- Debate over whether early off-world colonies must be authoritarian: one participant argues that extreme resource constraints and life-support margins will enforce rigid, top-down control for centuries, while another contends that bottom-up, Valve-style self-organization and habitat mobility can preserve individual freedom even in small, early settlements.

- Quick-look propellant math: ~90 kg of methane is required to lift a 100 kg human to low-Earth orbit (including drag & gravity losses), after which “effectively unlimited” space-based resources become reachable.

- Practical minimum viable Mars base described as “a few tonnes of gadgets from Earth, a drilled radiation-shielded hole, and a closed-loop recycling system,” emphasizing how little mass is actually needed to bootstrap survival.

- Skepticism voiced that Mars offers any real refuge from terrestrial authoritarianism, since a global government could more easily locate and eliminate surface colonies than hidden Antarctic or ocean-floor bases.

- Link shared: new transcript on diyhpl.us covering survey responses from Bitcoin miners vs. developers on network longevity, added to the open-source diyhpluswiki repository.