Don’t stage off Starship

I’m told there was a book on this exact topic. I’ve never read it, because other people tell me it’s now wildly out of date.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene

For instance, one person writes on Quora[0] that between 1600 and 1800 one could cross the Atlantic from Europe by becoming an indentured servant, working 4-7 years for someone. By looking at the average US income, this corresponds to roughly $2-300,000 per one-way "ticket".

This is somewhat comparable to Musk's aspirational price for a one-way ticket to Mars, no?

On another note, I'm sure there were discussions back then about why bother to spend months crossing the Atlantic..!

[0] https://www.quora.com/How-much-did-it-cost-in-today%E2%80%99...

Then there is the huge gain in perspective. Even if the direct utility of all the space missions might not be large, looking onto our planet has given us a clear perspective. That we shouldn't waste this precious place.

Finally, not at least trying to go to Mars and beyond would have a negative impact on the long-time development of the species. We either eventually leave this planet or eventually will be consumed by the expanding sun. Sure, there is plenty of time till then and I hope there are others why try to make humankind eventually an interstellar species. But if we don't even try, because it is "stupid and wasteful", we already have lost.

And I am sure, even if the colony on Mars might not do anything useful in the short term, just having space launch capability available as the article describes, will find many other beneficial uses.

The typical moral justification is that the Earth may be threatened and so it would be prudent to have some humans somewhere else in the solar system.

Well the number one threat to Earth is an impact event. If we can hypothesize a rapidly growing lift capacity, why not use that mass budget to develop a solar-system-wide system for detecting and if necessary altering the trajectory of potential impacting objects? It would be WAY better to protect the Earth than any other backup plan.

The other big threat to the Earth would be a fast gamma ray burst but that would very likely get Mars and any other human colony as well.

The reality is that people want to go to Mars for the same reason people want to go climb mountains: because it is there. Our economic system provides a very few people with the resources to pursue those dreams. Whether that takes away from everyone else depends on how you think about the economy—to what extent you believe it is zero-sum.

Personally I think we should go to Mars for the simple purpose of going—I like exploration and climbing mountains too—but not fool ourselves about establishing a new human society there. To me it’s like say let’s establish a new human society on the summit of Everest. Which would be way easier than doing so on Mars, by the way!