Oh, I think settlements on Mars and the Moon have a point. We will learn a great deal from both places. This knowledge does not have a great cost getting out of these gravity wells. The people or their goods will cost a lot to move to other places in the solar system, but intellectual property could also be sold, if they invent things necessary on the Moon or on Mars.

However, I do not think that planetary settlements are the long-term wave of the future. The more we want to travel around the solar system, the less we will want to be inside deep gravity wells. Thus, I doubt that we will ever go to the trouble of terraforming Mars.

I mostly agree with Edward. There is very little point of a settlement on Mars because there is nothing on Mars worth pushing out of its gravity well. Moons and asteroids don’t have that problem. There can be very little of value there, but because of the lack of gravity, it’s still worth moving what little there is elsewhere. As long as one needs to build a self-contained habitat, anyway, might as well build it where there is no gravity and spin it.

The big counter-argument: We have lots of experience building on/in the ground. It’s probably easier to start building self-contained habitats where there is a “down” than where there is not. That’s the big advantage of the moon. Not to mention that we don’t have to move stuff very far to get benefits. Asteroids are further away (mostly). Moving mined/harvested stuff from them to us or zero-G smelting and construction equipment, which does not exist yet, to them is more difficult.

Humanity needs to expand its horizons immensely or…
I’d say that sending a helicopter to another planet counts as a good start toward expanding horizons immensely.

The next major milestone would seem to be a rover on every (major) body in the solar system or a fleet of rovers on the moon and Mars.

I don’t think we can walk and chew bubble-gum on this one, but perhaps. If I were Elon Musk, I would want a very good rover survey of where I was going to land my Starships. That means that he can pay for that “fleet” of rovers. I’m not aware of a private company interested in doing this on the moon, but there may be enough interested parties that “if you map it, they will buy” would work. The solar system is still in a more “pure science” state (i.e. NASA’s purview), imho.

You never know until you try, speaking of expanded horizons.

And aren’t Curiosity and Perseverance expanding our horizons?

I do not think that our horizons are going to be on planets. I suspect that rather than living on planet surfaces, there will eventually be more people living in space stations (e.g. Gerard K. O’Neill’s idea or Babylon V‘s version) at various Lagrange points around the solar system or living on low gravity bodies, such as the Moon, all of which do not take so much energy to move from one place to another.

When we say that it is difficult to get into space, it is not so much that the rockets have to work precisely well, which they do, it is that we have to use so much effort and energy just to get off the Earth and into orbit. Getting out of the gravity wells are the hard part, so if we start living outside of those wells, then it becomes much easier to move around the solar system.

It just makes Mars mo0re tangible as a place we really could go soon, if we set our minds to it.

Well . . . after careful consideration – I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t like your way of coming around and posting your jerimiad, then leaving without positing any actions you think should be taken.

Yes, yes. I know you don’t like my comments. Maybe consider why that is…