SpaceX Starship SN4 just blew up in Texas

[Shiv]

36. That's largely what I thought,

But at a certain scale of massive engineering in LEO, over decades or centuries, the number of way-stations and artificial protective envelops even with no orders of magnitude in speed increases, ah, I just envision things on too grand a scale maybe.

I largely look at mars more for the two small moons and a possible low-g environment when further out from the 1G of Earth. Medical based reasons, like recovery hospitals. The resources in the middle and outer system will eventually draw entrepreneurs, one way or another, and at some point remote operations will need nearby oversight.

Plus, it's there.

I think again even with our slow speeds, life extension, suspension through lower activity, oxygen and diet, and large generation ships, have been mathematically demonstrated to show even a moderately advance civilization could colonize a large section of a spiral arm in several hundred thousand years.

Just gotta get that first foothold that can survive a single planet extinction event, even if it is LEO, Lunar or Martian.

Before I get too weedy, protecting what we have is obviously a higher priority, given the engineering and dedicated effort we don't have the time for to get to any of those goals. But once you dodge a handful of extinction bullets, good idea to develop a back-up plan between the next ones, no?