Occulus will run on a $1200 computer, if one shops smartly.

Meanwhile a total copypasta of mere speculation from /r/spacex: SPACEX, 2020: SEND A SMALL ORBITER AND LANDER. Being only four years from today, use an off-the-shelf spacecraft bus for an orbiter and a lander which is a set of ground penetrators like what was tried with Mars Polar Lander. Probe the subsurface at the MS1 or the candidate sites. SPACEX, 2022: LAND A PAYLOAD ON MARS AT MS1 with a substantial solar array with processes that stores methane and oxygen. This should not be wasted and should have the potential to act as a backup to the second such system delivered to MS1. SPACEX, 2024: LAND A DRAGON CARGO AT MS1 which delivers some initial supplies for the first human landing. Include an expandable module that will function as a Quonset hut for supplies. Before 2024, a standard adapter for connecting modules on Mars must be defined, a critical development milestone, so that this and subsequent deliveries can be integrated into a functional outpost. SPACEX, 2026: LAND A HABITAT MODULE. The module must have the bare essentials to sustain the first landing crew and must operate for the next 3 years to prove the technology ready for a landing before 2030. Likewise, this module would not be wasted and would function as a backup. SPACEX, 2026: SECOND MISSION. Land a second-generation CH4/O2 processor and an Earth-return launch vehicle at MS1. SPACEX, 2029: THE FIRST HUMANS TO MARS. Send a crew of 7 astronauts to Musk Station 1. The 2029 mission will involve two Falcon Heavy launches - A "Red" Dragon with living habitat for the journey and a Earth-return launch vehicle with supplies. A first-gen MCT might be the transporter but time & cost between now and 2029 can only support the logistics of a small crew (7).

Just out of curiosity - what do you expect the results of digging up millions of years of stored solar energy (aka fossil fuels), and burning them all in a finite atmosphere over the course of a couple of centuries, would be?

"The scientists are optimistic that they'll be able to find high quality DNA from the mammoth, and perhaps even living cells." Is this a real possibility; 43,000 living eukaryote cells? It seems like cellular respiration would have ceased long ago, or is the claim that they were somehow preserved in some kind of stasis?

Surely you've submitted your resume to Google to be a replacement for their head of engineering (Kurzweil's current gig). Incidentally, you don't even know who these billionaires are, so how can you possibly comment on their qualifications?

Too bad that the folks who wrote the report in question were economists instead of scientists, and the compiled their "data" from anti-global warming websites. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/bubkes/#more-691