<...Whatever you'd like to believe, launch systems are fairly major efforts, requiring such great resources that they require governmental involvement.

Rockets are very different from wooden ships or wagons, which can be built by individuals with simple hand tools, and still are in many parts of the world today.



True, as far as it goes. Of course, when I travel out West nowadays, I do it in a jet airplane, not a wooden wagon. It doesn't cost much, and I didn't have to build the airplane either. Don't sell technology short.

...Reason 2 is that Mars is Mars-like damn it, not a second Earth. You can go to nearly any frontier on Earth and survive pretty well, but it will require vast resources to survive on Mars.

This is also true, as far as it goes. Again, don't sell human inventiveness short. Many people died traveling West in wooden wagons. Las Vegas is sitting in an area that would have killed an unprotected human in a day or two 200 years ago. What would the explorer Cook say if he could see Honolulu, and entire modern city that was shipped there on boats? People now go to Death Valley and Antarctica for fun. If--and I admit it's a big if--a sufficient reason is found for thousands of people to move to Mars, they will figure out a way to get there cheaply and live there when they do get there. Maybe colonists will agree with O'Neill that the surface of a planet is a lousy place to live, and build deep space colonies instead.

It's a little soon to write the whole concept of living in space off, don't you think?