https://img1.steemit.com/0x0/http://i.imgur.com/Qp56BAe.jpg
<sup>[source](https://archive-media.nyafuu.org/wg/image/1458/63/1458636201292.jpg)</sup>

Mars once had liquid water, meaning it had a thick enough atmosphere to sustain it and high enough temperatures that it wasn't frozen. Not anymore. If anything lived there, it was likely rudimentary enough that it could not comprehend the fact that the hospitable conditions which permitted it to exist were transient. It may surprise you to learn that there are human beings this dim.

It isn't a question of when the sun will burn out. Conditions on Earth have fluctuated wildly, even during the relative 'blip' on the geological timescale during which life has existed.

The atmospheric composition alone has changed so dramatically and so many times that it is not realistically possible for the Earth to remain habitable, let alone comfortable for humankind in the longterm.

https://img1.steemit.com/0x0/http://i.imgur.com/CdceSBS.jpg
<sup>[source](http://www.teepr.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/kzzuvlrvvtf9sjpm3s0b.jpg)</sup>

One way or another, we're going to have to become extremely skilled at creating additional human living space. These habitable volumes can take whatever form you think technology will permit.

Rigid bodied enclosures, inflatable domes, sealed lava tubes, monolithic domes, all viable approaches. But the bottom line is that we need to get into the business of creating places human beings can live because at some point Earth will stop being one of them.

Where we do that isn't my concern. The Moon and Mars, presumably. Each has pros and cons. But we need to learn to expand into these frontiers now, while there's still time to learn by trial and error, to gradually improve our technology/methods rather than being kicked out of the nest and learning to fly on the way down.

https://img1.steemit.com/0x0/http://i.imgur.com/BHHnOHg.jpg
<sup>[source](http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/thgnqteu60mn6tis77kx.jpg)</sup>

Space exploration and colonization seems like an unthinkable extravagance to some. But a skyscraper would outrage a small minded tribal shaman for the same reasons.

The scale and sophistication of human civilization permits enormous, costly constructs like that. We've gotten to the point where the resource availability, technology and economy are where they need to be in order to make things like skyscrapers, aircraft carriers, undersea high speed rail tunnels and so on.

These engineering miracles are a fact of life, not shameful decadence, each simply the next logical step after prior accomplishments on a smaller scale.

Nothing about colonizing other worlds is beyond our means. The technology exists. A Mars colony could be founded in less than ten launches, by first setting up an inflatable shelter to work from and then using equipment from subsequent launches to seal lava tubes, fertilize the soil inside, setting up LED lights and cultivating plants.

https://img1.steemit.com/0x0/http://i.imgur.com/Au1jErb.jpg
<sup>[source](http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/austrian-group-tests-mars-space-suit-a-831024.html)</sup>

No network of expensive rigid bodied capsules needed, being underground means natural protection from radiation and hundreds of cubic miles of habitable volume, for less than what the Apollo program cost in today's dollars.

If you're not hot on rockets, most of the equipment could be sent via launch loop, a space elevator alternative that's possible to build using existing materials but unsuitable (due to high G forces) for launching human beings.

Send the equipment, have the habitat auto-inflate upon landing, then when the various landers call home and give the all clear, send human beings in the final (and only) rocket launch.

https://img1.steemit.com/0x0/http://i.imgur.com/Azt630r.jpg
<sup>[source](https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/376695main_13%20-%20Robert_Zubrin-Testimony-5_August_2009.pdf)</sup>

It isn't technology that's holding us back, or even cost. It's the average Joe's lack of a farsighted vision for the future of our species, and the willingness of politicians to sabotage our future in order to appease them.

We must begin to see ourselves not from a purely selfish standpoint but as part of a larger human organism, one generation in a long line descended from the humblest origins but forever clawing our way towards the grandest heights.

https://img1.steemit.com/0x0/http://i.imgur.com/0Da7BkU.jpg
<sup>[source](https://fa707ec5abab9620c91c-e087a9513984a31bae18dd7ef8b1f502.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/6270835_the-fourth-man-to-walk-on-the-moon-also_tc256e5a3.jpg)</sup>

There’s concrete pride and meaning in this worldview, a clear purpose for our lives and a unifying ambition for humankind; to overcome all natural obstacles by our ingenuity and toil, to thrive on a scale unprecedented in the animal kingdom.

We must propagate ourselves throughout the universe so that the uniquely human art, song, dance, games, theatre, films, humor, literature and culture we have created will never perish, but continue to evolve into ever more wonderful forms.

Occasionally some cells lose sight of their place in the organism and begin to work against it. We call that cancer.