Or have extra housing and food for 3 billion inhabitants?
Now I am not saying it will happen any time soon, but the colonization of Mars won't be just for NASA employees. The whole purpose of colonization is to move large numbers of people, enough to sustain a growing and industrious society.
The timeline is predicted as follows:
2011 - Mars Scout Mission, a Science Laboratory on wheels which will explore the martian surface.2013 – Privately owned "space cruiser” to take group of space tourists outside of the Earth’s atmosphere.
2020 - NASA Lunar Colony, building of launching pad on the moon for future space exploration.
2025 - Manned mission to orbit Mars and return to Earth. Robotic terraforming of Mars will begin in locations where water is located.
2030 - First Manned Missions to Mars surface, establishing first colony and building greenhouses for food.
2040 - Additional colonization missions, in cooperation with China, Russia and the EU. The focus of these missions will be to build a viable society.
2041-2 - First children born on Mars.
2050 - Larger colony ships designed to be "stackable" to make the colonization process faster, easier and cheaper to upgrade over the long term.
However history has shown setbacks to the Mars mission timeline frequently depend on the economic successes of the countries involved. The 8 years of the Bush Administration significantly slowed down space exploration because all the financial resources were being used on the War on Terrorism and the bank bailouts.
Its safe to assume we will encounter similar delays and setbacks in the future.
Eventually however the assumption is that the government would be looking for large numbers of colonists / volunteers. Will it happen in our lifetime? Maybe, but only if governments can get their act in gear.
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