[yitchelle]

I am surprised that as travel to Mars is becoming more of a reality, there are not a lot more folks trying to reach Mars for commercial gain.

I am correlating this back to when the Europeans are going around the globe and colonising every land mass they can land on. Why are should Mars be any different?

[majewsky]

Bringing a ton of gold to Europe from South America is waaaaaay cheaper than bringing a ton of anything to Europe from Mars.

[HeadsUpHigh]

As Elon Musk said you could have crates of cocaine on the surface of Mars ready to be transported back to Earth and it would still make more sense to buy it locally. It's just too expensive right now. Future spacecraft might change that but as with everything else this will come with scale and this scale right now doesn't have enough customers to justify itself.