>>12620424Back in the 1960s we were able to send a 6,500t rocket up to travel for three days and have it carry a 16t lander that could after matching velocity and position with the moon could then take off and travel for three days back to Earth, keeping 3 people alive the whole time.
Scaling that up to moving at least a dozen people, and the equipment they'd need to actually colonise a different rock instead of just visiting and fucking off, in an environment that's more dangerous by number of hypervelocity dust impactors, for a year or longer trip is so expensive that the reward of "lel colonisation" is meaningless to nation-states in comparison.
If the USA, or China, or anybody else colonised Mars it would take at least 75 years to see any domestic economic return. The only thing that might be economically viable is asteroid capture, but nobody can convince politicians of it'a viability.
