I <i>sort of</i> agree.  If we imagined a world thousands of times more wealthy than the present one, I think you&#x27;d probably see a Martian colony kick off more or less &quot;just because it&#x27;s there.&quot;<p>But absent any return on investment, the available resources today are orders of magnitude too small to make a go of it.<p>In any foreseeable world, any kind of substantial off-Earth human presence (more than say 200 people) is going to require a substantial practical value to justify it.  Pure science or &quot;just because it&#x27;s there&quot; or fulfilling the childhood sci-fi dreams of various people are not going to cut it.  Which bums me out too!  I have childhood sci-fi dreams.<p>If there&#x27;s a path to large-scale (or even medium-scale) human presence off Earth, it&#x27;s something like solar power generation or asteroid mining.