How would Earth-Mars trade work with a Musk-like colony?

Let's take a world that is based heavily on Elon Musk's specific ideas of Mars colonization, to whit:

• Launch technology from Earth evolves to be to <$100/lb cost to launch ratio, due to reusable rockets

• A 1,000,000 member colony is established on Mars within 100 years.

• No major new technology/science is developed (no antimatter drives, room temerature superconductors, cold fusion, singularity, teleportation, or discovery of Unobtainium on Mars, alien artifacts on Mars, etc...).

  However, fusion is plausible, as well as advanced robotics and decent quality AI and advanced genetics. Obtaining water on Mars for sustenance is plausible.

In that world, what would the Earth-Mars trade plausibly look like, based on what we know of Mars, space and economics, in the near term (say first 100 years, so no terraforming of Mars)?

An immediate (and IMHO grossly incorrect) idea would be to model it on Europe/New World trade in 1500s-1800s. But that's clearly wrong:

• The transportation costs are still enormously higher (I'm unsure what they were in New World trade days but I'm guessing way lower that $100/lb

• No/low agricultural capacity on Mars, at least initially.

• Problematic human transplantation (someone who lives in Mars gravity for a while would have issues on Earth).

posted about 10 years ago

DVK‭

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