How To Colonize Mars: Send First Humans For Robot Maintenance

Elon Musk wants us to go to Mars. He sees this as a necessary move to ensure Earth's survival. I find the discussions about how to do this as impractical and premature as well. I'd like to introduce some ideas about how to go about doing this. First thing we have to be aware of: Mars is a very hostile environment for humans. Little atmosphere, too much radiation, too cold, too far from the Sun, low on nitrogen (which is probably a bigger problem than low on water), very costly to ship to, too far away to do remote real-time control of equipment. Really a very unappetizing place to live. Manufacturing is the hard part. In addition to all the...
Source: FuturePundit - Category: Research Authors: Source Type: blogs