Mars to Stay to 30, thereby beginning a Martian settlement. Since the Martian surface offers all the natural resources and elements necessary to sustain a robust, mature, industrialized human settlement—unlike, for example the Moon—a permanent Martian settlement is thought to be the most effective way to ensure that humanity becomes a space-faring, multi-planet species. Through the use of digital fabricators and in vitro fertilisation it is assumed a permanent human settlement on Mars can grow organically from an original thirty to forty pioneers. A Mars to Stay mission following Aldrin's proposal would enlist astronauts in the following timeline: As Aldrin has said, "who
Mars to Stay advocates—both favorable and critical—resulted in the Mars Artists Community creating several dozen more designs, with such slogans as, "Traitors Return to Earth" and "What Would Zheng He Do?" In October 2009, Eric Berger of the Houston Chronicle wrote of "Mars to Stay" as perhaps the only program that can revitalize the United States' space program: What if NASA could land astronauts on Mars in a decade, for not ridiculously more money than the $10 billion the agency spends annually on human spaceflight? It's possible ... relieving NASA of the need to send fuel and rocketry to blast humans off the