Motivation

Many people like to read and watch science fiction about space travel, especially to Mars, the most habitable planet in our solar system next to Earth. The public interest is growing. But what is the motivation to really get there, to make the dream come true? This page wants to collect reasons and shall help to find possibilities to encourage more people to spend part of their lives for the realization of a settlement on Mars. NASA has already introduced the motivation items "Human Evolution" , "Comparative Planetology", "International Cooperation", "Technological Advancement", "Inspiration" and "Investment". But let's see if we can find more ...

Magic88889: it’s not raiding- it’s sanmlipg!!! We're just taking it for a little while.  Borrowing it, so to speak. -  What do you think Cyan’s favorite game is from the Myst series. Judging from the Riven memiorabelia (I slaughtered that name with laughter…  bad pun), I’d say that Riven was their favorite That's probably since Riven was the biggest physical-component one they made.  Myst was almost all CG, Exile and Rev were developed by other places, and Uru again had no live action sequences to need props for (/to get props from).- They’ve pushed hard for theaters to adopt the 3D technology and I think the odds of “Myst” in 3D are, sadly, rather high. I wish it weren’t so, but…THAT’S HOLLYWOOD. Gah.  Well, make it good subtle/useful 3D, then.  I'm sure you guys can do that, somehow.Also, invest in ankle protection.-

Scientific

A manned mission may perform more scientific results compared with remote controlled rovers.

Survival of mankind

Currently mankind is living solely on Earth and is completely dependent on its fragile habitability. A number of possible events can bring mankind to the edge of extinction. A fatal epidemic plague of a virus with the combined characteristics of both ebola and influenza or the deep impact of a large asteroid may wipe the human race off the planet. But in such critical situation mankind would survive on other planets, because the occurrence of such events at the same time on two planets is extremely unlikely.

Stephen Hawking put is like that: "I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load."

Political reasons

The three nations with human space access USA, Russia and China are interested to be the first permanent dwellers on the near cosmic bodies. The political heads aim to carve out territories. The first dwellers will have the best chance to get a big piece of land. For fear of going away empty-handed while other nations occupy the Moon and the planets drives the government to support the effort.

Profit-making

Tourism can be a mighty business. Rich people already spent several million dollars for a week in near-Earth orbit, which is thrilling enough to begin with. A trip to the Moon or even to Mars is even more exciting. A manned one-way mission to Mars might be a business model.

See also

• What settlers would miss
• Motives to sell the colonization of Mars