You're not wrong, but humans being how we are, "develop the technology" requires we go there.
The engineering we can use simulations for some, and cheaper testbeds like Luna for some more, but the politics and funding can only be sustainable with a human presence on the Red Planet.
Multiple, rival presences, if the European colonisation of the Americas is any guide.
This article very accurately breaks down why we're not colonizing Mars.
https://defector.com/neither-elon-musk-nor-anybody-else-will-ever-colonize-mars
Its witty, but it didn't tell me anything I didn't know when I was 12.
Mars has challenges. Outback Australia has challenges.
Mars' are less challenging to us in 2024 than Australia's were to the British in 1788.
I'm not sure you're actually hearing what the author is saying. Colonizing the Outback is not even remotely close to colonizing Mars in its inhospitability, and expense. There is literally no analog you can compare with on Earth. The cost alone would drain the resources we would need to continue maintaining the level of life we all have on Earth to a shocking degree. It's simply not a plausible scenario given our current technology and civilization, nor our conceivable technology in the foreseeable future. It is the very definition of boondoggle.
We are currently draining Earth's resources into a confrontation between nuclear powers.
The Martian landscape is far less inhospitable to human life than a politician's soul.
I'm well aware of the challenges, but the author of that essay seems to be unaware of most of the last sixty years worth of developments.
Specifically, what technology do you believe we've developed in the past 60 years that would negate the reality of the challenges to sustaining human life on Mars on permanent basis? Remember, we're not talking about sending one or two people for an exploratory, 2-day mission. We're talking about a group of humans are expected survive and thrive on Mars permanently.
"In a saner society, a rich guy with Musk's well-known and unapologetically expounded views would sooner find himself under a guillotine"
Thanks for the completely unbiased article from this spiritual redditor.
