"Finally, the space logistics analysis revealed that for the most optimist scenario considered, establishing the first crew of a Mars settlement will requireapproximately 15 Falcon Heavy launches costing $4.5 billion, and these values will grow with additional crews. It is important to note that these numbers are derived considering only the ECLS and ISRU systems with spare parts."
Basically main points of review that it is feasible to establish settlement on mars, but maintenance costs will quickly skyrocket as colony grows and equipment ages. Report also advises that a lot more research into reliability and modularity of critical equipment is required to lower amount of spare parts required.
It goes without saying, that without getting to some level of self sufficiency given current launch costs (even if they are slashed by order of magnitude) it would be prohibitively expensive to maintain any sizable human presence on Mars. Therefore some research definitely needs to go into rolling out production facilities from scratch.
Does that $4.5 billion sound really small to anyone?
So basically this means that Apple can fund a dozen settlements on Mars, and their yearly profit would likely be able to sustain those dozen settlements with spare parts and supplies?
In 2005 dollars, the Apollo program cost $170 billion. So yeah, $4.5 billion sounds pretty small relatively speaking.
Is there a reason to want a sustained human presence on Mars? I heard about using it as a rest stop on longer trips but couldn't any science be done on a per trip basis?
Sure you can go half-way. But that's optimum if you value human life over all other considerations. However, there are people who are willing to take risks, and those people can drive the cost of science, development and colonization down by an order of magnitude. You just have to accept the mortal risks involved with launching an outpost using unproved equipment in an unknown environment.
Then there's the benefit if they survive. Not only a 2nd human population in the galaxy, which increases the odds of long-term human survival by some huge margin. But the inspiration they give to others that it can be done. Who knows what would come next? Moons of Jupiter? Venus?
Basically main points of review that it is feasible to establish settlement on mars, but maintenance costs will quickly skyrocket as colony grows and equipment ages. Report also advises that a lot more research into reliability and modularity of critical equipment is required to lower amount of spare parts required.
It goes without saying, that without getting to some level of self sufficiency given current launch costs (even if they are slashed by order of magnitude) it would be prohibitively expensive to maintain any sizable human presence on Mars. Therefore some research definitely needs to go into rolling out production facilities from scratch.