I don't think it is. The hard part is building Starship, which is being done anyway.
After that, it's conceivable that the cost to travel there will eventually fall to a few million or tens of millions of dollars per person. At that point, a handful of rich people could drive enough demand for the development of colonization technology that it becomes self-funding.
We can't live on mars without living inside massive radiation shielding probably underground. There won't be enough industry this century for Mars to be self sustaining if we start tomorrow.
For the non-scientist living on mars would be living in a cave worse than that enjoyed by most poor people in absolute boredom 99.5% of the time.
Your martian adventure will cost an appreciable portion of a billion dollars, include a return ticket, and continual support from home. It will be a very high cost ammortized over few units and it will never be self funding.
> Its basically impossible to finance a meaningful try at colonizing mars without national resources
That's a separate point: Citizens don't really get a say in how national resources are deployed, though the theatre of elections certainly makes them think they do (Recall that dude at Davos who said, "There are 150 people who run the world, all of them are men, and none of them are politicians"?).
The point is: you and I, unless we own private aerospace companies, don't get a say and don't matter in the question of "why Mars".
We'll certainly be allowed and encouraged to "make your voices heard" and many, including politicians and "representatives", will protest about the trillions of "taxpayer dollars that could be put to a better use". But the people who are doing the innovation and taking the most risk with their own capital will decide.
> Again the capitalists will be contributing little […] The person driving the school bus risks more and contributes more than the parasites.
Your basic assumptions are wrong and troubled by motivated reasoning. But I'm sure you can already tell where you are wrong so I won't condescend. Certainly you seem to have strong feelings, which is cool and all.
> We aren't. It's the individuals who own the resources and money to implement space flight and Mars colonisation that are going to Mars.
> But the people who are doing the innovation and taking the most risk with their own capital will decide.
> will protest about the trillions of "taxpayer dollars that could be put to a better use"
There aren't any individuals that own the resources to implement space flight and mars colonization you yourself admitted as much with the "trillions of taxpayer dollars" Those last 2 quotes contradicting themselves are literally back to back
> Citizens don't really get a say in how national resources are deployed
Every two years we do in the US.
> Your basic assumptions are wrong and troubled by motivated reasoning. But I'm sure you can already tell where you are wrong so I won't condescend.
You have condescended to me but you haven't explained how I'm wrong and I don't think I am. If so pray tell.
Money as a fundamental unit of value outside of economics leads to nonsensical conclusions like taking a money guy who presently employs a stable of geniuses who themselves sit atop the result of man millennia of labor by singular irreplaceable people and assigning credit to the current idiot who owns the works.
It leads you to imagine that owning a hundred billion is as valuable a contribution as a million teachers or that someone who risks 90% of his fortune by ceding a bigger piece of the economic pie to another billionaire and thereby downsizing to fewer trips to space is somehow risking a billion times more than someone actually risking their life.
It's like listening to a psychologist try to understand the evolution of galaxies via their domain knowledge.
Capitalism is a method to allocate resources within a society it offers no meaningful truths about it. It is on the whole a massive failure only slightly less stupid than prior iterations of central planning.
Back on the topic of mars. It is fundamentally absolutely useless as a second home for man. It is at best a place where a small number of people can do interesting science. There wont be a meaningful number of people there because the entire idea is fundamentally flawed.
Would you like to talk about that or would you like to educate me about capitalism and government?
> There aren't any individuals that own the resources to implement space flight
This has already been falsified.
I personally have stood and watched fleets of satellites cross the night sky in naked-eye visible formations that were put there by private industry using reusable launch vehicles.
Your argument was valid in the 20th century but it's not any more. Things change.
> Would you like to talk about that or would you like to educate me about capitalism and government?
Friend, you are really so boring and obtuse.
Here's the bottom line so you can write another thousand words coping:
Men are going to Mars. Men who own or run aerospace companies will make it happen. You aren't one of those men. Your protests and pontificating don't matter.
The costs will dwarf any projects humans have pursued so far. I hope the long term costs are in the trillions so that a quadrillion dollars of wealth is created!
To the extent that taxpayer dollar matter, it will be because nations don't want to miss out on the investment, not because they are needed.
Perhaps you haven't made your 1st million yet, so you really don't know how to create wealth or build substantial projects. It doesn't start with taxpayer dollars.
> I hope the long term costs are in the trillions so that a quadrillion dollars of wealth is created!
This thread is annoying because you're both right and you're both wrong, about different parts of the argument, and you're too busy shouting at one another to notice and correct one another's actual errors.
For this specific one, I will merely quote the words of a wiser person than I.
"Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy."
If you think it's about money you haven't understood the real issues.
Money is nothing more than a symbol, just like flags, and nations, and gods. Symbols for things that are not actual real things.
Symbols do not matter. Reality always beats symbols. Reality continues after any entities that can create and manipulate symbols cease to exist.
I want a scientific mission to mars I hope doing so pushes science and engineering know how forward.
Going to mars on a larger scale is presently nonsense because beyond the science there is no reason to go there. There just isn't anything of exploitable value there.
We can't at this level of technology teraform mars nor live there without massive radiation shielding eg live like rats underground 99% of the time.
Furthermore every aspect of our technological civilization is heavily dependant on a long chain of products with their own deps stretching back in a massive graph.
Any such endeavor would be incredibly costly per person, yield little more than hosting a half dozen people, and require a constant input of goods from home without which everyone does.
This isn't a frontier town because its too expensive and it doesn't have things that can enrich home base for less than cost on acquisition.
It isn't a backup plan if Earth dies because exploding a 1000 nukes would leave the bombed out husk 1000x more livable.
Its not a second earth because we can't teraform it at present level of technology.
It won't create a dragon hoard of wealth because there is no reason to believe it will create any.
Its just a science mission like the ISS. It does actually start with government money because nobody has multiple trillions to spend on something that won't create wealth because why would it.
Please refute something of what I said.
Let's start with how a large scale colony is going to be viable and earn money.
Please consider the cost of constant support, how they will achieve self sufficiency and on what time scale including everything from mining to pharmacutical manufacturing how they will deal with radiation and so forth.
Please cite actual sources. While you shift from trying to look cool to actual debate please leave this shit at the door.
> Perhaps you haven't made your 1st million yet...
After that, it's conceivable that the cost to travel there will eventually fall to a few million or tens of millions of dollars per person. At that point, a handful of rich people could drive enough demand for the development of colonization technology that it becomes self-funding.