Elon Musk and the BFR

[Rynn]

Forget about terraforming, creating a small closed ecosystem is what you’d need but even that would be very expensive. Especially as no one, not even space x, is seriously trying to make and study one. Then there’s the need for a self sufficient high tech economy which we don’t have experience creating from scratch, especially in such a hostile environment so far away. Creating a colony on mars would require decades of major investment for an incredibly poor ROI.

A very rich nation not beholden to an electorate might be able to do it if enough people in the government had been bitten by the space cadet bug. Other than that I don’t see such a thing as being feasible unless a swathe of technologies were invented that lowered both the cost and risk. Things like robotic mining/construction, habitat maintenance infrastructure (I.e things we’ll need to keep failing ecosystems going on earth) etc.

Rather than being some billionaires retreat it wouldn’t surprise me if the first major colony off world was a one-party state with heavy nationalisation of services and market regulation.