Organic growth models harness terrestrial resources to make colonization possible

(Robert, interviewed by Charles Monroe-Kang , for the date at the end it says this Original Air Date: May 04, 2019 Post date: February 15, 2022, but its not Feb 15 yet so…)

CMK: How would this work, exactly? What’s the plan? RZ: The way to go is with a few small exploration missions to find the right place for a permanent outpost. Then you send lots of cargos with habitations. Then you send a few groups of people to set up greenhouses for food production and facilities to manufacturer plastics, steel, propellant, and oxygen. And once you create the capacity for people to be self-supportive, you can send more and more of them. So it won’t be like the Normandy landing, with 100,000 people the first day and another 100,000 in the second wave. It’ll be more organic growth. CMK: What about water? RB: There's water on Mars — and not just at the poles. That’s one of the discoveries to come out of NASA’s very successful robotic planetary exploration program. We have now discovered glaciers on Mars at about the same latitude as San Francisco on Earth. They contain more water than the American Great Lakes and they're covered by only a few feet of dust and sand. So they're within shoveling distance.