Yeah Mars isn't very friendly. 'They' are talking underground habitats or maybe 3d printed above ground, very thick, using 'native materials' (likely Mars dust)
Of course there's also poison in that dirt
Boffins would say they're just engineering problems lol
Heavy industry of many types and off planet mining (lunar, asteroid, etc) would seriously help with pollution and may well change the very meaning of wealth here.
Imagine say a very large chunk of nickel in earth orbit. Gold? Cheap prices on these incredibly useful metals would advance civilization in ways we can't imagine. And one can do things impossible on Earth, like foam metals, in micro gravity.
Once air is figured out there's no scarcity of resources in space. It's literally practically infinite.
There's also the national security angle. It shows up in the Apollo numbers:
WARNING: AI generated info
:
Saturn V rocket launch est $185 mil in 1969 dollars, $1.2 to 1.5 Billion today. Per launch.
Target for Starship is $10 mil per launch in todays dollars. I do take anything Musk with a ton of salt, but even still. That's less than the cost of 3-4 miles of 2 lane per side rural interstate.
That is a serious game changer.
I love the Saturn 5. I saw a discussion once over using their old engine design for a new superheavy lift rocket but there's no welders left who can do it. Apparently they adjusted their extremely difficult welds 'on the fly' so each engine was slightly different! Crazy skills.
That said Starship is a killer machine. A space shuttle that (hopefully) works.
If you can't tell I love talking about this stuff
Pic shows a few of them to scale (link).
Pete
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/c...494c6.png.webp