> Basically there is not need and motivation for humans to colonize anything outside the Earth. It's just too far, too expensive and too uncomfortable.

There is definitely motivation. Some people want to colonise Mars. Not everybody, but likely enough people to make it happen. Elon Musk wants to make it happen, and while there is no guarantee he'll get his wish, I think he has a decent chance of succeeding.

And establishing a permanent base on the Moon probably falls into a similar category. Moon has certain attractions over Mars – e.g. much more feasible target for space tourism, as a near-Earth testbed for developing technologies that may then be deployed to more distant parts of the solar system.

If the US (or a US-led multinational consortium excluding China) establishes a permanent base on the Moon and on Mars, that would increase the likelihood that China would do it too, in order to prove themselves equal to the US. (In principle other countries might feel the same urge, but China is possibly the only country who feels that urge strongly enough, and has sufficient resources, to actually pull it off; the US policy of excluding China from space ventures also gives China a motivation that does not apply to many other countries with which the US is willing to cooperate.)

Whether there is a "need" – the boundary between "wants" and "needs" is a value judgement. People who want to colonise Mars likely have different values from people like you who don't see it as worthwhile.

It's certainly possible that we might visit Mars, but colonizing it just isn't possible within the foreseeable future, certainly not within Musk's lifetime. We're not even close to having the technology necessary to survive that kind of journey and the engineering, logistics and medical science required to actually start a colony is far beyond anything we are currently capable of.

Musk has touched on the fact that it's nearly guaranteed to not be possible within his lifetime.

This is one of the reasons (he's spoken of) that he's having a decent amount of kids and also doing things like Neuralink.

Colonisation of Mars is going to be a long process. There is going to be a gap of decades (maybe even more than a century) between the arrival of the first settlers and the attainment of self-sufficiency (autarky, the ability to survive without continual resupply ships from earth). From my reading of Musk's various comments, he doesn't think it is likely he'll live to see self-sufficiency (autarky), but he certainly hopes that the arrival of the first settlers can happen in his lifetime.

I personally love space and aviation stuff. But, as economies become more efficient and global, it’s increasingly unlikely that it will be possible to finance such projects. See: people haven’t been on the Moon for 50 years, Concord haven’t flown for 20. Both projects have been financed through relatively undemocratic, non-market means.

> people haven’t been on the Moon for 50 years

They are supposed to be going back in 4 years time. That's probably going to be delayed, but still people will probably be back on the Moon before the end of this decade. And this time they are saying they plan to stay.

> Both projects have been financed through relatively undemocratic, non-market means.

So are LHC, ITER, the International Space Station, Project Artemis. The US is unwilling to spend the massive amounts it spent during the Apollo project on space right now, but it still spends a lot of money (NASA's budget is about 22 billion USD a year, and the military space budget is about 14 billion USD – over 36 billion spent on space every year) and has been pretty continuously since Apollo was closed down. It would have achieved more by now if it had been spending that money more efficiently. The advent of SpaceX and other commercial providers is changing that.

> Basically there is not need and motivation for humans to colonize anything outside the Earth.

Our current gas emissions would disagree.

Also, asteroids, gamma ray bursts, curiosity, sheer ambition, etc, etc.

The thing is: we don't need to convince all of mankind to colonize another planet. All it takes is a few people. Crazy rich Mr. Musk is one example. He may not be able to achieve it, but maybe all we need is a few other Musks in the next generations and suddenly we'll be in other planets.

The Fermi Paradox discussion is fascinating.

While personal ambition is commendable, realistically for inter-stellar colonization this has to be planet-wide project.

> suddenly we'll be in other planets.

Who is “we” in this case, how does it affect you and me? (The point being is that such long-term projects are beyond current society capabilities)

If Musk sent out a generation ship he'd die onboard and his grandchildren would turn the ship around to visit the mysterious alien planet they've heard tales of known as "earth".

I don't see any scenario where a generation ship can plausibly be expected to colonize another planet.

> Our current gas emissions would disagree.

While at first it might seem that Mars or any other planet is the solution to our environmental problem, the easiest solution to the problem would be fixing this planet. Colonizing Mars would take up so many resources that fixing Earth might be more cost-effective.

This is not Earth that needs to be fixed, it's human behavior.

Teraformation and space conquest are fassinating topics, but "fixing our behavior to avoid to fuck up the only accessible viable environment we have" is far from deserving only a mere "might be more cost-effective".

But way less fun :)

Or we could, you know, just transfer our consciousness to machines that can easily survive Mars and other environments and start our colonization after declaring ourselves to be Homo-sapiens-machina.