I think that’s very probably true, yes. I’m not certain that will continue to be true indefinitely, or that it will or should continue to be the deciding factor for future decision making. I’m just pointing out that we’re actually discussing a small subset of a very large space of options, that there are ways of “eating the sun” that allow life to continue unaltered on Earth, and so on. TBH even if we don’t do anything like this, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if future humans end up someday building a full or partial shell around Earth anyway, long before there’s anything like large-scale starlifting under discussion. Living space, power generation, asteroid deflection, off-world industry, just to name a few reasons we might do something like that. It could end up being easier and cheaper to increase available surface area and energy by orders of magnitude doing something like this than by colonizing other planets and moons.
I think that’s very probably true, yes. I’m not certain that will continue to be true indefinitely, or that it will or should continue to be the deciding factor for future decision making. I’m just pointing out that we’re actually discussing a small subset of a very large space of options, that there are ways of “eating the sun” that allow life to continue unaltered on Earth, and so on. TBH even if we don’t do anything like this, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if future humans end up someday building a full or partial shell around Earth anyway, long before there’s anything like large-scale starlifting under discussion. Living space, power generation, asteroid deflection, off-world industry, just to name a few reasons we might do something like that. It could end up being easier and cheaper to increase available surface area and energy by orders of magnitude doing something like this than by colonizing other planets and moons.