be a true pioneer and go first.

The notion of living on a sterile, barren planet with no trees, water or air is bizarre.

We still have no idea how to get humans to Mars alive and in good health, let alone how to get them back.

And, sorry, the moon isn't a "gateway" to anywhere, nor are there any "resources" there that make it worth the trip. But who knows, maybe some tireless lunar rover will find alien technology beneath some rock...

If we are truly interested in exploring the solar system it's best to leave the fragile humans at home.

Interstellar travel simply can't exist in this universe. This alone adequately explains the Fermi Paradox.

I rather like Jason Pargin’s take on all of it:

Pessimistic arguments about space travel can't be compared to 19th century arguments that man would never fly, arguments that were disproved when we progressed from the early experiments of the Wright Brothers and others at the beginning of the 20th century to supersonic aircraft in about fifty years.

More than fifty years after the Apollo Program there have been incredible advances in materials science, engineering, and computers but landing people on the moon is still difficult. That's not because we haven't thrown enough money at the problem, it's because we are actually approaching the limits of what is possible in this universe.

even when going to Mars let alone interstellar travel.

I don't believe that explains the Fermi Paradox however because it does not rule out interstellar contact via things that do travel at the speed of light and do so very readily that being radio and light etc.

And yeah, living at the South Pole would be tough alright even with all the air and water but, it would still be vastly better than living on Mars or the Moon.

There's a Great Filter in self-annihilation via technology.

We have come perilously close on more than one occasion ourselves (and still teeter on the brink). It will very likely happen via environmental collapse or nuclear war or perhaps unstoppable contagious disease. Or, maybe some combination of such events.

One other is that the odds of life evolving into "intelligent" life may be vanishingly small. We have no idea what such odds are though, we only know that it is greater than zero and less than one.

Unless Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) becomes a reality, and it starts inventing things beyond our imagination.

Or Open AI or Gemini or any of the other Big Shiny Smart Things.