That red planet is our manifest destiny writ large. The ultimate expansion of the human race over our solar system. A successful colony would establish us a multi-planetary civilization, greatly increasing our odds of survival against a cold and indifferent universe.
We are at the mercy of the cosmos. We could be evaporated at a whim. A gamma-ray burst. A rogue interstellar comet. Supernovae. Or maybe the Dark Forest is real, and there’s a planet-killer on its way to us right now.
I much prefer the Rare Earth theory. I like to think that we are unique - it is both frightening, in the sense that we are truly alone, always at the precarious edge of extinction; and exciting, in the sense that we are always at the edge of greatness. Technological breakthrough holds much promise - it could liberate us from this planet and put us on the path to a Type II civilization.
Technology could also destroy us. How ironic to think that we should survive all the great filters, find ourselves alone in an empty universe, and, instead of expanding and conquering the outer wilds, we contract and implode in ruin and hellfire.
This is why it’s so important to go to Mars. Were Earth to fall, Mars would survive. But let’s move on from the cynical take - let’s assume that Earth were to survive and prosper and, with it, Mars, too. New industries would boom - space travel, asteroid mining, space tourism, and all the necessary industries to support our far-flung colonies would 100x.
Notwithstanding the anthropological imperative to colonize new worlds, Mars represents a true north star in our collective conscious. Named after the Roman God of War, the Red Planet, successfully colonized, would motivate and inspire countless generations of conquerors to burst forth from Earth and into the dangerous unknown. Like our ancestors before us, who braved the endless sea, strange horizons, savage tribes and countless dangers to bring the world before them into a new era of greatness and prosperity so, too, should we take after their example and set our hearts to this noble goal.
Mars must be ours.