> Considering how quickly industrialization has damaged Earth's ancient ecology I sincerely doubt industry could be sustainably stood up on a planet like Mars.

> Considering how quickly industrialization has damaged Earth's ancient ecology I sincerely doubt industry could be sustainably stood up on a planet like Mars. There is no ecology (at least to anyone's knowledge) on Mars to destroy in the first place, nor is there one in orbit or on the Moon or anywhere else other than Earth. "Sustainability" is therefore not a factor except in the sense of raw resources - and in the infinity of space that's a lot of raw resources at our disposal. > You may be underestimating how special Earth is as a home, and vastly overestimating how suitable Mars would be for carbon-based life. What makes you think I may be underestimating or overestimating (respectively) anything? Earth is special, which is precisely why we should be maximizing the preservation of the one thing that makes it special: its biosphere. That maximization entails moving everything that is even merely irrelevant (let alone actively harmful) to said biosphere off of Earth; anything less than literally all human industry (and all human population aside from non-industrialized peoples and maybe conservationists/biologists and their support staff) being moved to orbit and beyond represents a failure to achieve such maximization and puts that one special thing in jeopardy.