Space

To me, colonizing another planet is not about expanding or moving the human race somewhere else. It's a backup plan. Right now, our entire species exists all on this one planet. There is a non-zero chance that we could all be eradicated in an instant by a sufficiently large asteroid or comet, or by nuclear war. There is no backup for the human race or any other species on earth. Once we have a colony, we greatly increase our likelihood of surviving the end of the world. I think that's worth investing in, and we should bring as many species with us as possible. For all we know our planet may be the only oasis of life in the galaxy or even the universe. Didn't you think we should have a backup?

The same argument existed since the beginning of space exploration, if we, as a species would have heard those arguments, we wouldn't have satellite today, and all the other advances space exploration brought.

I once met someone who said that it's a pipe dream to think we could have equality between races before we had equality within the same race, and that we should make sure that there aren't any poor white people before we start worrying about PoC.

These two projects build on each other. Furthermore, each has a minimum time that no amount of researchers working together can push us below. To say we shouldn't do one because we haven't done another only serves to reveal your ignorance.

Trying to raise a child before retiring is stupid for the same reason. Yet here we are not waiting to organize our lives into serial convenience.

Like a frightened turtle.

How about eleven feet of concrete?

If you haven't noticed, the space stations we do build require international cooperation and are basically just a bunch of rocket sections stuck together. The ISS, in all of its glory, took years to assemble and has some serious design constraints.

A project of that magnitude would require lots of highly specialized parts to be launched into orbit first, or, we somehow manage to build an entire fabrication facility in orbit where it can process raw materials.

The concept of a rotating ring is simple. Developing the means to build it is hyper-complex.

If you're asking about the shielding, probably the mass required for materials that are generally used for radiation shielding. If the craft is built terrestrially, the amount of energy necessary to launch would be insurmountable with current chemical rockets.

Now, if the craft were manufactured in space (and forming of the shielding materials were practical in low-G), the problematic materials could be shuttled up over time, making it a non-issue. This would, of course, also mean that the craft could not be used for re-entry and would require landing craft. And there's all the logistics challenges (supplying air, etc). Probably though the direction that will be necessary for long-distance space craft.

With the current technology that we have, it would be that way where you get there but it will be difficult to impossible to get back, relatively speaking. But we’ve been at work to try to not make that a reality for those visiting the planet.

This is one of the reasons why the rockets from SpaceX are so valuable in that they can land the same way they take off. Because with other rockets, we’d need a situation like we had on the moon during the Apollo years where a ship orbits the planet and waits for a separate landing ship to come back which is a waste of fuel and cuts down on the potential time that can be spent on the planet as well as resources that would be consumed and need to replenished and also waste of humans waiting in orbit instead of being part of the ground crew.

While that technology is now here, there is still much testing that still needs to be done to ensure safety is there.

What you may also be thinking of is the time in which it takes for a ship to travel between the earth and mars. At its shortest, the trip could be as little as 6 months, but is more as both planets orbit the sun further away from each other, so we are trying to find a time that works with that orbiting schedule as well so it doesn’t have to be a one way trip and they can get there and come back in a reasonable amount of time while having enough resources to last the journey.

I don't know that Law Enforcement possess the skill and know how to establish a settlement on their own but I like your thinking, friend!

If the issue is gravity, we could go to Venus and spin space craft to get centrifugal force.

Make sure to first redistribute their money to people who actually deserve it.

There are dozens of astronauts who've spent years in the space station. Granted that's across multiple missions, but the gravity on Mars might end up being enough to mitigate the damage.

I'm more concerned with the "artist's impression of a Mars colony" being a few low res shapes placed on top of what is very obviously a close up of a few square feet of Martian surface. Have they already outsourced chat GPT's image gen to even cheaper models?