The thermal nuclear engine has propellant, technically not fuel. It's not combusted, just ejected backwards at high speed. It's gets used up, but it's not a source of energy.

Mercury gets too hot for water, but there is some ice in dark polar craters. Venus has water clouds, but it's also too hot so most of it boiled away. Mars has plenty of water frozen at its poles. According to this article, the asteroid belt would also have lots of ice.

Other than Io, every solid object beyond Mars is completely covered in miles of ice.

There's water everywhere.

I wouldn't say it's the level of education that needs to change, but rather, the topics.

We are going to need intense education in problem solving, creativity, empathy, curiosity and flexibility. Those are things which can be taught, and for which we have not had sufficient time to teach fully, in the past.

There might very well come a point at which your survival relies on your ability to make a friend. Currently, this is only true of jobs like sales or business negotiations. It is likely to be important for everyone in the future.

I don't know what form those schooling systems will take, but it's likely to be very different from anything that has come before.

I'm planning to hunt the sheep keeping the grass short under the machine civilization's massive solar arrays. As long as their population is sustainably harvested, the machines won't see me as a danger.

Humanity's future might be much like our past.

Don't advise your kids to pursue a career. Raise them into well-rounded individuals. In the age of AI, it will be the most human qualities that make us worthwhile. For a long time, we all made ourselves into machines, because someone had to. That is no longer necessary.

The world is transitioning again, from experts to generalists.

Creativity, empathy, curiosity and flexibility. If there is anything we can still do, it will involved all of those. If there isn't, then it doesn't really matter.

Everything else will be done by machines.

Fewer humans working OR expansion of the economy overall. If 99% of human work is replaced by AI, we can maintain the same number of jobs if GDP is multiplied by 100.

There is not a fixed amount of work to be done. There is an infinite universe of untouched mineral reserves and energy out there.

We still find jobs for bacteria. We pay them in food.

Or just disassemble them completely to build all kinds of things

Evolution is no longer limited to how it has worked in the past. We're now an active part of the process, thinking purposefully rather than simply reacting. GMO crops are the first step. GMO ecosystems will colonize Mars.

I maintain faith in the adaptability of biochemistry. It has surmounted impossible chemical realities many times before.

You're right, it's not enough to sustain life. It's not an Earth-like atmosphere. But it is enough pressure to allow liquid water on the surface and protect from micrometeorites and cosmic rays. It's enough moisture in the air to allow rain and distribute water to the entire surface.

You would still need habitats, but they would be simpler to build. Simple plastic-wrapped greenhouses would become viable. You could go outside with just full-body compression socks and an oxygen supply. Atmospheric CO2 and temperature would be high enough for lichen to grow on the surface.

Mars still has enough water (ice) to fill an ocean. It's just cold so it's frozen.

If its poles melted today, it would have an atmosphere and oceans for millions of years, as the air slowly blows away in the solar wind.

That's why this machine is designed to detect molecular fragments of space-blasted life, not whole bacterias

This gave me the hilarious vision of satellites tripping on ball bearings on the floor and falling on their asses.