Interesting
Best bet for the cosmic ray issue: spend several launches shipping water into orbit. Assemble the water shield structure (and the additional propulsion) in earth orbit. Go from there.
Oh. Wait. I got that wrong. We don't have a surplus. We have about $120T in debt.
Nevermind.
Dust, rocks, and old ice we have plenty of right here. Can’t we just skip it and locate the planet where those Green Orion slave girls are?
A good start would be to build a dome structure that replicates Mar’s environment and atmosphere, and settle it with about 100 volunteers for one year. I wouldn’t want to participate, but would be interested in seeing the results. I’d rather move to Antarctica.
Since we can barely pay the energy costs of living on the Earth it is not credible that we could pay costs a hundred or thousand fold to live in a hostile environment.
What good would exporting Marxism to Mars do for anyone?
We should settle both Mars and Venus.
Venus is more problematic. Perhaps a micro-biological approach to capturing the sulphur on the planet.
Mars two should be seeded with biologicals that would help prepare the planet.
Wouldn’t hurt to crash some comets into Mars both to Mass for atmosphere retention, increase water, and help warm up the planet.
You guys are gonna think I have gone greenie, but....I strongly disagree with Bob Zubrin because:
1. Mars probably has indigenous life forms which need to be studied. Importing a bunch of Earth organisms will probably wipe out the indigenous ones. At the very least, it will complicate our investigations. “Hey, I discovered life! Oh, it’s E coli again.”
2. After spending enormous energy to climb out of a gravity well why are we descending back into one? Asteroids, especially Apollo-Amor (Earth crossers) are far more accessible. The low delta Vee required for mining and returning metals from asteroids makes this our first opportunity to make a profit.
3. Colonizing for the sake of colonizing is expensive. There is no conceivable Martian product that can support a colony. However, asteroids have been proven to have nickel, platinum group metals, and other valuable resources.
4. Mining and industry in free space have 24 hour per day sunshine to use for process heat and power. Mars has day/night cycles so you gotta go nuclear.
5. The Martian surface is inhospitable. What keeps eating the seals out of equipment that we land? Probably peroxides. The surface dust is corrosive.
I have met Bob, although I doubt he would remember me. I’ll give him credit for persistence. He’s been pushing Mars colonization for over 25 years.
“The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.” Robert Heinlein
We miss you Bob.