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Re:Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video] by abecedarius on Tuesday September 27, 2016 @07:32PM (#12594203)
You spin up your station. You're not limited to whatever accidental value holds on the planetary surface. This was all studied back in the 1970s and 80s, and free-space development makes way more sense: http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/
Re:Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video] by andygates on Friday September 30, 2016 @06:59AM (#12611693)
And this adds a whole new set of engineering challenges and project risk. Nobody's spun up anything bigger than a rocket stage to date.
Re:Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video] by abecedarius on Friday September 30, 2016 @08:16PM (#12615976)
Of course space settlement is many steps away; so is a permanent settlement on Mars. You need to analyze the payoffs and costs and intermediates and uncertainties for each.