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, architechtural word; anything that is pure information can be sent from Eart at low incrememtal 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 expensive to provide 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