[marcosdumay]

Well, with the timeframes here, there exist only two options: "never" and "very soon".

So, yeah, if you want to argue for "never", it's valid. It's just talking about delays that isn't.

(But somehow the "no large enough group - and it means 100 or 200 people - will ever want this" argument doesn't look reasonable either. We are talking about an empty ecological niche and a timeframe large enough for biologic kingdoms to appear.)

[Maursault]

You have fair points except for

> But somehow the "no large enough group - and it means 100 or 200 people - will ever want this" argument

idk who argued that, but it wasn't me. My argument is economic. I didn't make it but would make further argument(s) basically that 1) it's insanely dangerous, and 2) there's nothing out there, which together is really the same risk vs reward argument that is notably top heavy with a wide spread.

[marcosdumay]

An economic argument is exactly the same as saying the people don't want it badly enough.

[Maursault]

> An economic argument is exactly the same as saying the people don't want it badly enough.

This is false equivalence. Assume everyone wanted it to the maximum possible level of desire, and it is still possible that desire will be unfulfilled due to economics, namely, expense. You can't say of a home that someone can not afford means they did not want it badly enough. No matter how badly they want it, it is not possible for them to get it if it is beyond their means. Humanity may not be able to afford human-attended space exploration beyond LEO and, vanishingly rarely, the Moon simply due to expense no matter what the level of desire is.