Witty title involving one-way trains

They found ice on the moon, which means it would have water. But everything else you said seems right. I wouldnt want a colony on the moon, it would brighten up night time on earth. Or I would think it would if there was a city on it
 
Zenith you are not alone. This is basically my dream. To go up and start establishing a civilization on Mars that. The idea just makes a giant grin appear on my face.
 
@shampoo-thief. The ice on the Moon still wouldn't be enough to provide a colony with water. It's nothing compared to all the ice on Mars. But yes the Moon does contain some ice.
 
The idea sounds great, but the reality (at least for now) is that there (as I stated before) is no cost-effective or productive way to do it. I plan to be an Aerospace Engineer, so this stuff is second nature for me. Supplies would have to be flown millions of miles away from Earth, with no straightforward way of loading them off the ships and constructiong them efficiently. Certain Specialists, with abilities ranging from Engineering, to military training, to construction (which require a lot of money to train correctly) would have to be sent there voluntarily, and create an entire mini-civilization under terrible Mars conditions single-handedly, not to mention do it all in zero-gravity and wearing supremely uncomfortable breathing suits. Then, after the buildings are somehow created, agencies would have to send even more personnel, like Doctors and Technicians (good luck getting ordinary people going voluntarily) to assist a struggling society with hardly any communication means whatsoever. Even our Rovers have a difficult enough time just landing on Mars. All I'm saying is, that the idea is 100% credible, but we're just not able to do it with current technology and the state of the Economy (at least America's economy) we have today.
 
You couldn't do it with the American economy. With a project of this magnitude you would need to use the world's economy.
 
Precisely. There was even a past event where President Obama (who I still root for) publicly cut the Space Administration's public funding. Not exactly the best time for a Billion-dollar space trip to Mars.
 
Q. How much does it cost to launch a Space Shuttle?
A. The average cost to launch a Space Shuttle is about $450 million per mission.
Click to expand...

ShadowLugia,

Better throw another zero into your answer.
 
Right. :D
It's nice to know what I'm talking about every once in a while.
Staying on topic, how do you think an established colony on Mars would function? Would currencey be used? What would homes/buildings look like? Just food for thought.
 
Currency won't be needed till the colony gets big enough. That could take 100 years at least. According to http://www.universetoday.com/13680/radiation-sickness-cellular-damage-and-increased-cancer-risk-for-long-term-missions-to-mars/ the buildings would be cover by soil.
 
@ShadowLugia. Who has ever said that there is no gravity on Mars? Of course there is, not as strong as the gravity here on Earth, but definitely stronger than our Moon's gravity. Don't worry about that.

Also they have developed a space suit that is a lot lighter than those used in the past and are a lot more comfortable, it's only a prototype but in a few years it should be usable. They are just like a diving suit, perfectly fitting to the body. In other words, not those inflated space suits we used to use.
 
You're correct on the bit about Mars' gravity. However, the trip would have no gravity whatsoever, and using fuel conservatively, the trips takes around 200 days give or take a few. Here's a direct quote from Jack D. Farmer, part of the NASA Ames Research center:

A few people could be sustained on Mars with a steady line of supplies
coming from Earth. In the long term, decades, we could find ways to provide
some of those supplies on Mars, allowing the small colony to become more and
more self-sufficient over time, and to possibly even grow. It would be a
very long time, perhaps a century or more, before a colony on Mars could be
completely independent. On even longer time scales, a few centuries, some
people believe that we could change Mars globally to make it more hospitable
for people by somehow making the atmosphere thicker and warmer.

It somewhat echoes what I've been saying all along. The conditions on Mars and the amount of supplies we'd have to take seem to be the determining factors on how the idea of Colonization would work.
 
If I'm ever suicidal and interested in the development of modern science at the same time, I'm totally in.
 
"You would send a little bit older folks, around 60 or something like that," Schulze-Makuch said, bringing to mind the aging heroes who save the day in "Space Cowboys."

That's because the mission would undoubtedly reduce a person's lifespan, from a lack of medical care and exposure to radiation. That radiation would also damage human reproductive organs, so sending people of childbearing age is not a good idea, he said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40194872/ns/technology_and_science-space/

the bolding is my doing
 
@omahanime. Not if doctors are send along with the astronauts. And again, the radiation would only decrease your life with a few years in the worst case. If you want I can calculate what the avarage decrease would be.
 
Pokequaza,

I am only repeating what Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University stated. He is more knowledgeable on the subject than I am.
 
Perhaps if I found being in outer-space fascinating, sure, but I'm one of those dull people that's content with the status quo.
 
Then I was just contraticting him. Well I don't want to say it's completely safe and without risk, of course not. But a lot of it is been exaggerated and that annoys me a little bit.
 
And what story did you read then? Bother to post a link? The story listed in the link is way too exaggerated, let alone your story. Even if you're spending all your time outside on Mars the radiation won't be that much of a danger.
 
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