You know this guy gets paid by the word because he spends about a thousand words saying "The earth is more hospitable than Mars and there's still places on earth where life basically doesn't survive". Which is one argument, made in an extremely long way. But the counter is surely "Yes, everything that could live at the top of mount everest <i>prefers</i> to live at the foot of mount everest, that option is not available to life on mars". Or "Everest is uninhabitable because we've never tried to make it habitable".<p>I was hoping there would be a hard scientific fact the author would state like "It doesn't have a magnetic field and solar flares do X" but we didn't quite get there.<p>A lot of doomsterism in this article is incredibly one sided. Yes, it's true the sun will be around for another 4 billion years, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't go to mars, it means you get to ask the quesiton "Do you think at some point over the course of the next 4 <i>billion years</i> we'll successfully create a martian colony?". 4 billion years! We're talking about 4 billion years and you're worried about the carbon foot print of coffee beans?<p>I fundamentally agree that Musk's particular effort is pie in the sky. But (a) the steps along the way aren't (starlink, cheap satellites) and (b) it's his money he can fuck all the way off with it - I'd rather he spent the money shooting for Mars than shooting to land little orange men into the white house.