Re: Space X and the prospects of Mars colonization.

That will never be the case.

There are no materials which are cheap enough on Mars and expensive enough on Earth to every make freight plausible.

Haha, you say that as if there's a building supplies shop on Mars. How can something be cheap or expensive on Mars? I don't think they have their own economy over there. If they do, they're doing a very good job of hiding it. Haha! I think what you're trying to say is that there's nothing on Mars that could be sold for enough on Earth to make it worth the trip. I could see that being the case.

"How can something be cheap or expensive on Mars?"

Try jumping to Mars. Get the latest position of Mars from some star chart, go out into the parking lot at just the right time, and jump real hard. Did you make it to Mars? No? Well how about this?

Buy an airplane and fly to Mars. I mean, all it will cost you is the price of the airplane and fuel. Did that work? No? Well, how about this.

Crawl on top of a NASA Saturn rocket, and have NASA fly you to Mars. Did it work? Was it cheap? No? Well, you could always go back to a bottle rocket idea. It's cheaper that way.

What is there on Mars that is going to justify the expense of going there? So far we haven't found any justification for the expense of sending our robot vehicles there. So far it has all been a waste of society time and money. So far it has done more to increase poverty on earth than we could ever imagine.

Cool

I was just responding to Spendulus's comment. He/she said that, "There are no materials which are cheap enough on Mars and expensive enough on Earth to every make freight plausible." It obviously costs money on Earth to get to Mars. I just thought it sounded funny to talk about the cost of things on Mars. They can't actually have a financial cost if they have no economy. It's sort of hard to tell if investing in trips to Mars has been a waste or not. Time will tell. It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings, as they say.

Those are confused ideas and trains of thought.

Every robot probe sent to Mars (or anywhere) is a complex exercise in economics.

An assumption was made earlier by someone that a functioning economy on Mars that would require goods shipped back to Each. That is a false premise. Jus think about it. Consider a small machine that made a wheel from local materials. Future missions could buy wheels from that operation. Send two rovers instead of one because the payload is lighter since you don't need to take wheels.

That's a local economy on a small scale. And on the other side, a decision to build and send totally self contained rovers maximizes income and work for Earth bound aerospace companies. That's nothing BUT a decision based on economics.

Having said that, it's worth noting that colonization of Mars does not start when people are sent there. It starts with simple attempts to isolate raw materials with robotic operations, materials of which the extraction of is essential to human life. In the chemical industry these would be called "pilot plants." The likes of NASA and Musk is not competent to send and operate these types of facilities.

I guess it's just a question of semantics. You said, "There are no materials which are cheap enough on Mars and expensive enough on Earth to every make freight plausible." Typically, when you said something is cheap or expensive somewhere, you are referring to the price it costs to purchase it. When you say something is cheap on Mars it seems strange to me. Everything is free on Mars, since as far as we know, there's nobody up there claiming they own it already. The thing that is not free, would be to extract these materials. We would have to spend a lot of currency here on Earth to purchase needed materials and motivate people to do the necessary work. Maybe it would be better to say, "There are no materials which would be cheap enough to extract on Mars and valuable enough on Earth to every make freight plausible."