>>14191421I noticed that the other anon joined it, but I'll say that there was no hostility, I'm just being realistic. In before, when I referenced American Frontier, I meant the period of history, not the end of it. So the Martian colony may, and I think it most likely will, start as a research base, but it's definitely going to grow into a city, sooner or later.
I do believe so because space is unironically hard, and very, very expensive. You can see it today, it took about five decades of continuous government-led space exploration to see a beginning of commercialization, with the first private stations. And we haven't even left LEO, apart from the short Apollo program. That's why there will probably be similar, maybe smaller, gaps for Moon and Mars, but let's focus on the latter. If you want companies to go there, they need the incentive first. Musk and SpaceX are doing it for ideological reasons, how about the rest? There's no gold on Mars, or any other material that will justify the private colony there. I don't want to go into details, but profits must outweigh expenses and there won't be many sources of profits on Mars. On the other hand, there will be a lot of expenses, you'll be paying a lot to keep the colonists alive, provide them oxygen, water, food and all other basic resources to survive. Mars will be fully dependent on Earth for a very long time.
