That is a good point. But keep in mind that the people going up to initially settle it will not be the average Joe/Jane from earth. There are many many environmentally concerned people (not talking about extremists) that will be respectful of what needs to be done.Space is loaded with all kinds of stuff. I heard the other day that all gold originally comes from stars exploding, just as an example. We could easily survive if we got the technology together. To be honest though, I don't see how space settlement could work, and I have a hard time explaining this to my spacefriend, but if we can't survive on a bountiful planet like Earth, where earth takes up a lot of the slack, how could we survive in a largely artificial environment where we are responsible for every single facet of our survival? There would just be more things to fight and war over. I dunno, I just can't see it working long term.
With that said, the human race does evolve its behavior and could realize the need for change at the cusp of destruction.
And about Gold, every element was created in stars.
The big bang produced mainly hydrogen and helium and Lithium (various isotopes). They combine under great great heat and pressure to form stars. This is the stars fuel. Our sun uses hydrogen and forces the atoms together (fusion) to make helium.
Larger, hotter (MUCH MUCH HOTTER AND LARGER) stars, fuse larger elements together to make even larger elements. Take Magnesium for example. The magnesium we use to feed our plants is essentially the exhaust from a star burning neon and hydrogen as fuel. It gets expelled and floats around. Our earth was created from floating swirling dust clouds in space. This dust was comprised of all the elements we find here today basically.
Every piece of you is the byproduct of star fusion or explosion. We were literally made from stars whether you believe in God or not. Even if you believe in God, he had to have a mechanism to carry out his goal.
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