Because you can use resources from Mars once you are there. Mars has the potential to carry a human civilisation. It has the potential to be terraformed.
Mars has the potential to carry the sort of civilization we have now; it’s another planet, we make it like Earth, we get another Earth, we colonize it and live like we do on Earth.
Space stations have the capacity to carry an entirely new sort of civilization. The resources are out there, too—more scattered, yes, but your processing plant and drilling equipment are far more mobile in space. More, once you have industry running, gravity wells are a substantively smaller problem.
Mars has the potential to carry the sort of civilization we have now; it’s another planet, we make it like Earth, we get another Earth, we colonize it and live like we do on Earth.
Mars will never by just like earth. Different gravity matters. Culturally the process of building up Mars likely won’t produce a culture that matches earth.
Earth’s patent law likely won’t be enforcable on Mars. Genetic engineering might be legal on a much wider scale than earth.
Why would we colonize another gravity well? This one is already 90% of our problem with colonizing space.
Because you can use resources from Mars once you are there. Mars has the potential to carry a human civilisation. It has the potential to be terraformed.
Mars has the potential to carry the sort of civilization we have now; it’s another planet, we make it like Earth, we get another Earth, we colonize it and live like we do on Earth.
Space stations have the capacity to carry an entirely new sort of civilization. The resources are out there, too—more scattered, yes, but your processing plant and drilling equipment are far more mobile in space. More, once you have industry running, gravity wells are a substantively smaller problem.
Mars will never by just like earth. Different gravity matters. Culturally the process of building up Mars likely won’t produce a culture that matches earth.
Earth’s patent law likely won’t be enforcable on Mars. Genetic engineering might be legal on a much wider scale than earth.