Hey, Ed, I didn't even realize this was you until I saw it again!

You took the words out of my mouth. The idea of abandoning the only living planet we know of to move to a lifeless, airless, arid, freezing cold, dark, poisonous, radiation-filled desert is literal madness.

As someone on a similar thread wrote, "We should do this right after tens of millions of people are living in Antarctica" and they were absolutely right.

Antarctica is more hospitable in every way. It's warmer, has air and huge amounts of water, and is hours and hundreds of dollars away from the rest of humanity, not months and billions. Oh, and it's protected from the lethal radiation from the sun by the Earth's Van Allen belt - something Mars doesn't have.

And yet no one lives in Antarctica. Scientific colonies exist there, but rely entirely on food and supplies from the outside world.

I think people simply want an easy solution to the problems besetting humanity - solutions that don't require them to do anything. "I don't have to change my lavishly wasteful lifestyle one bit - Mars and the Invisible Hand will fix everything for me!"

Thanks for your wise words, as always.