there are serious problems, and being snarky isn't going to solve any of them.

The problem is how to fund it.

I'm no billionaire but I got $10.00 bucks to move the project forward.

what makes you think they'll pay with their own money for private space travel and planetary colonization?

They won't.

They got their riches using other people's money.

Google "other people's money".

when the Citizens United ruling came down. Hard to believe we once had such a "leftist" on the Supreme Court.

Don't believe the hype.

https://medium.com/matter/mars-one-insider-quits-dangerously-flawed-project-2dfef95217d3

As Roche observed the process from an insider’s perspective, his concerns increased. Chief among them: that some leading contenders for the mission had bought their way into that position, and are being encouraged to “donate” any appearance fees back to Mars One — which seemed to him very strange for an outfit that needs billions of dollars to complete its objective.

“When you join the ‘Mars One Community,’ which happens automatically if you applied as a candidate, they start giving you points,” Roche explained to me in an email. “You get points for getting through each round of the selection process (but just an arbitrary number of points, not anything to do with ranking), and then the only way to get more points is to buy merchandise from Mars One or to donate money to them.”

This isn't just a case of them having unrealistic and overly ambitious dreams either. It's clearly a scam outfit based on everything I've heard about them.

At least one could get some entertainment out of it.

Because, if Mars One launches to Mars, the people will not last very long there. My money is on: the first dies before arrival.

You should be a regular on "Walking Dead".

you may not be too far from the mark.

they all die before arrival.

Even assuming it is not a scam and that the technology is available, the chance of colossal failure is high.

For instance, suppose the colonists make it to Mars and establish Gatesville. There is a live feed from Mars, with a delay of course. After a couple of weeks a major, unforeseen problem occurs and the colonists are stranded and running out of supplies. The whole world would watch as the people of Gatesville die off. Every last one.

Nobody would want their name on that.

Who would want to invest in that?

Although there is no way he would do it under the Mars One BS.

After generation after generation of failed attempts to colonize Mars and establish an ecosystem that can sustain large life organisms, might they discover how good Earth has made it for us. Maybe then they'll stop raping this planet in the name of profit.

The "Biosphere II" project showed us how difficult it is to make a biosphere.

We need to make movement in both directions: understanding how fragile life on Earth is, and how difficult it will be to establish life on Mars, if we can do it at all.

Thank you for your reasoned and enlightened input.

...to 'make a biosphere'.

As far as anyone really knows, biospheres evolve they are not made. We have a technocracy that mostly rejects ecological principles, and now the captains of that technocracy think they'd like a healthy biosphere -- on Mars. What a disgusting insult.

The banter around this is so unbelievably stupid, with idiots who don't even distinguish between 'outposts' and 'colonies'. The latter would involve raising infants in one-third gravity, something humans are not adapted for and those children are more likely to suffer crippling muscle and bone conditions than they are to carry on the life of a colony.

We may not be ready to actually colonize Mars for a century or more.

and that the sociopaths masquerading as politicians that we are repeatedly supposed to take seriously, are the first to join the migration...permanently.

and build Galt's Gulch, a libertarian paradise bereft of government regulations and taxes.

Save yourself a LOT of time and money guys. Such a place exists on Earth, it is called Somalia.

which is fitting.

there, fixed

permanent habitation on the Moon or Mars unless private money somehow gets involved. How that needs to happen, I don't really know.

But I did once write a short story, still unpublished, that has the first NASA manned mission to Mars being met by a group that gets there ahead of them which I have funded by the fictional Spielberg-Gates Foundation.

is so they can get all the resources and money from it.

and poor to move into. Go for it.