Does the idea of colonizing Mars, and perhaps other planets, make any sense? In my humble opinion, not at all. This, of course, doesn’t apply to business ventures. If there are people willing to take a ride into space, or spend a vacation on some near or distant celestial body, who, in addition to the mere desire, have the necessary financial resources and the willingness to use them for this purpose, the providers will appear as well and overcome any associated difficulties, no matter how complex they may be. All thanks to the all-pervasive principle of supply and demand. The same is true of other services, such as hair styling, hooking, or bungee jumping, although these don’t require as complex logistics and advanced technology.
I’m skeptical about projects with broader scopes—things along the lines of a mass migration—that various visionaries consider inevitable if we dream of surviving as a species. To make this a reality, however, we need a suitable location. If we start running away blindly, we may find our doom even faster. To my great relief, I recently read that some savior actually managed to pinpoint the right place. It’s still in our solar system, so not even that far away. I think it was about the two moons of something, which means we could viably separate people with different worldviews. With the necessary modifications and improvements, such as installing artificial gravity and devices that destroy or perhaps only repel asteroids that roam the space and threaten to collide, it would apparently be quite nice there.
I wonder where the visionary got the funds for his epochal discovery. If it wasn’t private money, his own or someone else’s, the local populace should probably take a closer look at how their ruling representatives are spending the collected tax revenues. As for neutralizing the boulders floating in outer space, I’d suggest deploying the appropriate tech somewhere around Earth. This would be a much simpler and cheaper solution, especially since it looks like we don’t need extra gravity. The remaining funds could be used to give access to running water here and there (it would be more than enough for both here and there), make it potable, and add sewer systems to boot. (…)