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This sort of talk always kills the dreams of orbital living. There's no point building a colony on mars if we can't even build a self-sufficient lunar habitat.

This sort of talk always kills the dreams of orbital living. There's no point building a colony on mars if we can't even build a self-sufficient lunar habitat. But there is no point in a lunar habitat if we can't build an orbital habitat. But there is not point building an orbital habitat if we can't even build a self sufficient desert or ocean or underground habitat. If we were really serious about this we would have a followup to the Biosphere projects that finally solved the issues they identified. We should have several fully self contained habitats on Earth before we consider building them in orbit or on another planet. People are trying to skip all the way to the end without doing all of the hard work in the middle. It's doomed to failure.

ncmncm 5y ago
Exactly the point. Every detail of the most hostile spot on Earth is overwhelmingly more viable as a place to homestead than the best imaginable site on Mars. The middle of the Sahara Desert, bang at the South Pole, under the ice at the northernmost bit of Greenland, on a tepui in Venezuela without permission, on a desert island where typhoon waves wash all the way across, all are more pleasant and less likely to kill everyone who goes there in the first year. So, pick such a place, and try it there first. If you aren't even talking about that, you are far from ready to make a go at someplace massively more hostile to your very existence.