Reducing the risk of extinction is definitely something we should work towards, and there a temptation to say "we should fix earth instead of going to mars" whi

Reducing the risk of extinction is definitely something we should work towards, and there a temptation to say "we should fix earth instead of going to mars" which always annoys me because it assumes that one is at the expense of the other, which it is not. But I DO think that BEFORE we try to send people to Mars we should invest a lot more in local orbital architecture like space habitats. Building bigger space stations would be cheaper, easier, safer, and more immediately beneficial. They could be a stepping stone to the moon or Mars but would be beneficial in their own right