> we're not settling Mars

I remember when electric cars were universally considered to be unrealistic.

I remember when full-flow staged combustion was a dream that the soviets tried to achieve but couldn't figure out, and it was thought to be impossible.

It was just a couple years ago that nobody gave satellite internet a second thought, it was just assumed that it would always be "slow expensive backup". Now it turns out that low orbit and beamforming technology can do more than anyone thought, and with the potential for inter-satellite laser connections, the future economics ANY fiber infrastructure is called into question.

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"we're not settling Mars" is a totally legitimate statement, when the "we" is a civilization that abandoned the Saturn V to build the "Space Shuttle" (which wasn't a shuttle in any meaningful sense of the word), and then realized it was too expensive, but only after they'd lost the competency to build the Saturn V, so they just gave up.

And it's not like society just gave up on space, they gave up on everything. Cheap nuclear energy, flying cars, robot maids, cancer cures. All of these things were "within reach" in the 1960s, but around 1971 humanity just stopped trying.

Now you can call me an Elon fanboy, but this is a guy who managed to pull off engineering feats that I did not think were possible, multiple times now. And these were real tangible things which changed the course of human history. So if I have to pick his civilization or yours, no offense but I'm going with him.