>>11607715>There is nothing in the outer solar system hat would draw mankind out thereVirgin land, people will be less drawn to get out there and more feel pushed by political regimes of the inner solar system and want to go out and do their own thing. The outer solar system will effectively start off being like Alaska is currently to the united states.
Also, without a general expansion towards orbiting habitat civilization, you can say bye-bye to interstellar colonization.
>Venus is a step closer to Mercury HA
No. It's physically closer, sure, but in terms of sinodic period it's actually further from Earth, and in terms of delta V both Moon and Mars are closer owing to their much shallower gravity wells. It literally takes more delta V to go from Venus to Mercury than it does to go from Moon or Mars to Mercury.
Also, Mercury is only more desirable than the asteroid belt once industry in the asteroid belt has been mostly established. Mercury obviously has way more resources total, but they're all at the bottom of a decent gravity well; in that respect it's no better than Mars, worse actually since Mars basalt when spun into fibers works just as well at providing strength to pressurized orbital habitats and propellant tanks as metals do. Asteroids are desirable because they're the low hanging fruit; we'd go to them before Moon or Mars if it weren't so difficult to do anything based from Earth. We need to go to Moon/Mars to learn how to live and do industry in space, so that we can exploit the asteroid belt, so that we can go live anywhere in the solar system and even leave the solar system if we want to.
