[RD] Pessimism about Mars

That's a fair point but I don't think it will be regulations that drive those major changes. I think it will come down to economic considerations driving some solutions out of the market rather than heavy-handed regulation. It's my hope anyways that this is the case - that economics drive out some solutions before a bunch of people get killed before regulations are written in response to that. But I guess we'll see!

Bet on a combination of both. Economics will drive out some really good but high end approaches, one off mayhem and subsequent regulation, or hopefully preemptive regulation but don't hold your breath, will eliminate some (pardon the expression) fly by night half baked idiocy. Then a few middle ground concepts will be developed a little further until accidents pare that field down to a standard. In the end the standard probably will not really be the best of that bunch, just the luckiest.
 
I'd been under the impression that it was vaguely understood that, by the time we had the technology to colonise Mars anyway, it would have become more resource-efficient to simply construct artificial habits in space. Mars doesn't need to accomodate more than robots mining for whatever minerals we can't more easily get in the asteroid belt.

I'm honestly sort of surprised to learn that anyone was still taking "colonise Mars" as a serious item on humanity's to-do list.

I don't think a space habitat would be more cost effective than a Mars colony. With a space habitat, any extra material, anything lost out of non-perfect closed cycles needs to be brought in with expensive spaceships. A Mars colony would have some hope of being semi-self-sustainable, so in the long run it would require significantly less support.

Of course, this kind of depends on what you want the habitat for. I seriously doubt the economics of space colonization in the near future and for tourism, the space habitat would be more cost effective, because it is much easier to get to (Although Mars would be the much more interesting destination).
 
Maybe inside asteroids?
 
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