What mars colony. We're not even within striking distance of a manned trip. Whatever we do after that is so far out I don't think anyone can responsibly assert what it will require.
Anybody that is trying to sell you on Mars colonization is selling you a children's cartoon, not a serious project.
Surely if there is anywhere in our solar system we have a chance of successfully colonizing, Mars is it.
It seems like the obvious first step. Where would you recommend?
And for second steps you'd probably want someplace that is more useful in resources, like some of Jupiter's moons. Mars is probably the last place you'd want to go.
Then again, we don't know how to build a colony on Mars any better than we can build a colony on an oil rig platform in the ocean, or build a colony in LEO. Even our colonies on Antarctica - Esperanza Base and Villa Las Estrellas - aren't able to grow their own food.
In any case, Mars is a better colonization target than both Mercury and Io.
Resource extraction does not require colonization. We have robots.
You think that a floating base in the upper reaches of the Venusian atmosphere is a good first step? No being able to make trips to the surface would limit human involvement to the floating base, so scientific exploration would be very limited. The complexity makes it much more challenging to become self sufficient.
How would you propose making a return trip? Or is it a one way mission?
As for Jupiter's moons. They are so much further away than Mars, are all much lower in gravity, and much colder temperatures than mars.
Our own moon and mars are much better candidates for humans to visit, and attempt permanent bases and perhaps colonies.
Also, we can actually get there. This Mars colony is in the realm of fantasy, when we don't have a means of getting astronauts there without dying of cosmic-ray cancer on the way. In contrast we've put a man on the moon. Multiple men. We know we can do it, which decreases the necessary scope dramatically.
I don't see a good reason to set up a colony in the first place, but the least-bad option is very clearly the moon.
> a catapult and a few days travel
We don't have catapult technology that would work on the moon without solving significant technological challenges. I don't think engineering challenges should hold us back (it's half the fun of these missions), but you cannot use "we don't have the tech" as an argument against mars, and handwave it away for the moon.
> The moon. It's closer, it has pre-made internal cavities,
Mars has lavatubes as well.
> we don't have a means of getting astronauts there without dying of cosmic-ray cancer on the way
People will not die of cancer of cancer in the way. It is likely there is an increased risk to developing cancer, it's not crazy. Some estimates put it at a 20% increase. Hardly a death sentence your post makes it out to be.
> Also, we can actually get there.
Energetically, Mars is not that much further away from us than the moon. It has a thin atmosphere that allows for aerobreaking, and is a useful resource once landed.
> In contrast we've put a man on the moon.
We've put a lot of robots on Mars as well. We've actually got more recent experience landing things on Mars than on the moon, especially large things.
No one is talking about landing humans on Mars without first refining a lot of technology, without being able to reliably land craft with literally tonnes of equipment.
Personally, I'm excited about both prospects, and I'm excited that SpaceX is finally developing the reusable heavy lift capability that we should have had years ago, but for whatever reason people stopped persuing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_lava_tube
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/18417/how-big-is-t...
It's no wonder NASA came up with the absolute craziest solution -- a wicked fast heat shield burn descent, followed by a wicked fast parachute descent, followed by an absurdly complicated and risky 'sky crane' procedure to shave off the rest of the velocity using thrusters.
A thin atmosphere provides an additional option over the alternative of zero atmosphere. Zero atmosphere means you rely entirely on propulsion to slow your arrival, which is inherently expensive. I can agree that a thicker atmosphere would be easier, but a thin atmosphere is better than none.
> absurdly complicated and risky 'sky crane'
The skycrane was entirely related to not wanting to stir up huge dust plumes around the lander.
There's an incredible amount of scientific understanding to be achieved over the next few decades using unmanned probes in the solar system including mars. After that we'll see. We are barely capable of manned spaceflight at all, don't even have a proof of concept of a self-contained ecosystem that can be isolated for years at a time. We are simply not politically and scientifically sophisticated enough to attempt this on the scale of decades. Leave it for the future.
Are you talking about human race, spreading out from our cradle in Africa thousands of years ago? Or more recent colonization? Or more recent examples of one group of people subjugating another pre-existing habitat of a land?
Because you know there are not people or animals on Mars right?