> It would take, optimistically, decades before Mars was truly self-sufficient, and that time and money could be spent working to prevent the kind of disasters

> It would take, optimistically, decades before Mars was truly self-sufficient, and that time and money could be spent working to prevent the kind of disasters that threaten our existence on Earth, such as natural disasters related to climate change. There are good points in the article--I particularly liked the comparison to post-apoc Earth--but this particular argument always seems to hit like a non-starter due to the subjective imperative. The people who will bankroll human travel to Mars are not doing it for entirely rational reasons. Further, they "wanna" do it, which is nearly an unstoppable human force once that button is pushed. Still, I believe they work from a broad mental concept. A sketch or pastiche. So, it would be interesting to me to get at something like: What would convince an Elon Musk to completely ditch the Mars journey concept? What would be the needed components of the replacement sketch, or concept? And further, what would really make someone like that turn back to Earth and say, "heck with my backup metaphor, let's make this place really awesome?" Given things like political boundaries, the strength of that metaphor by itself, etc. IMO these kind of space travel conceptualizers need a concept. Logical reasoning in parts is nice but the conceptual alternative must be rock solid, and likely singular (a good way to annoy a busy conceptualizer is to prepare lots of options). Thank you for sharing the article.