like youtube recommended this video to me, and for some reason i watched it, all the way through. this is a small channel, and i don't want to pick on a little guy, so don't be mean to them.
but so many of the talking points for sending people to the moon (or mars, or anywhere else) to live permanently, just don't make any degree of sense.
i think people SEVERELY underestimate the sheer logistical difficulties of living on the moon permanently, self-sustainably. we don't even have people living in self-sustainable, permanent settlements on antarctica, which is a hell of a lot more habitable then the moon. they can't grow their own food, people need to go home after the winter is over, and any health problem can quickly become deadly, any social problems can quickly become horrible.
which makes other talking points about how it would help humans become an interplanetary species, or would "take strain off of earth", completely ridiculous. not only will it be functionally impossible for these colonies to become truly self sufficient, the ecological impact of sustaining a colony on the moon will be absolutely enormous. the carbon footprint of a moon colony citizen would probably blow that of many of the wealthiest people out of the water (not that carbon footprint reduction is really a viable strategy for climate change in and of itself)
but also like, even trying to live on the moon for just a few months, let alone years or for a lifetime, would be actively traumatic. it seems to me that no matter how comfy you make the dwellings, no matter how many psychologists you have on staff, there is no way that a huge proportion of people aren't coming home with ptsd. humans are just not meant to function in an environment that stressful and isolated from Home, from their ecological home.
it feels like Science (the futurist, technology-will-save-us ideology) has become something of a neoliberal religion. space, alongside Technology, has long been a bit of a "you'll get pie in the sky when you die" kind of promise. "it's okay that we are destroying this world, there's more worlds out there, and you could even be on the ships to go there!"
and the people who will die or get severely traumatized by actual attempts at making colonies, those people are its human sacrifices.
even the closing remark of the video just sounds so neoliberal. "we should always remind ourselves that the difficult tasks are the ones that hold the most of value." value for who? will humanity really benefit from being sent to work in lunar mines? from burning enormous piles of resources to set up space colonies that are largely scientifically worthless, not achieving anything that a unmanned probe couldn't already achieve (with a fraction of the resources and psychological strain)
