
Colonizing Mars V. Building Space Stations - abrax3141
Why are we talking about colonizing other Mars, instead of building a bunch of huge space stations? Seems like the space stations are easier, cheaper, more scalable, and more flexible.
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byoung2
You could possibly find some savings by using materials on Mars to either
build your colony or sustain it, and things like gravity which are expensive
to produce in space are free.

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abrax3141
Musk claims that it costs too much to move the mass required to build the
space stations into space, but energy is actually quite cheap if you harvest
it efficiently (solar), and anyway the cost of moving the mass is a amortized,
so it's small relative to operational costs over time. It just seems to me
that there are only two planets that we are likely to ever colonize, and one
is already a wreck. Putting in an enormous amount of work to wreck the other
just seems to put off the inevitable ... one way or the other.

