Re: Colonists
I bet if NASA put together a one-way mission to Mars, there would be thousands of volunteers.
I was actually thinking about this a couple of days ago. What if a self-supporting base was established on Mars and NASA offered one-way trips to this base. Would people volunteer?
Perhaps robots and other machines could contract such a base long before people got there. Supply ships would keep the base stocked, but the growing colonist population would learn how to be a self-sufficient as possible. Their main goal would be to become independent of the Earth.