One must ask the question: why bother exploring space at all? Don't tell me it's for the spinoff technologies, those are a fringe benefit at best, and have dubious return on investment compared to more direct funding. No, it's just because we're curious. We just want to.
Eventually logical arguments about how to acheive goals bottom out at raw, built-in desire. And no matter how many silly-sounding phrasings of the goal that you come up with, the fact remains that we want to go there. We just want to.
(This is no defense of any particular extant plan. OTOH I suspect OP underestimates the value of life support tech here on earth. But these are side questions.)
Maybe the fantasy is better than the reality, as it often is.
Dreaming of going to space makes some people happy and they won't let it go. Doesn't mean it's a good idea!
But sometimes it's productive to have an unreachable goal: it gives us the motivation to improve towards it and reap the benefits, even if we never hit it.
Eventually logical arguments about how to acheive goals bottom out at raw, built-in desire. And no matter how many silly-sounding phrasings of the goal that you come up with, the fact remains that we want to go there. We just want to.
(This is no defense of any particular extant plan. OTOH I suspect OP underestimates the value of life support tech here on earth. But these are side questions.)