Elon Musk’s fan boys should note that SpaceX is not the only private company that has attempted colonisation of a foreign land.
In December 1606, the Virginia Company of London sent three ships from England to Virginia with the singular goal of making profit. The indentured servants sent to the new colony signed contracts to work for several years in exchange for land and freedom. Things did not go as planned. Between 1609 and 1610, life in the new colony disintegrated in a Lord of the Flies-like fashion. Out of the 500 original settlers nearly 400 either starved to death, died of disease, or were killed by the Powhatan native Americans. Those who managed to survive did so by eating the rotting corpses of their fellow humans.
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