I have a doubt: what we should colony first? Venus or Mars...

>Nuclear war breaks out with a colony on Mars you paid for
>You still can't leave the planet

Are you an idiot or something? Nuclear shelters are much cheaper than a Mars colony.

>You know where else you can mine metals and build buildings? On earth! At a fraction of the cost.
The start-up cost may be greater, but after a certain point Mars will pay for itself. The low gravity makes mining much more energy efficient. And although it will deteriorate the bones of a human lower gravity is actually an advantage over Venus. You may be able to mine materials on earth for cheaper, but space launches from mars are a fraction of the cost as they would be on earth. Not to mention that space elevators would be possible on mars with todays tech

The problem is that eventually, you need to be able to sell something of value to an actual human market willing and able to pay for it.

I have never seen Musk or any of the other enthusiasts lay out a realistic pathway to this goal.

>The problem is that eventually, you need to be able to sell something of value to an actual human market willing and able to pay for it.
That is not a problem at all. Why do you need to be able to sell something to colonize a location? Antarctica has bases there and they have no market for any material product. Their biggest export is scientific data or tourism. Why can't Mars just do the same? Just because you're not rich enough to afford a trip there doesn't mean we shouldn't make it available.

>Their biggest export is scientific data or tourism.
That actually satisfies the criterion.

But you will notice Antarctica is much cheaper to colonize, it has trade relations back and forth with greener pastures, and the population size is really very small.

Tourism on Mars? How rich and suicidal are most tourists?

Scientific data, well, some curiosity will be satisfied and governments can usually get away with wasting some small percentage on practically useless science. You may even find the occasional donor. But somehow I doubt it pays the bills for a sustainable Mars colony. I find it interesting, but nowhere near enough that I would actually pay what it really costs.

>But you will notice Antarctica is much cheaper to colonize
Yeah thanks captain obvious, I never said it wasn't. You're complaint was that Musk never lays out a realistic pathway towards selling anything worth paying for. But I doubt anyone ever did this for Antarctica, and a few hundred years ago it was thought to be too expensive to set up anything close to what we have there today. All I'm saying is these types of endeavors are possible without a for-profit business plan.

>it has trade relations back and forth with greener pastures, and the population size is really very small.
Antarctica's population and trade depends very strongly on the season, and equivalently Mars' trade with it's greener neighbor will depend on the orbit of Earth and Mars which one could also call seasonal (periodic is a better word).

>Tourism on Mars? How rich and suicidal are most tourists?
Well Mars One is proof that people actually do want to visit mars, even at the risk of death. Do you seriously think a trip to Antarctica is like a walk in the park?

>I find it interesting, but nowhere near enough that I would actually pay what it really costs.
Well you aren't the one paying, are you? Maybe you should leave discussions like this to the people that actually think the scientific data part of the colonization is the top priority.

>Well you aren't the one paying, are you?
Stop lying, we both know it will be the taxpayers who bear most of the burden. Musk's net worth is what, 12 billion? That's a small fraction of what a self-sufficient colony would cost.

You know what, you're right. Just keep on sending those tax dollars towards developing jets and tanks, I'm sure that will bring much greater benefit to science and mankind as a whole.

>jets and tanks
>mankind as a whole
And there we have it, moving the goal posts.

What happened to
>Well you aren't the one paying, are you?

>with little or no possibility to explore the surface
Once you have the atmospheric colony, exploring the surface by robots would be just as easy as on mars.

>Want to extend your Venus colony? You have to fly in steel from Earth.
First of all: Why are you building with steel on venus?
Secondly: We have no ideas what sort of materials would be easily availible to be dredged or mined from the surface of the earth
Thirdly: Plenty of resources can be can be manufactured from the air.

Is Venus more difficult than mars? I'd say no, not at all.
Mars however fits our frame of reference better, and domed cities is a common sci-fi trope, floating cities is not.

What mining or development is being done on antarctica?

In the end mars colonization is going to be done to get away from the shitskins on earth, and because of autists like Musk.

>to get away from the shitskins on earth
Yeah good luck with that, and have fun paying top premium for a 20m^2 appartment without an outside atmosphere but high radiation levels.

In the meantime, I'll fuck whores of all races here on earth.

Musk will do it alone if he has to. You can bet all the profits from Tesla could/would be directed to mars
Or from his satellite constellation

Each MCT going there will take back some low amount of tonnage, I expect a decent market in mars diamonds/rocks

Nor will mars colonization done by SpaceX cost anything near what it'll cost NASA.

I think that's wishful thinking, but we'll see.

My prediction is there will be people on Mars, Musk will be bankrupt and NASA will have to "bring them home" like that faggot in that propaganda movie.

Moving the goalposts? Really? You ignored every point in my post and instead went straight to "My tax dollars are being wasted!"

Science costs money, just like everything else. If you're not willing to pay for it, why are you in a Mars vs Venus colony thread? Yeah, I know you think that staying on Earth is the cheapest option, but if you're gonna be bringing up taxes and advocating staying on the planet, don't be upset when I bring up what 75% of the US tax dollars are being used for. If you don't want me bringing random shit into the thread then don't be a hypocrite.

