Did you miss the part about “a whole lot of people dying horrible deaths?”

It is not a false dilemma. Life on Mars may be possible sometime in mankind’s future. However, if we do not spend our money and have our priority on making life on this planet better NOW, then mankind won’t have a civilization to send people to Mars when we finally figure out if it is even biologically possible for humans to live there. Right now the science says, “No.”

I’m not against space exploration. I actually had a very interesting engineering job offer working at a contractor at JSC after university. I’m well aware of the advances we got — and get — from the space program. I’m just not in favor of a Mars colony program — again for biological reasons.

I also am not a Musk fan. He is one of the corrupt middlemen eating gov’t cash while delivering few advances. That money would be much better spent on NASA.