Will any of us live long enough to see a permanent settlement on Mars?

[Bitmap Frogs]

mrstickball said:

What makes the moon that much more harsh than Mars? I fully understand that Mars offers more resources, but the cost to project colonies on Mars is exponentially higher than the Moon. It'd be like trying to colonize Newfoundland from Europe, and totally avoiding an uncolonized Britian.

A few notes on the pros of moon habitation/colonization:

• Abundant! Helium 3. The moon has infintely more HE3 available than Earth, and the closest easily usable alternate HE3 sources are large asteroids in the belt, and Jupiter and Uranus....Far more costly than the moon for the next century. Just 15 tons of HE3 would power the United States' electricity demands for an entire year, given current efficency rates (could be as little as 7 tons with more efficent generation stations). Mars has no HE3, AFAIK. 
• Astronomy. Since the moon is a near-vaccum, and provides a better vaccum than any technology we have on Earth, it provides a lot of opportunities in the astronomy field, and other industries that require a vaccum.
  
• Surface buildings. Unlike Mars, surface buildings are much cheaper to build on the moon. The moon has no wind, which allows for building construction that only takes gravity and thermal loads into consideration...Given the moon's gravity, construction would be much less costly on the Moon than Mars. Martian wind storms gust up to 375MPH....Making it a bit more difficult for any surface construction on Mars.
  
• Lunar regolith. Despite your affinity against the stuff, it makes for decent construction & insulation materials.

 

 

Helium 3 is nice, but it's useless until we develop fusion. It's a loooong way - for starters, we haven't even achieved ignition. We're talking 2030-2050. If it happens.

By the way, surface buildings on the moon are a not without issues/compromises. There's no atmosphere, peanut sized asteroids could easily break through buildings. Making buildings resilient to meteorites makes them way more expensive and bulky, which means longer construction time, etc. Additionally, radiation. Radiation insulation isn't easy nor cheap nor light.

Now, the regolith. Lunar regolith looks like dust, but every particule of it is sharp like a knife. It tears your lungs if you breathe it (we're talking asbestos-like toxicity), it breaks apart moving parts and you can't avoid having some leak into the buildings. Basically, anyone taking a walk comes back coated in poison.

Mars has a tiny atmosphere: some meteorites get burned, regolith has eroded (so it isn't sharp like lunar) and in-situ resource utilization is way, way more promising.

Of course there are some interesting points about a moon base, but the moon will be 100% dependant on earth supplies. Mars is much more interesting. It could be actually possible to settle there.