Notice we have no moon colony.

Visiting is trivial compared to independently thriving.

We also need, like, a reason. Even if we can... why? (and "survive the apocalypse" is a pretty bad reason since there are zero other bodies in our star system that are better for humans to live on than even a nuked, climate-changed Earth—anything short of a crust-melting impact would be easier and cheaper to survive with Earthbound bunkers, excepting things that would also wreck other bodies in our star system)

Which reasons, as for 99% of everything else like that humans have ever done, will likely be economic or military. When it makes dollar-sense to do it, we'll go. Not sooner. Not really, and not for the long haul.

I'm doubting we'll do large-scale human colonization of space for a long, long time, if ever. We might do mostly-robotic asteroid mining within the next 100 years, and a couple visits to e.g. Mars might be made, but nothing serious.

Was the moon landing, or even the entire space race, about a "challenge" or pantsing the Soviets? Despite all the mythologizing we now do about the last century's dabbling in manned space missions, we sure seem to have abandoned the concept now that there's no geopolitical dickwaving to accomplish.

On a slightly different tangent, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress [0] suggests that whosoever sets up the lunar catapult first will likely become "masters of Earth". I think I'm going to start learning Chinese! [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress

[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/china-aims-for-a-permanent-moon-ba...

> Wasn't the same argument made against going to the moon?

Was the argument wrong? If it was wrong, are the reasons it was wrong applicable to the current situation?