Agreed. I loved "Interstellar", but leaving Earth is a hopeless prospect.

How do you move 8 billion people to another planet when it costs a $billion to send just 5 people into Earth orbit? Worse, there's nowhere enough sunlight and water anywhere in this solar system to sustain more than a handful of people.

No, if mankind can't make it here, we can't make it anywhere.

The same way we explored the earth. Every one won't move at once.

These are gradual things that unfold over decades to centuries.

We can definitely colonize space. And we can make space travel vastly cheaper.

But I'm extremely doubtful we would ever reach a point where moving everyone off of earth is easier than fixing whatever is broken with earth. Or that it would even get within a factor of 10.

Moving everyone off-planet, no. Getting a presence up there, and creating off-planet production sites on the other hand, would be quite handy on the other hand. That way we could reduce the impact industrial production has on the planet.

See, exploring Earth takes almost no energy, mostly time and will and supplies. Ships at super efficient.

On the other hand, getting to 1st cosmic speed takes a lot of energy released in a relatively short burst or some kind of space elevator which we cannot build yet.

You cannot make this "gradual" really. You either get to orbit or don't. The "gradual" phase of getting into space is done. We got to orbit.

We need a major economy and scale breakthrough now or you cannot even try sending people off anywhere. So major that small improvements as done by SpaceX will not get there in centuries.

Totally agree. I have a couple visions of attainable infrastructure evolutions, we should have every city and county helping sponsor X Prizes that would help us attain incredible improvements: • elevate all city infrastructure up off the ground, 100 feet or more. If you figure that out you get arable, natural landscapes back and you keep your city too. • How to bring light down to the ground underneath it all? I say we build transparent canals, use their shape to lense light through and around. • these canals, there could be extra channels/tubes added to store and process dirty, utility and drinkable water • create food programs that bring growing, harvesting, finishing and cooking down into the crowds of us who’d want to participate. Can we reduce the cost of food by orders of magnitude?

Right, if it's possible to sustain a colony on mars, shouldn't it be even easier to sustain a colony on earth?