I don't think I'm being particularly uncharitable. Look at the Opportunity Mars rover. It died after a record breaking... 15 years. And that is arguably one of

I don't think I'm being particularly uncharitable. Look at the Opportunity Mars rover. It died after a record breaking... 15 years. And that is arguably one of the most sophisticated robotics projects humanity has ever deployed. The IIS has been around for only like a quarter of a century and despite being constantly maintained by highly trained astronauts, it already had air leak issues. And FWIW, power line maintenance is much closer to average humanity than NASA is, and also quite a fundamental piece of technology that you'd think we as a species would have figured out by now. I just don't see a post-human future that is based on silicon: the manufacturing process is far too complex and poisonous to be viable as a self-replicating system and it doesn't last long either. I don't see a biological post-human civilization being feasible either: we've all but depleted all easily accessible natural resources, so any new civilization would have an uphill climb to surpass our technology. People talk about Dyson spheres but for some reason no one mentions that space debris will puncture every material known to humankind because it's just flying so damn fast. Seems like a fairly obvious and fundamental physics issue IMHO; not exactly something that one can just wave away with theoretical future technology. Maybe you know something I don't, but as far as I'm concerned, space colonization feels more like wishful thinking than something that could actually realistically happen.