Newspace is maybe like that. Yet seriously, justifying, numeric arguments for
putting colonies on planets? All political stuff. US regime change wars cost
trillions of $ the last 3 decades. Did those make any money, did they achieve
anything or did they achieve the contrary? Looks like one hand (space) is
unaware of knowing what the other (military one) spends. NASA did not send men
on the Moon or Iraq with a grocer's mentality.
General Dynamics' (the sub builder) 1963 magazine ideas like Nova could build a
2001 style rotating space station (ISS follow-up?) reasonably quickly and start
colonizing projects. What space is all about.
http://bayourat.blogspot.com/2010/08/m1-rocket-engine.html
Nova was not even the tallest concept in the sixties. So was going for S-V only
the correct decision: too small I'm afraid for colonizing Mars.
jd