I'm not saying it's impossible to send people to Mars and even bring them back. I'm saying there is no point whatsoever right now, at least no material or scientific purpose.

Of course, building a "city" on Mars is well beyond our capabilities, so that will either not be attempted at all, or it will fail. Maybe by 2124, but more likely 2524.

> I'm saying there is no point whatsoever right now, at least no material or scientific purpose.

"No point" here means "no reasonable goal". In this case reasonability is subjective - somebody sees obvious reasons why Mars colony could be useful for humanity, somebody doesn't. Pro arguments are science, learning how to live off another planet, certain insurance against planet-wide cataclysms, general progress in space engineering. There are contra arguments as well, but which are more important is also subjective - we don't have hard data or commonly accepted facts which would solve this arguments one way or another, so, to some, it's natural to investigate the matter further...

It's difficult to imagine any cataclysm that would result in the Earth being less habitable (even for us squishy humans) than Mars already is.

It's really a matter of imagination :) . I learned about the existence of the Institute of the Problems of Asteroid Hazards long time ago, which suggested to me it's not a black-and-white type of question.

It's not even just about habitability. There are many remote places on Earth that we consider a waste of time and effort to inhabit, which are themselves 100X more habitable than Mars. There's a reason we don't have large, thriving settlements on inland Greenland, deep in the Sahara Desert, and Antarctica, even though they are way more habitable than Mars. There's no reason to inhabit them.

If people think like this, it won't happen even by 2524.

Elon's job is to massively accelerate that timeline.

If elon decides to make humans fly and move objects with their will power. Will you defend it the same way?

Cuz probability of both are closer to each other that to probability of them being achievable.

Getting to mars would require a technological leap. Planes -> rockets kind of leap.

Currently we have yet to be able to get back to the moon.

Creating self sustained colony on earth would require some kind of technological miracle.

And it will not be enough to use few nukes to malt ice caps on mars.