These people trying to live on Mars, they’re very ill-adapted.  Humans are very ill-adapted to living in space, especially on Mars.  Gravity is different; there’s no atmosphere, et cetera.  So they’d have every incentive to use all the techniques of cyber and bio to adapt to that alien environment.  And that may involve trying to change and generate intelligent electronic species.  And once you’ve got them, then of course, they don’t want an atmosphere at all.  They may prefer zero-G, and they’ll go off into space, and this will be the start of a post-human era. And of course, if these entities are near immortal, then a long voyage to the stars won’t deter them.  So I think, if you think of the future, then it may be that it’ll be a future of inorganic electronic entities which will spread from our solar system and far beyond in the billions of years that lie ahead.  So I think that’s a potential future.  But we are well-adapted to being on Earth, so we have less incentive to do it.  That’s why I think it’s the crazy adventurers who will be the pioneers of triggering the transition to a new species, as it were.  So that’s why I would cheer them on even if I may not want to join them.