Would you consider 100 trillion dollars spent on a research base 30 millions miles away which is going to tell you how to make better insulation and grooved pavement to be wisely invested?
That wasn't the argument. It was on whether the ISS provided
"nothing" of value. There's also a huge difference in value proposition when the ISS is much cheaper and can perform a large number of the same experiments which can benefit others from a technology standpoint.
Earth is so much better place to live that only scenario where I see us actually needing Mars or other off-planet habitation is something like moon sized object hitting earth or maybe rogue blackhole. That is total apocalyptic destruction of planetary body itself.
Mars sucks, and Earth will never be as bad. And anything we can use to live on Mars can be done on Earth, without the involved transportation costs. And self-sufficient colony is just pure sci-fi.
That's basically what I was going for. We have subjective value and mostly self value. I wonder if we provide any objective net benefit when looking from non human centric perspective.
Looking at it from an objective, systemic approach, you and yours have zero possibility of survival of an Earth biosphere destabilizing event.
A chance can be acquired. If you're going to hide behind the "greedy genes" train of thought, you will need to look elsewhere for a justification on why this would be bad.
Well, if we manage to spread off planet, we'll be spreading Earth's biosphere as well, which if the biosphere were capable of expressing an opinion, would likely approve.