psyreporter wrote: ↑June 24th, 2022, 6:27 am
Do you have specific resources in mind that would be depleted when humans would start a space faring endeavour?
Yes,
all the resources it takes to wrest the raw (and often rare, or even exhausted) materials from the Earth, and to process them in many different ways into space-ship components. To build and test the space-ship, and all its components. The fuel, and the burning of it (assuming that space elevators, like nuclear fusion, are an unfulfilled fantasy). The wages and the people - probably 10000s of people or more - it would take to get it off the ground. Even the hot air created in the political discussions about it! I have in mind the
total cost of the whole fiasco, excluding
nothing.
To bring a project like this to fruition would be costly to the environment in just about every way. And the resources needed could be more profitably employed in trying to reverse our helter-skelter progress toward ecological catastrophe.
You talk of living temporarily on Mars, while the Earth recovers from an asteroid strike. With luck, that would not be too much longer than waiting for the dust clouds to fall to the ground, restoring sunlight, and thereby plant growth. Contrast that with an environmental collapse that could last millions of years...