L ike many people alive today, I have no desire to live on Mars. It is, by all accounts, a pretty shitty place for human habitation. Heat escapes its atmosphere so quickly that, were one to stand at its equator at noon with skin exposed — not a great idea! — it would feel like spring to the feet and winter to the head. The thin atmosphere also does little to protect the planet from meteorites and asteroids, which lob themselves into Mars with some regularity. The planet-wide dust storms are so fierce that the debris often does not settle for months at a time. Even Mars’ two moons lack the elegance and majesty of Earth’s sole one: Phobos and Deimos appear as misshapen potato-like blobs in the sky (to add insult to injury, Phobos is slated to crash into the planet in about 50 million years). And speaking of potatoes, one could not safely grow them with freeze-dried human feces and martian soil, as per the movie The Martian, because as appetizing as shit-potatoes may sound, the soil on Mars is toxic. Also, liquid tends to freeze, boil, or evaporate immediately — including human saliva and, presumably, tears. When scientists say they are looking for life on Mars, they mostly do not mean life right now but rather evidence that life existed eons ago, when Mars was possibly warmer and covered with water and not so much of a freaking hellscape of a planet. So: I don’t know. I’m not a scientist. But if we can keep things going here on Earth, I think we should.

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This thought has come to mind a lot lately, as much has been made of the political wranglings of Earth’s richest technocrats, whose ambitions range from lower taxes to interplanetary colonization. Somehow, while we were all thumbing through TikTok or commenting on tweets or working three jobs to (not) be able to afford rent, we allowed the world’s richest man to pay roughly $250 million to help reinstall Donald Trump in the White House and then create an unelected position for hi