It's perhaps a bit of a cheap shot to smirk at lines as inane as the: "Earth's surface is the shoreline of a new ocean," and “Creating a self-sustaining civilization on Mars would be the greatest adventure ever in human history,” and recognize that the personages mouthing such are hopelessly inept in their thought processes along with their woeful misunderstanding of wisdom or sensibility. The "special ones" will always get a lot of airtime, because what they have to say sounds compelling, mainly because it serves its purpose as an escape hatch, from the everyday corruption, hopelessness, and brutishness that surrounds so many of us on planet earth and therein lies the rub.
While it's alright to fantasize about traveling to planet Mars and creating a sustaining civilization on it, it's hypocrisy at its absolute worse to take the means to do so from the people of today and generations to come without having corrected the fundamental problems that exist on planet earth. The obligation that all humans have on this planet to begin with, is to live in harmony with each other, to see themselves in the other, and to live a life that lives by those very principles.
The escape plan to Mars, or some other planet, or some other distant galaxy, is fundamentally unsound, because it is structured to benefit the few and the elite, while taking from the many and the unconnected. The first principle that one needs to understand is that everything that humans need to do and to accomplish to begin with first needs to be done correctly on this planet. There are challenges enough on earth, to keep us busy for generations, and if mankind refuses to get its house in order here, it won't have its house in order somewhere else.
It's fantastic that man's reach exceeds his grasp, and it's fantastic that man applying his mind can accomplish so many grand technical feats, of which, some of these benefit mankind, and some do not. The overarching purpose though, of a life lived well, is not that you helped better your own bed,
although that has its place, but that you helped those most needful of help to begin with. What credit is it to any man, if your superior mind and knowledge is utilized to aid a favored few at the expense of the masses of mankind?
In point of fact, there isn't anything much easier than working with people of a like mind, because to a certain extent, these people are sort of like reflections of your own persona. Of far more difficulty, though, is to work with those that actively hate you, despise you, treat you wrong, misunderstand you, and abuse you, for these are the ones that really need your guidance, love, opportunity, empathy, and understanding. After all, if they are too much trouble for you to deal with, however are they going to generate on their own the escape velocity that they need in order to attain their mission in life?
The actual greatest adventure in human history will be the utilization of one's mind to connect to the source of all wisdom and truth, to thereby understand fully: "E Pluribus Unum" at is foundational principle level, than you will see clearly as if for the very first time.