Well, there are quite a few ways of moving lots of stuff out of the gravity well without turning the Planet below into the Fallout franchise. The already menti

Well, there are quite a few ways of moving lots of stuff out of the gravity well without turning the Planet below into the Fallout franchise. The already mentioned reusable chemical rockets will loft quite a bit as long as they are really reusable and durable. Space elevators (there are still material challenges for Earht, but IIRC existing materials would be enough for Mars): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator Launch loops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop Space fountains and active structures in general (are crazy but have high useful potential): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain Heck, there is a dedicated article for these in the Wikipedia! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rocket_spacelaunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rocket_spacelaunch Still, I would say ideally you would want to move most of the heavy manufacturing to space & from space resources anyway. Then reusable chemical rockets might be good enough to move people and other compact high value cargo between Earth surface & space infrastructure.