Talk:Motives to sell the colonization of Mars

Two groups of Mars colony supporters of uncertain value

Some people are motivated to get an American (or Chinese or Frenchman) to Mars as the first man on Mars. After that is done, they will have as much motivation to colonize Mars as they now show for colonizing Luna. If we want an independent colony on Mars, we must not compromise by accepting a flag and footprints mission to Mars. Once such a mission is accomplished, we lose the support of people who only want to see the first human being reach Mars as a stunt. Such people generally do not believe that colonizing Mars is possible anyway, and only go along with the colonize Mars spiel as far as they think it will draw some naive enthusiasts to support their grand stunt program.

Some people are true believers in Mars colonization. They do not look at difficult problems that must be solved to colonize Mars because bringing up such problems would discourage support for the colonization program. They truly believe that such problems will be solved when the time comes if we just put some men in a rocket and send them to Mars. They divide problems into two types: the easy ones which we should work on now in order to have some organizational momentum, and the hard ones which we should ignore. When the easy tasks are done and only hard tasks remain, they quit.

How can these two groups be distinguished from one another? Observing their behavior shows little difference between them. There is a third group that lacks the technical understanding to appreciate difficult problems in colonizing Mars. People in the third group are needed because technical problems are not the only thing we need to tackle to get a Mars colony. The third group can be distinguished because when a hard problem is explained to them, they become concerned and want to know how it can be managed, how long it will take and how much it will cost. --Farred 03:06, 8 July 2010 (UTC)