I went off topic and rambled a bit.
My point is that we already have the technology as of right now to do allot of fantastic stuff.
There is a lack of vision and priorities.
The entire worlds economy is driven by short term thinking and profits, not production.
Infact there was a trend away from production, building things in most of the west and towards parasitical behaviour.
We have world hunger right now, but with the right investment we can multiply food production thoughout the third world.
We can reverse desertification and turn a good fraction of the sahara into grasslands and farms,
you can build multi-storey buildings made of aquaponic farms and feed large cities from a few blocks.
It all needs energy and since oil is an important part of the economic system there is in built pressure to use oil, when we should be building 4rth generation nuclear plants.
As for mars why go there in the first place? showing the flag is not enough.
Mars should be part of the plan to access the resources of the asteroid belt between Jupiter and MArs.
Mars should serve as a base for massive farms underground to feed all the ships needed, and also a fuel production site.
The easy to get to resources are in the belt, all the minerals, and water we need in space and volatiles are present.
Without a long term plan, there is no use going to mars, and it will be uneconomical.
The same for the moon, why go back to the moon?
The moon has dueterium that can be mined, we will need large amounts in case we finally figure fusion, outside of the moon He3 from Jupiter can be accessed in the future.
