The Homestead Project: Making a Mars Settlement a Reality

space.com ^ | 08/10/05 | Ker Than

[Stew Padasso]

Good. A place to send all the NASA humpers (on their own dime of course).

[RightWhale]

They'll get there with chemical rockets, but it would be a poor way to run a business. Time is money, they say.

[NicknamedBob]

Any serious material handling projects to be done on Mars might as well face the fact that all of the inner system is available for raw materials.

Oxygen and carbon both exist in plenty in the atmosphere of Venus. The carbon would be especially useful as a building material when formed into carbon fiber or buckytubes.

To support colonization and exploitation of the inner system, I would recommend the construction of a fleet of Nuclear rocket powered vessels, as delivery and cargo haulers, atmospheric "scoop" ships, and perhaps even asteroid pushers. Refilling the propellant tanks at any gravity well is what makes them functional.

[NicknamedBob]

They could get there with chemical rockets, but once the nuclear power plant is in orbit, it would have to occur to someone that any substance which can be volatilized is now a rocket fuel.

If I were stuck somewhere in orbit, without any rocket fuel left, and a nuclear reactor for power, as well as a hold filled with solid carbon dioxide, ("dry ice"), I'd know what to do!

[dadokane]

steroids can provide an abundance of raw materials, and there is no need to escape from a deep gravity well to move the materials to Earth. In fact, it would involve falling downward toward the sun, rather than boosting outward.

i agree. let's not forget falling downward, into our seas, where new remedies could be forged from undersea plant makeup we have not yet discovered.

[NicknamedBob]

I strenuously disavow the use of steroids.

[garjog]

There are some cool sites on Mars. It might make an attractive tourist destination. Like a six mile high ancient volcano, a Grand Canyon like feature the size of North America. http://www.solarviews.com/browse/mars/olympus2.gif

Here is an idea. Perhaps the current robot probes will develop into a form of technology in which we can have virtual space travel for individuals? Perhaps a robot could fly there and send back signals that simulate actually being there.

[Hetty_Fauxvert]

ping

[KevinDavis]

Not the real thing..

[shaggy eel]

,,, I've just run a quick cost/benefit exercise on this and it stacks up that a lot of people on this planet are worth keeping here. Think about the sort of guys you'd have a beer with and the sorts you wouldn't - the sorts you wouldn't are on the first flights outta here, in the cargo hold. How's that? It used to be a slow boat to China and China's a long, long way. Mars is just fine for who I've got in mind.