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I also agree with respect to resource extraction. Gravity can be provided by centrifigul spinning. However, nothing beats mass for providing protection from radiation and give gravity with large living space. We currently would have a problem hollowing out and spinning a large asteroid to produce living space for thousands to millions of people.

Charlie B

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If we wanted to live in a hollow asteroid, it could be done.

Mars has no magnetic field, so protection offered against cosmic radiation is nil. You'd need to be underground just as you would on the moon or an steroid.

Hollowing out an asteroid would be the way to go for resource extraction and when you are done you have a nice, hollow home ready to move into.

Spinning a large asteroid would be the easiest thing in the world: Simply stick a few Ion drives around the equator and let them fire for a few years. We have that technology right now.

If the asteroid rock walls proved insufficient for radiation sheilding, it may be possible to stick a metal grid on the surface and use fusion or fission to power an atrificial magnetic field around it. Radiation protection may thus be much easier to build in then on the Mars or Lunar surface.

From a certain point of view Mars and the moon are nothing more than large asteroids. They lack a useful atmosphere and both are near vacume in relation to Earth. In addition to this neither offers any protection from radiation.

Thus there is no benefit of colonization of Mars with present or currently foreseeable technology. Lunar colonization has the benefit of proximity. Asteroid colonization requires impractical travel times at present but comes without the extreme gravity well penalty that Mars carries.

Pesse (Just my two cents) Mist

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