Sir I'd like you to step out of the car and breathe into this Kool-Aid detector.

Planets aren't going to be colonized like colonies were on this Earth. Economic growth and prosperity have decoupled not only from fossil fuels, but it's no longer a function of energy consumption in general. Humans simply do not flourish without the Earth ecosystem. The future you paint here is only credible to 13 year-old boys who just finished their third Jerry Pournelle book.

This is not how people are expected to converse on HN.

> The future you paint here is only credible to 13 year-old boys who just finished their third Jerry Pournelle book.

My mom is in her mid 70s and grew up reading Jules Verne and H.G. Wells as a child in Bangladesh. She still imagines a Star Trek future is inevitable. If anything it’s Gen Z that has a small and narrow vision of what’s possible.

It isn't about space travel. The AI boosters use it as a pretext for powering more data centers.