>exploring the surface by robots would be just as easy as on mars.
except we have a functional mars rover exploring the surface as we speak, while the robot we sent to venus melted in 90 minutes.
>First of all: Why are you building with steel on venus?
You realize that blimps are built with steel frames, right?
>Secondly: We have no ideas what sort of materials would be easily availible to be dredged or mined from the surface of the earth
I think you meant surface of venus, and you're pretty much correct, except techniques to mine fail on earth when the pressure and heat is too high. These limits are surpassed on the surface of Venus.
>Thirdly: Plenty of resources can be can be manufactured from the air.
The air on Venus is mostly CO2. Considering we have a CO2 problem on earth, and we haven't figured out a way to make use of it here, there's really nothing we can do to make that gas useful on Venus. Of course plants and trees can use it to grow, but then there's the problem of getting water to Venus. Remember, the clouds there are made of sulfuric acid, so pretty much all water would need to be shipped there from earth.

>Moving the goalposts? Really?
Yes, because you pretended it's not going to be other people's money, and then you had to backtrack without acknowledging it.

It's a common tactic to justify tax waste by pointing to other tax waste, as if that somehow made it more rational.

There are people who argue tanks and jets are needed for national defense, maybe they're wrong but I wouldn't be shocked if they were right on some margin.

There are people who think some marginal science is nice and interesting but not worth trillions of coerced dollars, and I bet they have a point.

I don't have to acknowledge all the points you make, some of them are correct and I don't have to refute those.

Oh, and by the way: Fuck "humanity as a whole". It has never done anything for me, most of it wants me to burn in hell forever (literally), and most of it wouldn't hesitate stealing my computer right now if they could.

Mars seems to be the only viable target for terraforming with current day technology. It can be bombarded with asteroids to heat it up and add the necessary atmosphere for plant and bacteria life.

Venus should be mined with autonomous bots instead. You could even move atmosphere like Nitrogen from Venus to Mars if you have a cheap way to leave it's gravity well like a space fountain. Light sails would do the rest, you don't have to travel fast in terraforming time frames.

>while the robot we sent to venus melted in 90 minutes.
So we either need to develop electronics that can survive high temperatures, or it needs to be actively cooled. Neither is an impossible task.
Apparently NASA is working on some venus rover now

>except techniques to mine fail on earth when the pressure and heat is too high.
Deep sea drilling/mining is not stopped by the pressure.
Deep surface mining has to deal with high temperatures, not as high as venus but still fairly high.

>there's really nothing we can do to make that gas useful on Venus
We don't do anything with CO2 because it's cheaper to just use normal building materials.
Sulfuric acid has hydrogen in it, could be extracted and used to produce water.
And there is likely some amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.

>what 75% of the US tax dollars are being used for.
welfare?

>terraforming with current day technology
wat?

It's possible with the technology we currently have, just not feasible because of the costs.

>terraforming with current day technology
Can't wait for that cost-benefit analysis, lol.

>welfare?
Would you rather have crime sprees or a civil war? It's not like that stuff has no function.

>It's possible with the technology we currently have
And what tech would that be? Not trying to be a smart-ass here, its just that i've never heard of any such tech

Yes because if we didn't spend a massive fraction of our GDP on handouts to foreigners, non-whites, single mothers, retards, or unionized government employees, we totally would have civil war...

You understand that it was the Great Society welfare program that caused the crime surge during the 60's?

Ion Thrusters and light sails can be used to haul asteroids from the asteroid belt into Mars' gravity well. All you need is a constant propulsion.

Well, if you think a society without welfare would have lower crime rates and better social peace, feel free to run a camapign with that and win elections.

Or overthrow democracy which will certainly not have unintended consequences either.

Even ignoring all ethics, going full machiavellian, you're not going to get all this tax money for your pet science without a well-funded welfare system.

>if you think a society without welfare would have lower crime rates and better social peace
It is demonstrably so

>feel free to run a camapign with that and win elections.
A large voting majority depends on welfare/wealth transfers, so they have ensured its impossible.

Not sure why you are talking tax money in this thread, mars/venus colonization will not involve large amounts of government financing

>mars/venus colonization will not involve large amounts of government financing
Okay, now you're really just trolling.

>It's a common tactic to justify tax waste by pointing to other tax waste, as if that somehow made it more rational.
Except Musk is privately funding the R&D for a Mars colony. It's not technically tax waste (yet. I'll admit it will take more than 12 billion to build a colony but as of right now you can't make assumptions about who's going to be paying for it, especially when nobody is taking up the task of paying for national defense. Also, a Mars colony would be a collective world effort, so spending money on cooperation is making national defense spending obsolete in a way. I'm not trying to have a /pol/ argument but you're the one that brought up taxes)

I don't mind if Musk spends all his money on it, I mean he could buy a yacht instead and run it in cicles all day.

International cooperation and world peace, not gonna happen. People are too tribal and too different, it's just not in the cards.

Again, time can prove me wrong.

Musk will finance it all by himself if he has to
He is in position to control the entire earth space launch industry, worth billions a year.
He's going to launch a constellation of LEO high bandwidth satellites

You can bet he'll take money from other ventures as well, like Tesla or Solar City

And if NASA wants to help out, then thats their business.

Mars is easier because its surface is actually survivable with protection be can built right now. Mars may be radioactive and only warm in the morning during certain parts of it's year, but Venus is an autoclave 24/7, surface pressure would crush a human being and rapidly destroy any structures erected there, plus the caustic atmosphere means that delicate instruments wouldn't last long and require constant replacement. Plus any structure built on Mars doesn't have to be built heavy enough to stand under 1G, which reduces the cost and effort needed to get it there in the first place.