Talk:Foundation of an Autonomous Colony

I think the 'colony types' is not quite right. It's quite alright to put down Earth supported, Semi-autonomous and Autonomous, however you are forgetting the two stages that will invariable follow, namely Acceleration, where the colony begins to take decisions into its own hands, even argues against decisions made on Earth and most importantly plants additional colonies of its own, and finally political independance. No doubt this final stage could come as soon as the second generation of children born on Mars has grown to adulthood and is enjoying the fruits of the labours of their parents and the pioneers before them.

I am not sure that people will want governmental independence by the time of the second generation. A Mars colony will be small for a long time. It will be able to benefit from expert advice from Earth; engineering work, expert medical advice, architectural work; anything that is pure information can be sent from Earth at low incremental cost. Naturally local decisions will be made locally from the start, but I doubt the colonists would even want to consider themselves independent from Earth.

It seems quite likely to me that the first colony will start as a completely robotic, remotely controlled colony for the purpose of establishing industry. The colonists themselves will be a great liability to industrial development at the start because of the expense to provide the necessities of human life. Perhaps as a colony type there ought to be a remotely controlled robotic colony for initial development. – by Farred from an unsecure terminal, 19:00 UTC 20 December

The above text was my post in 2010 in answer to the 01:59 hours 20 December post of User:122.148.43.180. I have now corrected some of my typing mistakes. - Farred 02:28, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

However a colony becomes independent, once it has sufficient electrical power (such as a ten gigawatt solar electrical power plant) and the means to replicate most of its industrial base, it will be able to make any tools that it needs to become entirely self sufficient. Then all important decisions for the colony will be made on Mars, because Mars will be supplying the wealth to support those decisions in the form of industrial production. Agricultural and atmosphere maintenance are parts of industrial production. At that point if Mars decides to develop more transportation between surface and low orbit, it will be a Martian decision. The Mars based official will likely communicate in diplomatic language to Earth based officials and respect their opinions but not feel constrained by them. If a Mars colony is to succeed at all, this point will come. Mars has a much better set of limitations for establishing economical transportation between surface and orbit than Earth does and the moons of Mars are much more accessible for raw materials for establishing a robust space based solar power industry. - Farred 02:28, 13 August 2013 (UTC)