Then we'll merely go to the Moon. :-) (And LEO and the Lagrange points.) You raise a good point IMO in re: viability of space. In the limit it may turn out

Then we'll merely go to the Moon. :-) (And LEO and the Lagrange points.) You raise a good point IMO in re: viability of space. In the limit it may turn out that humans can't live anywhere but on or near the surface of Earth. What is certain is that living in space will suck for many years, or likely decades. It will be like living in a mine, but there are more things that can kill you and you're much much further from fresh air and safe ground. And I suspect living on Mars would suck anyway just due to the ~0.4G surface gravity. At least on the Moon you can go home (in a few days rather than lots of months) or fly like a bird under your own power if your cave is big enough. ("The Menace from Earth", Heinlein; "Welcome to Moonbase", Bova) But even if we can't live there it's still really useful and important to go: micro-gravity manufacturing; robotic asteroid mining; science... I hope we can live in space, I want to colonize the galaxy. (The green galaxy on the cover of "The Millennial Project" book is one of the more compelling images I've personally ever seen. A photosynthesizing galaxy... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millennial_Project:_Colonizing_the_Galaxy_in_Eight_Easy_Steps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millennial_Project:_Coloni... ) But even if we can't go at all these rockets are really important!