Can we build on Mars?

[busker]

Can we build on Mars,
make it our home
once the seas rise

as when the Gorgonopsian roamed - 

with remembering eyes
look up at the dome 
protecting our biome
from micro meteorites?

There are far too many ways for the world to end.
Climate change is kindest. We can pretend
everything’s, normal, everybody lies,
until the bulk of humanity dies
and they dig up the bones of damned generations
before. Pat Boone will have a surprise in store,
or at least his corpse. The fields of Pars,
condensate rich, or Ghawar, will seal our doom -
sea levels rise, refugees swarm, nukes go boom boom.

And so we must build on Mars
a little room.

[dukealien]

Can we build on Mars,
make it our home
once the seas rise

as when the Gorgonopsian roamed - 

with remembering eyes
look up at the dome 
protecting our biome
from micro meteorites?

There are far too many ways for the world to end.
Climate change is kindest. We can pretend
everything’s, normal, everybody lies,
until the bulk of humanity dies
and they dig up the bones of damned generations
before. Pat Boone will have a surprise in store,
or at least his corpse. The fields of Pars,
condensate rich, or Ghawar, will seal our doom -
sea levels rise, refugees swarm, nukes go boom boom.

And so we must build on Mars
a little room.

You raise, poetically, a very serious question:  without the spur of necessity, or at least the lure of profit, are we ever going to get off this dam' planet?  I mean, yada yada cradle forever.  But factually - which means, when things get real - climate catastrophe, sea level rise, even nuclear winter are bunk.  The numbers have been massaged for clicks (or their ancient equivalents) and political power.  That stuff will never produce a Manhattan Project/B-29/twenty aircraft carriers-all-at-once national effort because the motivation isn't there.  The catastrophe predictions are hogwash, and in our hearts we all know it.

Which leaves us with... what?  Musk wants to get to Mars and make it humanly self-sustaining because of  unexpected catastrophes for human life on Earth.  Even he is selling EVs (which are also, basically, bunk except as commuter pea-pods) and, more significantly, orbital flights to make money and test scalable hardware.  Shoot, the physicists and mathematicians will have figured out a warp drive before we can get far enough from Sol Three to test it safely.

Yes, I'm annoyed.  I'm used to the idea by now that I'm never going to get (back) to Mars in my lifetime.  But I do want to see Musk's face when the first humans set foot on the Red Planet and are met by a thoat-drawn welcome wagon with my triad's advertising on it.

[busker]

I’m reading Anthony Beevor’s tome on WW2, and I would add the T-34 to that list of achievements, but nobody’s heard of Mikhail Koshkin.
EVs are definitely not bunk, not from a science, engineering, or economics viewpoint. Liquid fuel engines are well on their way out, and any attempts to turn the tide in the US will only result in the country falling even further behind. The aged langur in the White House despite. His mercenary Veep has no ideological axe to grind against progress, and will try to please the left as well as the right of centre, in a broad church.

But regarding Mars - yeah, the only thing that makes it a reality is competition. Maybe the Chinese get there first, and colonise the inner planets while the US builds another museum of creation. And then someone wakes up and the space race begins anew.