<story><title>Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species</title><url>http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/space.2017.29009.emu</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Eerie</author><text>Funny how there are people with much more money than Musk, who do absolutely nothing useful with it, but Musk draws criticism for details. Oh, why Mars, why not Moon, or Ceres, or O&amp;#x27;Neill cylinders, or lets colonize the Sahara desert first, or lets solve world hunger and poverty (which is a 100% political problem, not technological, BTW) blah, blah, blah, blah...&lt;p&gt;Musk is doing SOMETHING, at least. The technology that SpaceX develops can and will be used for much more than just Elon&amp;#x27;s particular vision of Mars colony.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jncraton</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  It is not the critic who counts;
  not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,
  or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
  whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
  who strives valiantly; who errs,
  who comes short again and again,
  because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;
  but who does actually strive to do the deeds;
  who knows great enthusiasms,
  the great devotions;
  who spends himself in a worthy cause;
  who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
  and who at the worst,
  if he fails,
  at least fails while daring greatly,
  so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Citizenship_in_a_Republic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Citizenship_in_a_Republic&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species</title><url>http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/space.2017.29009.emu</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Eerie</author><text>Funny how there are people with much more money than Musk, who do absolutely nothing useful with it, but Musk draws criticism for details. Oh, why Mars, why not Moon, or Ceres, or O&amp;#x27;Neill cylinders, or lets colonize the Sahara desert first, or lets solve world hunger and poverty (which is a 100% political problem, not technological, BTW) blah, blah, blah, blah...&lt;p&gt;Musk is doing SOMETHING, at least. The technology that SpaceX develops can and will be used for much more than just Elon&amp;#x27;s particular vision of Mars colony.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>adekok</author><text>&amp;gt; Musk is doing SOMETHING, at least.&lt;p&gt;Me sitting in a corner and drinking is doing something.  Me burning down my house is doing something.  Neither actions are productive.&lt;p&gt;Is Elon doing something productive?  With cheap rockets, arguably yes.  With colonizing Mars... it&amp;#x27;s less clear.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The technology that SpaceX develops can and will be used for much more than just Elon&amp;#x27;s particular vision of Mars colony.&lt;p&gt;Like what?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Oh, why Mars, why not Moon, or Ceres, or O&amp;#x27;Neill cylinders, or lets colonize the Sahara desert first, or lets solve world hunger and poverty (which is a 100% political problem, not technological, BTW)&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s hard to solve political problems, because everyone knows how bad people can be.  It&amp;#x27;s easy to dream about solving engineering problems.  People have been doing it for 
millenia.  We just build a bigger &amp;#x2F; better &amp;#x2F; faster &amp;#x2F; cooler thing than what we have right now!  See?  It&amp;#x27;s easy!&lt;p&gt;I find it instructive that most of the &amp;quot;pro&amp;quot; arguments are based on dreams and hope.  Most of the &amp;quot;con&amp;quot; arguments are &amp;quot;Have you seen how freaking difficult it is?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Dreams won&amp;#x27;t feed you in the cold, dark, airless, nights on Mars.</text></comment>