Mars Family Robinson

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Combs, Mike"

> That's why I consider O'Neill's vision of settlers in HEO selling
> SPS to investors on Earth while continuing to buy low-mass/high
> value products from Earth a more realistic prospect than the
> Zubrin vision. Zubrin seems to propose people settling Mars
> simply because it's the right and noble thing to do and then
> somehow functioning with neither exports nor a need for imports.

I'm 100% in agreement with you. My biggest fear for orbital
development is that SPS is *never affordable* compared to its
alternatives for that removes a trillion dollar market that can
serve as the means of achieving the end of orbital development.
Small scale bootstrapping is a problematic paradigm for orbital
development because each such step must be self-sufficient and thus
the profit hurdle is that much higher for each project.

Mars is a proposition that has absolutely no hope of developing an
economy. It will simply be a money pit. If High Frontier can't make
a go of it on an economic basis, then Mars settlement is as much
fantasy as talking with the dead.

TangoMan