alt Hacker NewsEven if that's the case, I still don't think it does anything to validate taking the defeatist route and not even trying.
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What exactly does “trying” look like to you?
We have limited resources, and every investment is a tradeoff. We can play with rockets, but how does SpaceX solve the problem of humans living with much less gravity than Earth, for example? It seems to me that this is a vastly greater problem than traveling to another celestial body.
Has anyone ever conceived a child off the Earth, much less given birth or raised one? Don’t talk to me about space colonies until we’ve done that.
If you throw yourself off a cliff because only defeatists accept that they can't fly by flapping their arms, you aren't brave taking chances, you're committing suicide.
By the same token "we don't want to be defeated" isn't a good reason to create a planetary exploration timeline driven by false urgency. Mars isn't going anywhere.
I is lot less question of can we, but should we. The amount of time and resources needed are most likely so extreme that most other use cases would be better.
Sometimes it make lot of sense not to even try. I mean technically we could save a few lives in northern countries during winter by heating all roads in such a way that there is no ice or snow... Doable maybe... But not worth trying...