The Economic Viability of Mars Colonization -
http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Tech/Space/mars.htmlIn my opinion, as a person who wrights a book that has action on Mars and a (Astro)Biologist, I think that
the MAIN economical profit will be from discovering new martian life forms.Why? Look at this:
Antybiotics
DNA-seqencing
New medicine - drug production
Pharmacogenomics
Gene therapy
Genetic testing: techniques in molecular biology detect genetic diseases.
GMO
Biofuels
Biodegradable plastics
Production of food like milk, bread and beer
Bioleaching (mining using bacteria)
Recycling
Waste cleaning and in-situ terrain cleaning (bioremediation)
Biological weapons
New energy sources and equipement of use - OLED diode, organic solar panels, new polimers, flat-sceens, bioluminescence materials etc..
...even more...
Those are the discoveries of biotechnology. Together those industries area's make
THE BIGGEST INDUSTRY IN THE WORLD with something about
47 trylion dollars.
Not mining, not production of cars/computers, not ore refining or software production but
BIOTECHNOLOGY.
That is so much money that it spins the world around, and since the colonisation of mars will need money...it will come from biotech corporations.
But why Mars? Look closely at those examples...do you find anything common?
If you answered: "
Each and every one of them was developed after a discovery of a new bacteria, plant or fungai" then you are
correct.
For instance: Peniciline is produced by a fungai
Pennicilium, PCR was created when
Thermus aquaticus and
Pyrococcus furiosis were discovered in 80 deg. C inside Yellowstone geysers, a specific strain of
E.coli was discovered that could transfer naturaly a genetic material from one species to another - thus creating an era of GMO,
The discovery of
Bacillus thuringiensis made possible to make ecological Pesticides.
Even up to 90% of medicine now are natural-based (not sythesices artifically) and are from plants and fungai.
The
Deinococcus radiodurans was discovered in ham-cans that was sterylized with radiation of 20.000 Greys (!!!) that could have killed a man in seconds (if not sooner), and opened our yes to the ways of biological radiation-protection and gene rapair (longer life and beating cancer!).
Thats just for starters!
As you can see...bioindustry is mostly interested in discovering new bacterias, fungai, plants and animal microorganism.
The fact is - the more exotic environment that are found at the better! (becouse they metabolic-paths must be something we have never seen before, and that meens
new inventions)
Does anyone remember why does the Wayland-Yutani corporation in "Alien 4" tryed to clone the alien?
For new medicine, bioweapons, new bio-polimers for industry. They realized that Aliens was so "alien" to what we know that the biotechnology discoveries would be marvelous.
If there is a life besides Earth anywhere in the solar system...it would propably be on Mars or Europa.
In creating MCO we have the luxary of "licencia poetica" which means, we can determine if life exists on mars or not.
As far as I know - life is already implemented by Hyper to the game.
That means that the problem is solved! We have life on mars so we have a reason and possibility to find new life forms for the biotechnology industry.
Those corporations would pay some
SERIOUS MONEY to get they'r hands on
even one of them.
As for the currency - I have some objections in using dollars, yens and eyro alone and using all of them is propably out of the question.
In 90' game "Star Control", you delivered Earth suplies of materials from other planets, and in exchange, you gained "Resource Units" (RU).