I’m not against space exploration, by the way, but am saying that more solutions are possible. But technical minds should also be enlisted and tolerated by the impatient, sensitive class—a tolerance that’s somewhat rare now.
In my opinion, every extensively educated engineer, manager and investor should watch “Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil.” It’s a movie fiction, but there’s much truth in it. It’s also very funny and entertaining. [I once lived in the Ozarks.] In equipment development, more experiences and associated perspectives from more realistically grounded people (sans much from the liberal arts or academic social concerns) are needed along with much more distributed efforts.
I’m very interested in space exploration and colonization, but I’ve never shared the interest most other people seem to have of colonizing bodies like Mars and the moon. After all the trouble and danger and expense of escaping one gravity well, why would you want to drop down into another one?
Particularly since the low gravity will doubtless lead to serious long term health problems that will leave the population more or less trapped in a low-G environment even if they could leave. It makes much more sense to me to concentrate on building customized space habitats (spinning for artificial gravity), leaving the low-G locations to drones/robot operations for mining and exploitation.