Interesting. To me, Mars is a large rock in a universe of large rocks, but it could be our second home (even if it is done for profit). In conversations like th

Interesting. To me, Mars is a large rock in a universe of large rocks, but it could be our second home (even if it is done for profit). In conversations like this I often consider this comic: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/modules https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/modules I don't care about Mars' surface processes. If I had a button to blast its outer layer off and replace it with a habitable one I would press it without hesitating - yet I imagine if I spent years studying the planet academically I would act differently, based on an amalgam of my concepts of "studying" and "Mars" I came up with on the spot and am ignoring anyway. Empathy is a poor substitute for understanding. There's a philosophical difference here too. I don't see a problem with pulling resources from as much of the galaxy as we can reach if it prolongs Earth life, assuming we don't find other lifeforms. The galaxy only has mystique when we assign it, which we can't do if we're dead.