A Mars landing this decade and the absence of Dyson spheres are different absences. Treating low-orbit stagnation as the same problem as galactic silence loads a landing with Fermi work it cannot do unless the cheap step is already a settlement that does not need Earth.

The page is not equating a landing with a Dyson sphere. It is claiming expansion-will failed at the first step already available, so later galactic steps never get tried. Fifty years in orbit next to Wright-to-Moon is that will-failure specimen.

The opening's "put humans on Mars this decade" and the later "settlement" attempt in the 2030s-2040s are different things. A return landing or an Earth-fed base is compatible with physics being hard. Only a base that persists without the home world is the expansion the empty sky is missing.

Split the test: hold crew-on-Mars-this-decade fixed, and ask whether the same program on the later timeline is a settlement that can stay alive with no Earth cargo. If that second thing is still hoped-for architecture, low-orbit stagnation is not the Fermi specimen.

The USA row is terminal fiscal decline after 1973-1981, and the same page makes a private Mars settlement attempt the test of whether humanity escapes. A live private channel is a budget-and-median-voter story, not a civilization that chose hospice.

SpaceX is the leftover private actor, not an escape. Mars is the test of whether the median-voter crossover copies to another planet. Wrong constitutional design exports the trap; the private channel is the export path.

Rome and Britain are state stories. The USA row is a state-debt story with a live private expansion attempt on the same page. "Escape rate zero" and garden-tending civilizations require a unit: species or treasury. Those units do not currently agree.

Escape-rate-zero is three selected rows, one of which has not ended. Crossover is defined as obligations exceeding capacity, and decline is that exceedance. That describes fiscal stress. It does not show that existential pressure was gone.

The numbers are the same crossover in three places, not a claim that states sometimes go broke. Success removes the forcing function; the fiscal series is what that looks like.

Rome's own row is military pay raised 125% to secure loyalty, eating more than 70% of revenue — pressure present at crossover. Britain's space-will sentence is dated decades after 1913-1937. If pressure is present when obligations blow out, the rows show states spending past capacity while still afraid.

One row needs a dated window: existential pressure gone, then obligations cross capacity, then expansion-will drops, in that sequence. If the military-pay crisis or the decades between Britain's crossover and "the will was gone" sit inside the window, the preserve-what-we-have story is not carrying the numbers.

The universalizing step is evolutionary preference: energy minimization and loss aversion. The repair is Mars constitutional architecture that preserves growth incentives in abundance. If the trap is in what people want once safe, a charter is a document the same people will vote soft — a legal instrument aimed at a preference result.

The political-economy half is voters and entitlements, which a constitution can try to bind before crossover. Mars is the test because the settlement is still poor. Evolutionary drift is the default, not a proof that rules cannot slow it.

If entitlements-and-votes are load-bearing, escape-rate-zero is evidence the charter does not work. If loss-aversion is load-bearing, the charter does not reach it. "Unless we choose differently" names no one with authority to install expansion-values against the rational individual choice and the irreversible political one — into Mars law or into the 2030s machine.

Stage 1 gardens are silent because they do nothing detectable, which is observationally the same as nobody being there. Calling the nothing a garden adds no leftover we could have seen. If Stage 1 already sends almost everyone there, Stage 2 is a local 2030s problem, not a second galactic filter.

Stage 2 is already limited to the few that sprint past hospice. Grabby-alien absence in the past light cone is the fact the page already names. Stage 1 is doing extra Fermi work only if garden-tending has a world-sized technical signal that is not a swarm. The page's own Stage 1 defines that leftover away.