[raducu]

But all the industrial scale processes we use require gravity, plenty of liquid water or solvents and a LOT of other infrastructure in place. Sure, you could pack up some tools in 10 ships 500 years ago and could start a colony in a hospitable part of Earth.

I'm convinced you cannot bootstrap a colony in an unhospitable place in the Solar System without ships 3-4 orders of magnitude above what we have today.

[valuearb]

If the BFR/Starship works as well as Musk envisions, it will be near 3 orders of magnitude better than current launch system.

For example, it will carry substantially larger payloads than the SLS, at less than 100th the cost per launch ($15M vs $3B), and launch almost daily, vs twice a year. The Shuttle flew every couple months, at a payload cost of over $30,000/lb, vs under $100/lb for the BFR.

Now I don’t think the first versions of the BFR will achieve those goals, but the crazy part is they are achievable. Reusability drives costs rapidly down towards to the cost of fuel, which is under $1M per launch.

The problem Elon faces is refurbishment costs. It seems premature to think that the BFR and Starship can fly ten flights with only minor refurbishment, and fly one hundred times before replacement. But the benefits of reuse are so huge that even if they fly only ten times each launch costs can be less than a Falcon 9.

[fooqux]

That's because it's the only way we currently know. I'm no materials scientist, but how many novel methods of making materials in microgravity will we discover in the next few decades? Or new, better materials.

It's all conjecture obviously. The point is that we probably don't need to carry all our heavy tools and infrastructure up there- we just need to find new (hopefully better) ways of creating the stuff we need.

[maccam94]

This is why I like the idea of building a spinning station in orbit and wrangling asteroids into orbit for mining and refining. Simulating a full Earth gravity in space would allow using existing industrial processes and allow humans to work there indefinitely without physical deterioration.

[gpm]

To address the things you raise directly: Mars has gravity, and if you have plenty of energy to melt it, it has plenty of water. Nuclear power can supply plenty of energy.