[Koromix]

Of course, everyone that does not buy into the myth of the Star Trek future that surely awaits mankind has to be a religious fool.

Perhaps some of us have realised that, like many (now disappeared) past civilizations, our technological civilization is entering a state of decline caused by resource overuse and population overshoot, among other things. It is barely maintained by burning through hundreds of millions of years of solar energy stored as fossil fuels in the span of 200 - 300 years, a behavior that is also wrecking the climate that allowed us to prospere in the first place.

In the face of the severe ecological, energy, food and population crises that await us (and indeed are already here in many places around the world), the Mars fantasy sounds foolish to me. Even a seriously damaged earth biosphere will remain infinitely more hospitable to human life than Mars. Damaged biosphere ≫ no biosphere (aka. Mars, and all other planets of our solar system).