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
Human mission to Mars intermediate steps before the landing on Mars, including human missions to Phobos; and the "Great Exploration" proposal from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, among others. In response to a presidential initiative, NASA made a study of a project for human lunar- and Mars exploration as a proposed follow-on to the International Space Station project. This resulted in a report, called the "90-day study", in which the agency proposed a long-term plan consisting of completing the Space Station as "a critical next step in all our space endeavors," returning to the Moon and establishing a permanent base, and then sending astronauts to