I wish EDS maglev, fusion power or quantum computing generated so much excitement, to say nothing of grid batteries, magnetocaloric heat pumps, or electric impedance tomography. I guess QC has done well lately.
Good question. The best off-earth real estate in this solar system is worse than the worst on-earth real estate. It's easier to build colonies in Antarctica or underwater on the continental shelf than on Mars. Mars is small, cold, and nearly airless.
We're not short of low-value real estate, after all.
Space is not that hard assuming some basic human upgrades. Nothing scifi needed (like mind uploading), just an engineering problem - things that today take a factory but would have to fit into a human sized body.
You start with a pop-interpretation of an edgy existential statement. The point of Sartre's "No Exit" was not to glibly quote the punch-line, it's to think about the logical implications. Probably something about learning to live together despite our flaws/sins.
About escaping the state, the Book of Genesis figured it out long ago: humans behave badly (aka sin) and were thus cast out of the only place they could live in peace--in other words, some people ruined it for all the others. And because of bad behavior, humans need to follow laws; and who makes the laws is what has created (and continues to create) history. So it was never possible to escape the laws/state ever.
To dream of running far enough away to a mythical place where you alone get to make the laws is just futile escapism. The Amish and the Mormons just moved with their laws to a new place, and if you didn't agree with their laws, you still got kicked out.
Now for the hyperbole: the "underwater continental shelf" and Antarctica are not "trivially accessible", they are some of the most unexplored and hostile environments on Earth. You'd have lots of trouble establishing a livable base there.
Why does it have to be defensible? Is this some sort of Fort Laramie you have to steal from someone else? Leave society, live off only what you can make or grow, have no contact with the outside world. Find a lake in some remote mountains or an island in some remote sea, sneak out there and never come back! What? You still want the amenities, energetic resources, trade, and communication with the rest of the world? Then you're going to have to deal with other people and THEIR laws.
"basic human upgrades" "just an engineering problem" fit a factory in a human-sized body??? Why that should be as easy as a CRUD app on a virtual server with some rented storage.
Face it: for all intents and purposes, the world is full, nobody is escaping anywhere, and we all have to learn to live together.
Strawman. I literally wrote "like the Amish or Mormons did" yet you describe living alone in a hidden hut somewhere, Theodore Kaczynski style.
>Why does it have to be defensible?
Even in the XIX century, Mormons were eventually subjugated by force. They only managed to last several decades under their own laws. Today under the "Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act" it's a federal crime to operate a submersible vessel without nationality in international waters. The claimed jurisdiction is global. So no, it's not possible to move away anywhere on Earth anymore. The moment anything substantial would be created, some state would claim it as their own.
>Why that should be as easy as a CRUD app on a virtual server with some rented storage.
What's the point of this hyperbole? The difference between an engineering problem and scifi is that the former can already be done, but is expensive or otherwise impractical, while scifi problem like mind uploading can't be done for any money today. Engineering problems, like making rockets cheaper, are solvable by throwing money at the problem as long as general physical laws permit improvements.
>the world is full, nobody is escaping anywhere
Which is exactly why developing space travel technology is so important.
For the same reason it's always flying cars, despite how comically inefficient such vehicles are. The masses have an extaordinarily simplistic notion of what futuristic or advanced technology is or should look like. There are only a few well-trodden idols linked to what the future is supposed to look like. Hollywood has told them so; they've been told for many decades that it most certainly involves a space thing and or flying thing.
Cracking the human genome was a thousand times more interesting and important than flying cars could ever be and yet the masses can't let go of flying cars as somehow representative of magic futureness. It's nothing more than cultural brainwashing, equivalent to being projected on by media & advertising for decades that smoking cigarettes is cool (and that worked just the same, people bought into it fully).
They do what they're told. They believe what they're sold.
But you don't. You're not one of the tomatoes, you're a real person, huh?
Two words: Star Trek