On Oct 24, 4:29 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:

As I pointed out before, you could start building cities in Antarctica
in conditions more pleasant than Mars; you can breath the air, and water
is already proven to be plentiful. There's bound to be minerals of one
sort or another, transportation to and from the place is fairly quick
and low cost, and assuming you like a diet high in meat rather than
vegetables, the seas surrounding its coast will provide it in abundance.
But you don't see cities springing up all over it or in the Australian
outback (even Brazil pretty much admitted Brasilia was a flop of an
idea), and that doesn't bode any too well for places that are even more
uncomfortable in regards to climate. Say ones lacking breathable air and
getting sprayed with the solar wind.

Pat

This isn't really valid, except in the very shortest term. It's
simply impossible to make meaningful predictions about changing
economic, religious, and social impulses over the long term, and any
of those can transform 'utterly impractical' to 'let's do it'.