Moving to Mars is analogous to a full app re-write. Instead of dealing with the "technical debt" that we've built on earth over the past couple thousand years,

Moving to Mars is analogous to a full app re-write. Instead of dealing with the "technical debt" that we've built on earth over the past couple thousand years, the proposal is that we start off with a clean slate. I'm not saying it can't work, but if software engineering has thought us anything at all it's that full app re-writes are generally a terrible idea. The sheer complexity and vast amount of unknown unknowns is what generally kills these projects and what would also kill any attempt at re-building civilisation in a foreign planet. Don't re-write, refactor and fix the bugs on earth.