The Cities of Mars episode got me thinking: Historically, settlers were often people prosecuted in their homelands (e.g. puritans and quakers settling the new world) or people who were exiled (e.g. Australia). Would exiling people be an early reason to settle space? The economics of space probably won't make sense for a long time, given the immense costs of getting anything on and off of earth's gravity well. But a lot of countries have people they want to get rid of, or people showing up on their borders they don't want to take in (I won't give specifics to avoid the no politics rule but I'm sure you all have examples in mind). How many would pay a premium to send people they don't like to self-sufficient space colonies as a way to get rid of those people without the political ramifications of genocide? Such colonies wouldn't need to be economically productive, just functional enough that the international community doesn't condemn the forced displacement too harshly and the people being displaced cooperate. The problem of self sufficiency in space seems much more tractable than the problem of profitable manned space industries that can compete with earth industries. So... will the first Mars cities, asteroid cities, etc. be refugee camps/penal colonies?