Mars Colony Premature Without Genetic Engineering

What would be the point of living on Mars? The cost per person to get there is probably in the hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. The living standard would be incredibly low due to lack of atmosphere, little water, lack of trees and fossil fuels, lack of fish in oceans, lack of very large scale specialization of labor, and other factors. Mars residents would be dependent on Earth for scientific and technological advances for easily a century if not more. We could not afford to ship a large enough starter human population to Mars to provide enough human population to enable the specialization of labor necessary to support a sustainable Mars civilization. Such a civilization would need...
Source: FuturePundit - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs