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'Colonizing the Red Planet,' a How-To Guide
Velcroman1 writes "A manned mission to Mars would be the greatest adventure in the history of the human race. And one man knows how to make it a reality. In fact, he just wrote the book on it — literally. Joel Levine, senior research scientist with NASA's Langley Research Center and co-chair of NASA's Human Exploration of Mars Science Analysis Group, just published 'The Human Mission to Mars: Colonizing the Red Planet.' The book reads like a who's who of Mars mission science, featuring senators, astronauts, astrophysicists, geologists and more on getting to Mars, studying its atmosphere and climate, the psychological and medical effects on the crew and other details. The most interesting bit: Levine presents is a solution for funding the trip, something unprecedented for NASA: advertising. 'The suggestion is marketing to different corporations and professional sports leagues for advertising, which is something NASA never does.'"
Advertising!
The best way to make an expensive thing look cheap.
Evil people are out to get you.
But there is the crippling counter argument. Mars has ground. Everything you build on Venus either has to be built from the atmosphere or imported. It also can't be too dense that it won't float. That greatly limits what you can do.
Really, what's on Mars that can't be done more cheaply by building near earth orbital environments?
The real estate to spread a colony upon. 1/3 gravity would be healthier. Local water is pretty damn nice too. Easier construction environment, simpler building designs, etc.
Mars has a LOT of hydrogen, in the form of good old H2O.
Venus is a dead end. Sure, you can make floating cities, but HOW would you do this? Venus has no satellites to mine and conditions on the surface are waay too extreme.
Here's a good answer. At the moment, all of humanity's eggs are in one, and some might argue very fragile, basket. We're exactly one extinction level event away from going the way of the dinosaurs. I agree that another "boots and flags" mission is fairly pointless. But setting up a long-term viable colony on the moon, or Mars, such that the human race has a chance at surviving even if some catastrophe was to happen to Earth, seems like a pretty decent idea. If Shoemaker-Levy 9 had Earth in its crosshairs instead of Jupiter - we had absolutely no chance of stopping it. And, if you want to go out out on an even longer timescale - the sun isn't going to be here forever. Of course, hopefully by that time we will be well past the point of using chemical rockets, etc. But, babysteps... get off this rock first.