odd that you mention it -- as an environmentalist at a time I raged and gnashed teeth at this idea of remote planet colony 'fantasy' while rivers were in dire t

odd that you mention it -- as an environmentalist at a time I raged and gnashed teeth at this idea of remote planet colony 'fantasy' while rivers were in dire trouble globally. Yet one day, an issue of Whole Earth Magazine arrived with a cover story about a trial of a survival dome in the deserts somewhere, with Federal funding, as a complete testbed for off-world living. To my guilty-delight it was found to be rotting with molds less than a year or two into the experiment, but I was humbled to find that multiple new materials-science products and techniques were realized in the process, with excellent application to difficult, real-life problems here on Earth. I realized two things: my emotional inner-war with the well-funded off-worlders was only costing me, nothing to them; second, excellent tech and invention is not predictable, and this experiment turned out to be quite productive for that. who knew?!