So Mars will be a totalitarian state where conflict is verboten?

I dunno, I certainly hope not. Are you gonna stay on Earth, with that attitude? Then possibly even less so, I would imagine.

Pretty interesting subject though, eh? Hope the first colony isn't "USA™", you know what I mean?

BTW I'm thinking that, with the cost of transporting a ton of cargo in space, interplanetary invasions might be impractical because it will be extremely expensive to transport any kind of military force. That does not preclude a conflict between the local colonies though.

I'm thinking it'll be more like, once there's a viable colony on 16 Psyche, it'll spend its time transmitting F/OSS designs to the universe.

It'll be pretty hard for Earth beligerents to be genociding when there are Starships dropping in on the starving villages and keeping them alive.

Yes yes, there is still a lot to be done before we can manufacture a Tesla on an asteroid, and land it back on Earth wherever its needed.

But, if you think about it, its definitely a better way forward than to just stay here and keep killing ourselves over what is .. admittedly .. a pretty small planet.

Hmm... Ultimately, people will be people. I don't see why we'd stop killing each other only because we moved to space.