I love the idea and genuinely feel like the purpose or obligation of intelligent life is to spread and escape the confines of a single planet. But the first step has to be a stable environment here. If we can’t maintain an ecology and atmosphere in literally the perfect conditions we’re adapted for we have no business messing with other planets. That’s not to say we shouldn’t research and explore, but we’re a long way from terraforming anything and Mars isn’t exactly an awesome place to live even under ideal circumstances . A stable space station that’s perminently habitable and self sufficient long-term is necessary before we can realistically consider further expansion. That would require us to have solved climate collapse and the mass extinction we’ve created which seems like a slim possibility at the moment.

“The technology of plasma thrusters using metal as a fuel is a really exciting development” Awesome concept and the name Neumann Drive is pretty cool.

Yep, the only reason it isn’t happening for you is that the creator of kbin.social has temporarily broken federation to protect his server against DDOS attacks.

Yes absolutely, though I find it a difficult spectrum between pure conservationism vs ecology. I want to plant as many natives as possible, but perfect is the enemy of good, and ultimately I believe creating habitat and restoring a functional ecosystem takes precedence over trying to wind back the clock on colonisation.

I live in New Zealand and am in the process of creating a 35 hectare eco-community which includes 8 hectares set aside for wetland restoration and reforestation, and another 5 of already regenerating native bush. There are existing trusts we could ally with for support, however most of them stipulate planting purely natives, which I don’t believe is practical. There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle, so to speak.

Here gorse bushes imported by Scottish settlers spread rampantly on any ungrazed land, and the reccommended approach is to poison them as fast as possible and plant natives in their stead. We’d rather not use pesticides, but there are other options. Gorse is very vast growing and horrendously thorny, but that can actually be a benefit - animals like rabbits don’t like to feed on it, so it can actually act as a nursery for young natives, and it requires full sun, so as soon as anything grows up from under it, it dies back.

Being able to step back and find ways for ecosystems to work together to restore themselves is the only cost effective/sustainable way to do it at the scale and speed we need to.