As sensed by people who have clearly spent moments considering it.
It may be unlikely, but I haven’t seen a real reason why not offered yet.
At least, not an original one. These ‘reasons’ are all recycled from the Apollo Era when they were also not true or accurate.
What hasn’t come very far in 50 years… is naysayers.
Well, there’s the internet 
With the exception of the last item, those were all true in 1900, as well.
What kind of goal-posts are you playing with, here? They look like some sort of new-fangled polymer (1833), but they’re being moved so rapidly I can’t get a good look…
This was quite a try. I believe you’re not trying to upset anyone. I would have to assume it comes naturally to you.
I’d suggest we send all the puritanical fundies, but, well, look how that turned out last time…
I suggest we send the Telephone Sanitizers.
Just make sure to load the small lemon-soaked paper napkins. Shouldn’t launch without them, seeing as how they are essential to provide comfort, refreshment and hygiene during the journey.
We can send both.
Destination: Sun.
And lawyers. Don’t forget the lawyers.
If I knew the next goalpost… maybe some type of anti-gravity technology or mastering synthetic photosynthesis.
I am sorry I upset you. 3-printing is a technological step up on sculpting though, integrated with cnc controls and glue guns.
You mean “why not” expect the terraforming/genetically modified human colonists @shaddack mentioned as likely to happen in the short-term? I could write at length about that but one reason is obvious: medical ethics & current technology aside, even if we already knew how to re-write human DNA to create people who could thrive on Mars then we’d need a couple of decades for those space-babies to grow up to run the place.
I have faith that humanity will go to Mars eventually, and hopefully within my lifetime. I just recognize that we have some pretty fundamental engineering challenges to work out before we settle on such an optimistic timeline.
And its availability and rapidly increasing affordability does not count as a form of a breakthroughs?
Consider the Internet. The cellphones. All the other sorts of high-impact technologies that sneaked upon us without us really noticing the change. True, the networks existed before, the radiotelephony as well - but the widescale availability can count as a major breakthrough on its own.
Not to diminish their development, but they are refinements of existing inventions more than new discoveries.
My point was that the technological growth and embracing of the scientific method of the industrial to space-age was really unprecedented. Not that new discoveries are to be made, but the radical change from muscle power to the technologies of the modern world, are a pinnacle we already crossed. There simply may not be such another pinnacle to cross.
Surely someone will have realized they could recruit lesbians? And send along a sperm bank for when they decide it might be time to repopulate.
The real question is who wants to go - it’s who we want to fool into sending. Hey Koch Bros - here’s a place to start your libertarian utopia unencumbered by the takers!!!
Be fun to see how much you actually depend on others to survive…or not survive.
The real question isn’t
See my point re: puritans above…
Let’s also not forget it’s applications to architecture, particularly extra-earth architecture (theorhetical): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_printing
However, I think the core arguments for advancements re: Mars Colony would have to primarly revolve around long-term-enclosed-environment.
3D-printed buildings are nice, especially if they can be done with Mars-sourced materials and provide radiation-protection. But otherwise they are another resource-consumer (energy, material) that is difficult to replenish.
I read Stephen Baxter’s Ark this winter – concerned the construction and launch of a self-sustaining spaceship. It was a crash-program of… 10 years? And pretty much had full resources of a (diminishing) United States behind it, to create the new technologies needed by launch-date. It… worked.
Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money?
Nice ride, but the in-flight music was off-putting and incongruous.
