I am all for industrializing space, as that's better for the environment. The moon should be our next stop. I am not as confident in your statement "Nuclear power is criminally underutilized currently." I would say until people find a solution to deal with the waste, it would be more criminal to keep supporting Nuclear energy. We have a waste problem, and we have a hole to put it in, which tax payers spent money on, and then local government said no, and so we have waste sitting around in canisters that are weathering and will leak... Even the miniature reactors, which seems like a good go, could be hijacked and turned into dirty bombs... i mean, sure, we're always going to have some technological terrorist that can take modern day tech and make a monstrous thing, especially in light of boy scout who took the elements out of smoke detectors to make a super collider in his basement... but there seem to be some other more viable options than nuclear plants, and we haven't even considered the educational crisis and maybe not having enough engineers to run said plants, or deal with a crisis when it happens. We don't talk about Chernobyl or Fukishima, but they are still very much a problem that we are collective ignoring. I think I read, Chernobyl is inexplicably heating up again? Fukishima hasn't quit dumping radioactive fall out into the sea.

I know solar isn't perfect, but ideally, if we, society, simply made the stand to put solar on every available house or structure, maybe even took down billboards and made that solar, the initial cost may be unreasonable, but the long term benefits may outweigh that cost. If took just took a quarter of the load of coal or oil, that's still a quarter of the load. I bet we could do better than a quarter.

Alternative fuels, like gas, are definitely criminally neglected. There was a farmer that converted all his vehicles, personal car and farm equipment, to running on natural gas, and the horse and cow and pig manure made him enough fuel that he never buys gas. If you remember your childhood book, everybody poops. Every car should just be run on natural gas. The fact that we have not updated sewer technology in 200 years, so that we can all reap the benefits of our own methane production, and use that to fertilize our own yards and our farms, maybe decreasing the petroleum use in the same area, might actually help with fuel and pollution issues.

At some point, in a modern society, we need to consider making utilities like electric free, because no one operates without it. Deregulating energy has never benefited consumers. Take Texas. Prior to deregulation, we had the cheapest rates in the nation. We sold to five other states, including California. Did I correctly read lately that California is forcing rolling blackout on its citizens/consumers? Is Consumer driving this conversation, or politics? Texas now buys from three states, and consumers are paying exuberant prices compared to before, and during the recent winter storm- we broke the grid due to decreased capacity. Intentional decreased capacity to create a scarcity in order to justify increased costs to consumers. That, and once we deregulated we had thousand middle men scrambling for a piece of the pie that used to just go direct to energy. States and corporations are unwilling to pay for new infrastructure, old style electrics, or nuclear, because the political, legal, and environmental cost are too risky. They are willing to play games with consumers to increase their profits. We don't have a tech or environmental problem, we have a corporate and political greed problem. Fix that, and all the other things will start working themselves out, because most people want what's best for the and their families and neighbors.

Because, you know what else is risky? A lack of commitment to any one or all solutions sets. Start putting solar panels everywhere. Make that the law of the land. Compensate people immediately and directly who can put them on their homes. Not like the current commercial gimmick claims you will be liberated in 20 years, but immediately. And while we're doing that, let's start switching our fleet to natural gas, or making them run on two fuels so that we have options as we move towards the new thing.

And hope Fusion comes online.

Back to the moon. We should already have built a functional colony there, except for politics keeps changing public direction, and now we're back to talking about going to Venus... Seriously? Have you ever had a birthday balloon that didn't go flat? What's the longest any one blimp as stayed airborne. At least on Mars, you have a place to stand.

Seriously, we don't have tech problems. We have a certain people problem.