The author seems to forget that Russia (then USSR) was the first to put a man into space, while under an economic blockade ...

And what does it have to do with Mars anyway ? Are we going to take our primitive geopolitical structure that we have on Earth and implement it on Mars too ?

In fact, I think this will be an even tougher challenge than the technological one:

Who owns the equipment sent from Earth, the land, the resources that are being extracted ? Countries/companies/individuals from Earth ? How are they going to enforce that and guard against a revolution ? (Space police, killer robots ?) What if a conflict arises between the colony and Earth ?

Technological challenges - I think we'll figure them out - but these 'soft' aspects - I'm not sure I want all this bullshit to spread around the Solar System thank you.

  How are they going to enforce that and
  guard against a revolution?

So, your telling me you want people to fly to Mars, under oath that they will always pay the rent, pay the tithe, and disavow ownership of the equipment their lives depend on, possibly letting others enable or disable it based on fealty and political alignment?

  Who owns the equipment sent from Earth?

The people riding it to Mars and using it when they land. Anything else is pretty much suicide. When you go to Mars, you might not come back. No one wants a EULA between them and their life support system.

Given the US's history it's interesting to speculate how they might respond to Martian attempts to throw off the colonial yoke!

Russia has semiconductor fabs? And produces biopharmaceuticals?

Angstrem has IC fabs (90 nm and 130 nm) in Russia but they bought the technology from the Germany (paid German company to build the fab).

Russians have designed their own microprocessors but they are manufactured in Taiwan by TSMC.

They even have their own Silicon Valley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelenograd#Industries

I believe they do.

Yes, they do.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabric...

That list of 100+ fabs lists just 2 in Russia (in Zelenograd and Voronezh), both operated by Mikron. One was opened in 1959 and operates at >900 nm, and the other operates at >90 nm. (EDIT: as mentioned elsewhere, even this lab was built by Germans with German tech.) For comparison, state-of-the-art facilities are <30 nm, and the US has >60 facilities on that list, which is still much more than Russian on a per capita basis (pop. 321M vs. 144M).

I know nothing about this industry, but looking only at that list it seems very possible to me that Russia is, for all intents and purposes, completely dependent on the global economy for semiconductor fab.

I think the difference is that Russia has the resources to create the factories if they need too, its just a lot easier and cheaper to outsource it.

Sure, but the point of this part of the blog post is that there is a minimum viable sizes for modern industrialized civilization, and it is bigger than Australia (pop. 24M), and probably even Russia (pop. 144M). Russian can't itself manufacture all products it needs simultaneously even if it could do it for any individual product.

Folks in this thread seem to have mistakenly interpreted this as a value judgement about Russia from the author. "Russia is sophisticated enough to produce any of these products!" is a retort to that claim, buts it's completely besides the point.

I believe he meant they cant manufacture all the items he mentioned and rely on trade for some parts.

I know for sure that cars, ships, aircrafts, and rockets are made from raw materials in Russia. I wasn't sure about some computer chips, but this article seems to indicate some are made in Russia as well: http://www.semi.org/en/russia%E2%80%99s-technology-industry-...

Same for Australia.

Though I will say the two car plants that design and build cars from the ground up are both closing.

>> Though I will say the two car plants that design and build cars from the ground up are both closing.

They wouldn't be if Australia was on Mars. This illustrates a point. Low shipping costs are what's killing those plants. High shipping costs are an issue for Mars. They'll have to make their own in almost every case.

We can't rocket, semiconductor or aerospace

Australia used to be one of the world leaders in hypersonic flight research. That doesn't quite equate with Boeing/Airbus, or even Embraer/Bombardier, but suggests similar potential like with Russia.

… because successive conservative governments have cut funding for science, education, and support of technology entrepreneurs. The current government is doubling down on efforts to drive the middle and lower class from education.

Australia could absolutely have advanced industries like aerospace and semiconductor fabs if the regulatory environment wasn't directly hostile to those industries.