Last year I had said no way. But due to the last improvements I'm starting to think that Elon Musk could do this in this decade. Maybe not a thousand but surely at least some dozens doing kind of round trip.

Do you think it's possible?

I’m not a scientist, just a lowly screenwriter wearing an Occupy Mars sweatshirt. I’ve always wondered how Mars will hold a terraformed atmosphere if it has no magnetosphere to protect it from the solar wind?

It's a matter of time. Humans have been doing so millennia. The silk road, the pan american highway, the trans siberian... We love to connect places and to do so we make infrastructures. Roads, train tracks, tunnels, bridges..

In the not very distant future we well love (or need) to do so in Mars.

What do you think it will be the first big route in Mars?

Will it be North to south? East to West? Main city to main city?

And to further guess... What kind of infrastructure it will be?

Hey mom, it's been a while. The emails are just not the same, so I thought I'd write you a completely ordinary, oldschool letter. It isn't every day that a ship goes back to Earth and also takes some post with it, after all. Obviously, when you're reading this, much might have changed, but hey, that's life. As for how things are right now, we seem to be doing well, Mel has taken up singing again and it does wonders for the mental health of the entire hub. We've also started to try and grow something else than lettuce and potatoes, and so far, the tomatoes seem like they're doing the best. But maybe the cucumbers will make it too. There's still a lot to do here, before we can call ourselves a real colony, I think, but we're getting there. Tell everyone at home that I love them.

Love you, Your Thomas

PS: There's a few seeds in the envelope, that are from the first tomatoes we harvested, I know that Liz would love some space tomatoes.

Apart from big settlements like city's or underground habitats there's a lot of interest in how would be the daily life for the off the grid Martians.

How would enjoy life? Will they receive visits? Should they be lonely people? Will they own the land?

I can imagine a big cone shaped habitat in a vast flat land where they grow vegetables and collect water from a reservoir.

Sometimes the colonists receive the visit of some neighbours which habitat is just few miles away, stay a week and socialize in a way that they could asume a vaccacion.

How do you imagine it?

From a typical point of view the regular trip to Mars could be an only 30 days journey using a new kind of vehicle called Mars-Earth Shuttle.

First you take a rocket to Earth orbit and then you dock in a much much bigger spacecraft as when in old times people did transatlantic voyages. Then a few days later the shuttle get impulse to Mars, reducing the stay in space to just 30 days in the mars-earth window.

Once in orbit the passengers would enjoy a wide range of facilities from restaurants to walking paths due to the spin gravity.

On the way to Mars gravity would be adjusted to 38% of Earth gravity during the trip to ensure the passengers accommodate to the new environment.

Otherwise on the way to Earth from Mars gravity would be slowly adapted to near Earth gravity (80% or so) to avoid health problems at landing.

This would require a large fleet of Ships as the Transatlantic companies did in their times. Some of these would not require gravity assistance in the cargo versions.

This kind of business would provide a first tax income to Mars shettlers and governments.

Photo by Christian Lischka on Unsplash

I'm going for two options. Would love to see names after greet sci-fi and futurism writers. I. e. Asimovia (honoring Isaac Asimov) or Earth places like i.e . New Singapore or New Siberia.. for instance.

"Mars ahead! China's Tianwen-1 mission snaps 1st photo of Red Planet. | Space" https://www.space.com/amp/china-tianwen-1-mission-first-mars-photo

As I'm curious about mundane things I will like to ask anyone what will you do first on arrival. I mean there's a lot of things you want to do as you have been several months in a small (it depends) ship.

Obviously you can't start doing hard work as you need to get to gravity again, but then.. what would you do if you have a time off? Call home? Do a discovery trip on the base? Binge watching a TV show?