Certified

Here I thought you meant bailing on the site. With the added context, my thought is that we have a lot of house keeping to do before we can start looking for a new home. There have been a number of exo-planets discovered that could potentially house human life. However, barring the need for faster means of travel, there are still so many issues we should resolve here first. 

When Elon Musk proposed that poorer people could effectively pay their way, much like indentured servants, in his vision for terraforming Mars, that really sent shivers down my spine. As once you are there, there really is no way out of the arrangement, and your boss controls the food you get to eat and the air you can breathe. Total Recall was not meant to be a guide. That's just on the idea of unchecked capitalism and how it looks more and more like feudalism as we remove what limited controls that are in place. 

Then you get into societal issues, all the given "isms" of our world. Who would get to go to said haven? In Burning Chrome, there was a short story about a space station in a degrading orbit. The crew had all been evacuated, except for one person who had such bone deterioration from living in space he could not survive on earth. The story ends with a group of people using modified hot air balloons to  reach the upper atmosphere and correct the orbit before the station breaks up. Their goal to form a sustainable colony off world. There's something really innocent and fun in this concept, as they succeed and the remaining crewman becomes a mentor to the new inhabitants. However, I can't imagine this ever happening. Even if we take the events at face value, once this abandoned station is fixed, I can only see the original owners returning to collect. Although, I do like the idea of upcycling at that level. 

These days, I think of fantasy over science-fiction (if only because fantasy is more divorced from the sad realizations of our own existence). When all one has is dreams, it hardly hurts to dream big...

You do raise some fair points, however. Space colonization - at this point in our evolution - is incredibly complicated, glacial and almost self-defeating in some ways; we require miraculous advancements (e.g., faster-than-light travel that sidesteps relativistic issues, artificial gravity that isn't spin-gravity, fully protective radiation shielding, truly long-lasting plus safe stasis chambers, energy generation at least as powerful as reliable matter-antimatter reactors, et cetera) to make the endeavor worthwhile. The near-certainty that space exploitation is going to be guided by corporations is disheartening. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to my former bleak thoughts.

That it is going to be corporate driven in an unregulated space, no pun indeed, is indeed bleak. When thinking about the colonization of Mars, it is something I think is strangely more feasible than we want to believe. 

Creating closes cave systems allows terraforms to create larger pockets of inhabitable area while excavating resources. There's an airlock / logistics issue that better minds than I would need to work out, but I think that's well within the real of possibility. Before we get there though, I think it would be better to develop a space elevator and station to allow for easier launches. With advances in carbon tubing and other materials I think we have moved this concept into the realm of the possible. Of course, that means either contracting with an equatorial country, or building an artificial island. Once that's in place though, and the corresponding facilities in orbit, we can really begin more through space exploration, if domestic. Lunching shuttles becomes much easier when they don't have to escape earth's orbit. My fear though is that we have somehow moved beyond big ideas. We are somehow mired in what should be a trivial matter of take your medicine and stop trying to put out the fire in just room of the house. 

As far as fantasy goes, I found myself working on a supplement for Metahumans Rising before realizing that's what I was doing. It's a Fantasy Americana setting based in 1978. The concept was a vehicle to explore an idea while at the end of an age, the 80s being very different from the 60s and 70s. However, as I work on the setting I keep being faced with moments of, well this hasn't changed, and I see this is where this concept took hold and now we live in it's long term repercussions. It's hard to describe, in so much that I think the setting is fun, but I am mired in all the bummers associated with the setting, and how thing progressed from that point. 

Tried to resurrect a true fantasy setting from a few decades ago and saw it covered in white savior vomitus I was regurgitating from my childhood. Had to back burner that until I can completely update it. It's funny, I see so many people posting culture wars comments online about D&D and politics. I mean, I'm not even immune to it having written a few thousand words and spent way too much time looking up refences to prove some basic points about inherent bias. (Dropping this here, because I think anyone can see these conversations, and I may as well take the opportunity to bang the drum.)

Anecdotally, I see people are upset with WotC changing D&D cannon to be more inclusive. Often I see them argue that the company is changing D&D to appeal to an audience that doesn't play the game. At the same time, these same people decry actual play series of others playing D&D in ways they don't like. Doesn't this later point disprove the former?

One of the things I try to point out, when I get pulled into these conversations, is that no one is trying to change how you play at your home table. Now, you can argue the inverse is true, WotC can keep the cannon that is perceived as racist or sexist and other people can play how they want, there is no need to change the default cannon. With that in mind though, I feel like the default state should be inclusive as it makes the game more accessible to new people. 

With that said, I still enjoy Lord of the Rings, despite the origin of Orcs and Harry Potter, despite the multitude of issues with the setting. Maybe being able to see it and compartmentalize it is key. When the kiddo is old enough, I'm sure I'll find myself explaining the understated acceptance of slaves in Harry Potter, the racial stereotypes, and post publication queer bating to them. Along with the strange joy I take in having the movies provided by a streaming service so that I don't have to give money to the author. Although, I suppose, one could argue that streaming it justifies the service's renewal of access to the movies. 

Now I don't know where I was going with this, but there we go...