In an announcement that anti-statists everywhere have been waiting for, a private firm, 4Frontiers, has announced plans to colonize and mine the planet Mars.
From the Wired article:
The new company, 4Frontiers, plans to mine Mars for building materials and energy sources, and export the planet’s mineral wealth to forthcoming space stations on the moon and elsewhere.The company also wants to build the first permanent human settlement on Mars, using strictly Martian materials, as early as 2025. The idea is to make Mars a center for needs of the solar system economy, said Bruce Mackenzie, co-founder of 4Frontiers and the company’s vice president and outreach director.