Humans will never go past Mars

Humanity will never go past Earth at this point. It's too busy global-warming and religious-warring itself to oblivion.

Never is a really long time. I don't feel good committing to never. I'll agree not in my lifetime, though.

give it 200-1000 years

Everything is impossible until somebody goes and does it. While going to Mars and beyond is going to be very hard with current technology, there are other possibilities. Even in situ resource utilisation, e.g. making rocket fuel on the moon, would make it drastically easier to get around the solar system.

Then there is nuclear propulsion, which would hugely cut travel times. These are technologies that will likely be viable in the foreseeable future. Then we have fusion, which will probably take a little longer. And then there after things that nobody can even imagine today. Like nobody could imagine a smartphone thirty years ago.

Mining on earth is extremely destructive, but if human civilisation is to survive the coming challenges, it will still need a source of high value raw materials.

Getting them from the astroid belt and refining it in space all via robotic probes seems not so far fetched.

But once such an industry is established the economies of space travel change dramatically.

Sure, overall I agree with the article, but there will be most likely a few that will leverage the economies of scale mentioned above for some human exploration beyond the belt.

Because if you are at a certain age and healthy enough, you can plan a nice multi-year trip without "return ticket" pretty easily and neither low gravity or radiation are a serious issue either.

Maybe we could. We're just not going to last long enough to find out.

I agree that with our current understanding we won't be going very far but like all future predictions it cannot account for scientific breakthroughs, even though you try to shoot that down at the end.

Plot twist: by the time we or a descendant species dyson-sphere the sun, we're tunneling into alternative earths in alternate solar systems, many of which don't have a Mars.

"Ever" is a long time. Human progress seems to come and go based on need and economics. At the moment we seem pretty distracted by local problems and I don't think any of us will still be around by the time humans kill the Earth, so it doesn't seem all that pressing.

But someday the technical issues will be solved and a sustainable habitat will be able to coast through space for however long it takes to travel beyond Mars to somewhere else interesting. When it's possible, I think some people will do it, perhaps a lot of people.

It's a worthy goal. As a human I feel some motivation to ensure the continuation of our species so I would lean towards any efforts that involve sending some backup copies of our DNA to some off-site storage.

It's entirely possible. Actually I suspect Elon might get to Mars and realise it sucks, because he's nearly alone on a barren planet and Twitter has massive lag.

After the moon, Titan is the only place here that seems worth bothering with a colony on. Hopefully we do (some variant on) sleeper ships at some point, because our sun will only last so long, but if there's no dumb billionaires to fund it in the future we might just not bother.

Edit: That said, I wish OP made more of a distinction between cost, feasability and present mature technology. We can feasibly live without an atmosphere, but it might not be worth the cost. We can feasibly reach a few percent of lightspeed, but not with conventional rockets. (Other technologies are mentioned in the footnotes, but OP's grasp of the alternatives seems to be lacking. Fission-electric has working prototypes, we could theoretically make ourselves smaller or more space-hardy, magnetic parachutes to slow down...)

I think the conclusion is justifiable, but the whole thing is a bit sophomoric.

Random thought. If WW3 happens and a handful of people bail on earth and escape to the moon, would it actually be possible to manufacture a base and survive up there without any further support?

Depends on physics breakthrough. If we break speed of light we can make an elevator size device that would transport person to Mars in couple of minutes. It's just science is poorly funded, nobody cares about abstract studies anymore.