Matthew Bracken (@Matt_Bracken)

A damn big rocket just went up today. Congrats! And its booster stuck the landing. Yay! But it won't get to Mars until 2027, after "loitering" for an optimal earth gravity boost a year from now. And it was almost 2/3 the liftoff weight of the Saturn V Apollo rockets that we sent to the moon over half a century ago. [2,950 metric tons Apollo, 1,800 metric tons, Blue Origin.] I would not plan on any "Mars Colonies" just yet. What we know so far means that humans cannot live on Mars, and a "Mars Colony" is impossible, in the sense that it's self-sustaining, with humans living on their own, and not depending for their monthly survival on constant resupply missions sent from earth. (Unlike the Americas in the 1500s.) Not to mention the Mars environment will kill mere mortal Earthlings, even if they have unlimited oxygen and water. So the only way Mars will ever be "colonized," is with sentient AI robots, who don't care about gravity, temperature, oxygen, water, or radiation. Or sleeping for a year or two on the way from Earth to Mars, while "loitering" for a year at a time like Blue Origin. My takeaway from all this is that our immortal future transhuman overlords are planning to "colonize" space in a post-homo-sapiens world. Where we mere human ants at their elite globalist transhuman picnic have been dealt with long before. Get your booster shot, or lose your social credit score, and risk debanking. "Mark of the Beast?" Nah, no way. That's crazy talk. Hello? "Universal Basic Income" means "feed the goldfish in the aquarium, until the time is right to pull the plug."