So it's the cost of launching this stuff from earth that's making the solar-shield on the Mars Express a problem? The Mars-Direct guys might not like me suggesting this, but there seems to be a push on for a Moon-base from which to manufacture stuff in a lower gravity source for launching all those space-solar dishes to direct 24/7 solar power back to earth. (The greenie / peak oiler in me would love to see that but at what COST when we can just build solar graphite 24/7 plants here on earth — with the graphite acting as a massive thermal storage load).
So if there were the economics for a Moon-base (let's call it "Alpha" as the first stage of our journey to Mars
), might we not also manufacturing fuel and or / water from the Moon for our Mars Express?
Back to the colony: would civilisation always be underground? In Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars" trilogy he seems to suggest that just adding enough atmosphere deals with the radiation problem. Is this true? Maybe this question should be addressed back in the "Panspermia space bug invasion" thread... oh sorry, I meant
Terraforming Mars thread.
(Incidentally, I find it interesting that my posts on Colonising Mars were split from Terraforming Mars, both of which might come neatly under the heading "Living on Mars", when that thread contains pages and pages and pages of Panspermia & "death from Space Bugs" discussion which got waaaaaaay off track. For example, discussion in this thread will probably alternate back and forth between
Colonising and
Terraforming Mars as people tend to think of it as
"Living on Mars" but the Panspermia discussion STAYS in the Terraforming Mars thread?
)
