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Re:Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Raising Money at a Valuation Approa... by ufmace on Tuesday August 19, 2014 @02:52PM (#8199091)
I don't think the people downvoting you realize just how big of a project a self-sufficient off-planet colony is. Nobody really knows how many people it would take to be self-sufficient, but I'm guessing that it's at least 100,000. The total number of people who have been to space, from all countries' space programs over the course of ~60 years or so, is 536, and not one of them has left Earth orbit.

Looks like we need at least 3 orders of magnitude of improvement before we can even start to think about it. If SpaceX's program for reusable rockets succeeds beyond Musk's wildest dreams, we might get like 1 order of magnitude of cost reduction. There's still a hell of a long way to go, and that's if everything works perfectly.

A semi-permanent colony might be doable, but anyone there wouldn't last long without regular resupply from Earth.

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