Domes are overrated
Some people wonder why we should go to Mars. There's not much to profit by going there. In terms of mining, not much is useful there, plus asteroids are easier to mine.<p>The benefit is that a colony on Mars would be an engine of innovation. People keep pointing out that NASA has produced hundreds of useful innovations (like space blankets). Imagine how many innovations would a colony of 500 people come up with when stranded there for months and years. It's not that we send them there with only sticks and stone tools, they'll have the most advanced technology we can fit them with, but they'll still find themselves in thousands of situations where their tools will be puny compared to their problems.<p>Some in this thread mention boring machines. Well, just after a boring machine cuts a few meters of tunnel, someone lines that tunnel with some concrete elements. Where's the concrete coming from on Mars? Oh, I guess they can make it locally. Great, where are the components coming from? I guess you can mine them locally, but you'd need to bore some tunnels for that. A bit of a chicken and egg. What if the concrete does not set exactly like on Earth, because, you know, there's not enough humidity in their air (and there's not enough air either).<p>These guys will face millions of problems. And they'll have no choice but solve them.<p>It's going to be awesome.