Yeah, I think the tangential successes is what many people miss about technology. Computers are by far the best example of this. At one time they would have und

Yeah, I think the tangential successes is what many people miss about technology. Computers are by far the best example of this. At one time they would have undoubtedly been seen by many, perhaps even the majority, as a waste. Governments were spending many millions of dollars (when that was a lot of money...) developing building-size machines that needed large teams of professionals to maintain and operate. Yet they were little more than glorified calculators. For instance the first general purpose 'super computer' was the ENIAC [1]. It was capable of a blistering 40 divisions per second! And it's literally impossible to even imagine all of the ramifications of creating a sustainable civilization on Mars. Being able to manage, and ideally control, atmospheric conditions is just scratching the surface. For instance it would signal the beginning of the end of scarcity since suddenly we now have effectively infinite land open up to colonization (as success on Mars would not be the end of planetary colonization efforts, but the beginning), infinite resources, and so much more. Again I think trying to imagine the implications of this is akin to trying to imagine the implications of computers - it's simply not possible in any meaningful way. But the great thing is that we live in a free society. So everybody is free to pursue their own vision. Plant a tree, build a spaceship, work on carbon scrubbing, or whatever else you personally think is a good idea. This is perhaps the one very good thing about the rise of mega-wealth. At one time you'd need governments to build and develop spaceships - governments whose ideology, views, and values tend to take a 180 every decade, if not less. For instance Nixon killed the space program in no small part because of a personal animosity he had with JFK, one that his death apparently did little to sate. And in modern times government space ships like the SLS are 90% pork barrel and 10% real. Yet now in an era where many private companies revenues exceeds the GDP of small nations (and accords corresponding private wealth), space is just becoming another industry. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC