I mean, the facts on the ground are pretty real. If the bootlicking warmongers don't start WW3 in the meantime, we very much may make it to Mars in time to watch the shit-show from a distance.

If that's not okay with you, I understand. But nobody is fixin' for some poison.

We want to stay free. You know, as a species.

There are zero good reasons not to put all our industry into building things in space, and returning Earth to a garden.

I mean, if you wanna get weird about it...

Thinking a colony on Mars could be viable without support from Earth is just escapism.

What makes you sure that WW3 won't extend to Mars?

No, because it would be WW1 on Mars.

Depends if we continue to build a commons, or not, I suppose.

So Mars will be a totalitarian state where conflict is verboten?

I dunno, I certainly hope not. Are you gonna stay on Earth, with that attitude? Then possibly even less so, I would imagine.

Pretty interesting subject though, eh? Hope the first colony isn't "USA™", you know what I mean?

BTW I'm thinking that, with the cost of transporting a ton of cargo in space, interplanetary invasions might be impractical because it will be extremely expensive to transport any kind of military force. That does not preclude a conflict between the local colonies though.

I'm thinking it'll be more like, once there's a viable colony on 16 Psyche, it'll spend its time transmitting F/OSS designs to the universe.

It'll be pretty hard for Earth beligerents to be genociding when there are Starships dropping in on the starving villages and keeping them alive.

Yes yes, there is still a lot to be done before we can manufacture a Tesla on an asteroid, and land it back on Earth wherever its needed.

But, if you think about it, its definitely a better way forward than to just stay here and keep killing ourselves over what is .. admittedly .. a pretty small planet.

Hmm... Ultimately, people will be people. I don't see why we'd stop killing each other only because we moved to space.