It's far cheaper and easier to spot, divert or destroy an asteroid than this colony. Inspiration? For what? Colonies around Jupiter? Again, for the same end, just more inspiration? For resources? What doesn't the Earth have that the moon or asteroids have? For national pride? Spending that money directly improving America would do far more in that respect. If an agency is going to spend Trillions of precious research money on a single project it needs to be thoroughly justified so as to be easily convincing. So far I only see 'planting the flag' as the only widespread appeal, and that's not enough. |
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