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Where should our Mars colony(s) be located? Mars Habitats. Mars Resources. Mars (off-planet) Governance. Buildings in Space. Energy. Power. Civilization.

Going in Style – The Aldrin Cycler Our last post was all about Starship, the new spacecraft under development by SpaceX. If SpaceX can make it work, Starship will certainly be a winner, sporting the capability to ferry up to 100 people on the 6-month journey to Mars. But what if it doesn’t work out?

Going in Style! When we looked at what we could do to shorten the trip to Mars, we found that things aren’t looking very good on the get-there-faster front. The Rocket Equation is unforgiving, with fuel volumes rapidly becoming unmanageable as we increase delta-v. So if we can’t get there more quickly, can we take

Are we there yet? Why is this taking so long? My last few posts explored whether we are even capable of transporting people to Mars, and the answer is almost certainly yes. We can do it, and we can do it with today’s technology, but it won’t be fun. The trip will be cramped, boring,

When does the bus leave for Mars? Our solar system is a very, very big place. Happily, we had the good sense to evolve on one of the inner planets (the planets closer to the sun than the asteroid belt), where the distances are merely enormous rather than gigantic, and don’t even get me started

My last post briefly discussed the anticipated radiation dose from Galactic Cosmic Rays. More specifically, NASA calculates that future travelers to Mars will receive a dose of 660 milliSieverts during their one-year return trip. Since we colonists have no intention (or means) of returning, we can expect to receive a 330 milliSievert dose on our

We’ve spent almost all of the previous posts discussing potential opportunities for getting to Geosynchronous Orbit, Lagrange Point Five, Luna, and eventually Mars. Before we talk about how long the trip will take, how comfortable we can be, we need to talk about what’s out there in the open ocean when we minnows leave the

Nothing is going to happen on the colony front unless and until we have spacecraft that can take us there. Do we have those now, and if not, how far away are they? I’m going to focus on SpaceX hardware because they are the only people who have built at least partly reusable ships that

That seemed like a pretty straightforward question until I tried to answer it. We have tons of work camps in Canada. When travel times are too long for daily commutes to make economic sense, employers establish places for their workers to live for limited time periods, such as 2 weeks working/ 2 weeks off. Over

There ARE other places out there in the Solar System where humans might be able to live long-term. Here’s a few of them to consider, working our way from the bottom of the Sun’s gravity well outwards. . It contains large quantities of hydrated minerals and clays, is very carbon-rich, and is estimated to be