you people don't consider the space program anemic now in terms of goals? How do you get excited about this?
all i see is payload costs and serious financial wizardry to keep it going. it's not even cool anymore. more popular but way less cool.
its like the distinction between science fiction and science fact seems way more clear (mostly because of budgets and interest) then it used to be. Everything is considered outlandish now unless its some wig-wam populated by some geologists. You get a cold shut down with anything else when you talk to people.. no one is enthusiastic, creative or grandiose anymore. It's considered stupid. People had like mars city in their heads and now at best you can expect some kinda shanty where nothing is anything more then just a bare bones engineering structure. It's devoid of any kind of culture with a ultra survivalist mentality thats solely perpetrated by cost. If you wanna build an oil rig to get peoples interest you need to make money off of it. They want to make oil rigs that don't make money. Who likes this?
![Huh? ???](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xhuh.gif.pagespeed.ic.6Nvt7O8a11.png)
?? why ?? its not appealing. You need the romance.
You think spanish mission in the new world but you get a hippy shanty (that will probably be littered with hooka (air) hoses). Its like van life extreme. You can't even film a good TV show about it. Elon musks vision looks like a indian slum.
and dear god I weep if they end up building some kinda city and it ends up looking like a 80's macdonalds (like total recall with arnold).
it's also gotta be kinda loose academically, you can't just do things that make sense doing on mars because your on mars because your gonna end up with a weird bunch of people and a weird martian culture. This will make absolutely no sense to the bean counters. you need to mix it up a little. Or you will end up with a real weird bunch of people. You can't call it a colony if you do that, more like a specific remote research center for the study of this and that. But people want a colony. Not a remote siberian research center.
I know this thread is not about mars but the only hip thing about space right now (kinda) is mars. It will dictate alot of things about space IMO.