Monday, December 24, 2012 6:26:46 PM
Anyone can plan anything. It doesn't make it plausible.
Human settlements on Mars aren`t really viable until travel from Earth to Mars is simple enough for resupply trips to be routine stuff, not all that much more of a thing than home delivery from a supermarket. When a settlement is utterly dependent on regular and frequent resupply, that resupply has to be routine. Otherwise you may as well just kill them before they leave and save the money, because they`re going to die anyway.
And if it does work and their descendents do at some point somehow become self-supporting, they`ll just revolt and declare independence anyway, so you`ll have lost all the resources you spent establishing the colony.
Monday, December 24, 2012 10:17:50 AM
Oh please. We haven't allowed our leaders to suck the life out of this planet yet so there`s clearly no rush to start on another one.