Good point, BH. But thinking in the long term, humans will need to colonize at least one other world at some point just for survival purposes. Mars seems like the best candidate at this point, and you gotta start somewhere.
I don't know. I think we've got a better shot at terraforming Venus into something pretty close to Earth than we do of ever doing anything worthwhile on Mars. As I hear it, we can't terraform Mars because, being geologically dead, it'll never hold onto an atmosphere worthy of the name. Thus, any Martian settlement will always be in tunnels, so it'll never be able to support many people at all. And even if you can breed people to survive the low gravity without constant medical attention, does creating a new species of low-gravity mole-men really count as human survival? I hear seals are descended from bears but they're no longer bears, they're seals, due to living in a radically different environment.
But the whole
lebensraum justification for colonization seems pretty infeasible anyway. Even if Mars and Venus both were already ideal clones of Earth in every way, we'll never be able to move enough people to either one quickly enough to make any difference here on Earth. So it all comes down to the old "not enough lifeboats" or "Noah's Ark" scenario. How do you decide who gets to go and who goes down with the ship?
No nonhuman species collectively cares about the survival of the species. Instead, the individual members of the species care about their own personal survival and that of their offspring. And I daresay most people feel the same way when it comes right down to it, no matter how much some people talk about "humanity's survival" when they're not currently fighting for their own.
So how do you sell the colony project when it only benefits the microscopic fraction of humanity whose progeny go off to it? Why should I pay taxes for some huge project that has exactly zero benefit to me, my descendants, or anybody else I care about? If my whole tribe's being written off, why should I care if yours is, too? If you're rich enough to buy your own ticket outta here, feel free. Just leave me with what I've got to enjoy as best I can however much longer Spaceship Earth stays afloat.
About an underground base; that's not something you need super smart robots for. You just need something to drag the hab module into place and then bulldoze dirt on top of it. Expensive, sure, but not much more difficult than what the MER's are doing right now. Plus, you need to do this on the Moon as well, so it gives you a good place to practice the techniques and sequence.
I can think of 2 good reasons to go to the moon. First, as Heinlein foresaw long ago, if you own the moon you own the Earth. It's the ultimate military high ground, and it's not going to be long before we see that demonstrated. Who will get there first? I think that's one of the main reasons why there's such a rush to get to the moon again, now that longterm occupation seems feasible.
The other reason is that perhaps the moon's got a lot of helium-3. This, I understand, is easier to make fuse than deuterium. If so, then strip-mining the moon for helium-3 might actually provide a real benefit to the majority of those on Earth. I could easily support such a project. Besides, the moon's close enough to be worked like an offshore oilrig, say 1 month there, 1 month here.
