Comment by DennisP

Comment by DennisP 3 days ago

13 replies

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Possibly even better would be Zubrin's recent book The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet, which goes into quite a bit of detail on how we could build a self-sustaining settlement.

mjevans 3 days ago

Though it lacks in the headlines, my preference is to send the robots first to bootstrap local production. Unless we really screw up the worst case would be some extra garbage to clean up for future missions, and the best case is any sort of increase in local production capacity.

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  • adastra22 3 days ago

    Why though? That’s the interesting part. Pioneers want to be there to experience the challenge of bootstrapping. It’s the whole point.

    It’s like saying “why climb Everest? We can send a drone up instead.”

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    • DennisP 3 days ago

      If you're climbing Everest, sure. If you're settling a new world, building a place to live with an economy, then the easier the better.

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    • cess11 3 days ago

      Right, and now that "climb Everest" is past the "pioneer" stage, what does it look like?

      Trash, exploitation and littered with corpses.

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      • adastra22 3 days ago

        So? People still want to climb, and if they want to risk their lives, they can.

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        • cess11 2 days ago

          Yeah, unlike you I'm not a fan of trash, exploitation and corpses littering the ground.

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  • DennisP 3 days ago

    Yeah that makes sense, especially these days. Even Zubrin's original Mars Direct plan sent a methane factory ahead of the people.

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  • Animats 3 days ago

    Most future space exploration will probably be robotic, just as it is now.

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