/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12547748
>why not both? if you have enough presence in space to build cylinders then you can have millions of people on mars too
Highly debatable.
To have millions of people on Mars you need to be able to manufacture the entire supply lines in a different cold irradiated hell in near vacuum with the only similarity to Earth being a weak gravity and a CO2 ultra thin atmosphere.
It would be silly to populate Mars only from reproduction (or to forbid contraception) so you'll need to be able to assemble bigger space-only spaceship in orbit up to Cyclers which are essentially versatile space colonies.

All in all, you require the technologies to build and sustain orbital space colony before you can build a true Mars colony (instead of just a glorified Mars base).
Then there's the economy, if we have such a presence in space, we will try to make a profit. Mars bring no (material) profit to Earth while exploiting asteroid would while also allowing to extract at least propellant.

>>12547728
>After this we would need to demonstrate large-scale and very precise manufacturing in zero g, which hasn’t happened yet and especially on this scale, will require A LOT of work.
I agree but 0G and precise would go together nicely. I expect revolutions in material science, maybe some material would be impossible to manufacture anywhere but in 0G.

>>11910547
Zubrin was an adviser for Mars One, are you sure you can read english?
Mars direct have the same relationship with truth, except instead of stepping on ethic tripmine he pushed the memes that Mars require no complex technologies in the hope of slipping it through approval before we discovers the lie.
For all the imagined harm you blame on the ISS and the Shuttle, there would have been nothing worse than spending all that money on a vain flag plant on Mars. Robots have been exploring the planet better than any human sent there could ever have. Even getting sample back is not as interesting as getting more data from more diverse landing zone.
The ISS taught the entire world to cooperate for science and our future in space so you can say it was even useful to maintain peace. The rare people arguing against that tend to be ultra-nationalist.

I won't defend clusterfuck like SLS, the shuttle itself was crippled by military requirement, the feats of SpaceX engineers prove that they've stagnated, always trying to preserve old job instead of making new tech.
It's still retarded to go Mars before we have the technology to do anything useful there, an no we don't have the tech for a colony, we'll need to study that on the Moon.