Ask HN: Why not use androids to colonize Mars initially and then humans later?
Wouldn't that be safer and perhaps even faster, as humans would arrive at Mars with a city already built by androids?
When you weigh the risks involved with sending robots that have a limited motor manipulation, range of motion and independent ingenuity, you might as well just spend a few bajillion dollars sending an astronaut do it. You can very feasibly sustain a small population of people on life support, and if they were aided by additive manufacturing tools that could leverage Mars' natural resources then I'd consider that a much more realistic colony moonshot.
If we had the technology required to colonize Mars, or even the moon, we could fix the problems we've created on this planet. We could colonize the oceans. We cant't "terraform" anything, we don't have androids that can build anything, we don't have a plan for getting lots of people to Mars, or keeping them alive. That's all fantasy and self-serving stock pumping.
Because the closest thing humankind has come to a working android is the (often somewhat glitchy) OS on most of the world's phones.
Watch videos of state of the art actual robots and try to draw a line from their actual abilities to building a city. On Mars. In an environment with no infrastructure, no people to repair them. Pure sci-fi fantasy at this point.
Why would humans go there in person?