Space could certainly be done better (I think the key advance would be the ability to upload human minds to solid-state substrate - that would make a lot of the

Space could certainly be done better (I think the key advance would be the ability to upload human minds to solid-state substrate - that would make a lot of the problems of living in space dramatically easier), but it doesn't follow that it could have been done better. It's part of life that we have to try inefficient ways of doing things in order to learn what we need to know before we can figure out the efficient ways.