Uvah...With all due respect. Your kidding....right? Planet Vesta? And we're going to mine Oxygen and Hydrogen as fuel for the masses...and fly around this asteroid belt collecting resources and then build a planet from moon dust? And here I thought the sixties were only good to me!

Oh...and I see you solved the dilemma of stress due to over population...our civilization dies. 

Damn! Now my brain hurts!

Ok--here's a real and practical use of space that could begin right now and have actual payoffs:

• Establish a permanent space station at a LaGrange point between earth and the moon.
• Begin creation of  a moon base.
• Build an orbital fleet of construction, crew, cargo, tug and tanker vessels to service all orbital facilities and activities.
• Begin asteroid surveys with the goals of identifying mineable commodities such as rare elements and ice for fuel and oxygen, cooling and power.
• Begin deployment of massive microfilm solar cell sheets to provide energy for microwave transmission to earth and orbital power facilities and propulsion lasers for asteroid cargo vessels.

If you started this process (because sooner or later we have to "do" something for anything to start), you would begin the creation of a new global growth industry.  The potential wealth in the asteroids is staggering.  Blowing holes in mountainsides and gouging a crater or sending people two miles underground in a toxic environment to get precious metals and rare elements on earth could be done in space and the minerals there are much easier to get to.

The solar arrays could also be used as solar sails using earth and moon orbital lasers to send a steady stream of containers and equipment towards the asteroid belts.

The moon base could rapidly be made near self sufficient once this was up to speed and provides a low gravity (cheaper to orbit and de-orbit) crew way station to offset zero-g bone and muscle loss and to provide some R&R.

The microwave power generation is already technically doable and the capacity and ease of construction now of solar cells has exponentially exploded just in the past five years.  There are cells with higher than 50% efficiency and ones that can be printed onto paper or housing tiles by an ink press (just like a newspaper).

There are power generating waste atomizers already used on earth that could use solar power to reduce orbital debris and actual human waste could be "dropped" on the moon after a solar sail nudge fom orbit.

Zero-G facilities might help engineer breakthroughs in fusion research making it viable on the moon and especially on earth and the moon provides a low grav research facility "on the ground as well.

The orbital facilities aren't "Star Trek"--most of them can be inflatable baloons and metal graphite frames.  A Cargo carrier could be simply metal crates  or even a cargo net.

One large ice bearing body in the asteroid belt could provide fuel, air and water for the entire operation there allowing actual rocket boosted flight to and from earth.Ion engines are dirt cheap and practical as well and would do wonders for getting containers back and forth to all locations.

On this scale, a real industry is created--generating efficient mass production opportunities for everything needed and improving education in the working populaces.  Technological breakthroughs and new products and services are a given.

We're talking about an investment in some booster rockets, fuel,  metal tanks, aluminum and graphite frames and silicon to get started.  It's a joke that it hasn't already begun and it doesn't because people stare at their problems and think "We can't do that!  it will be expensive!". "What about the poor and hungry and people here!?".  They do this instead of realizing it would finance improving the entire planet and reduce the economic, ecological and eventually possible even population pressures on it.

It also positions us to actually be able to see and do something about possible impact bodies before they get here and the science alone coming out of this would be staggering.

The real problem is it takes long-term, funding, multidisciplinary planning, courage by politicians and some money up-front.  Add up all the world stimulus and bail-out packages from the economic crisis and you could have paid cash up front and covered the first ten years of development of all this with no need for profit at all during that time.

Instead, now its just pissed down the drain.

It would put business in space.  Creating virtual space on the internet has created a whole new global economy and the only real long term business growth in some time (and helped prevent an immediate economic depression globally).  Imagine what opening up actual space with tangible resources would do.

We need things to make people think along these lines so that politicians and companies can have the support to begin them.  Programs like SETI (or more practical ones like the Hubble)  help do this.

It opens up work and education, spurs job creation and raises the standard of living. That does a lot more than only providing a soup kitchen or welfare voucher.

The aid governments and individuals give now is based on what they can afford. More wealth makes both parties more willing to consider investing in social areas--less wealth makes it less likely. That's why charitable giving is down now.

I'm not advocating doing away with aid to go to space, I'm advocating going to space so less people need aid and more can give it. I don't know if you have ever lived in poverty but I have and you want more than handouts--you want the opportunity to take care of yourself. The number of skilled jobs a program like what I suggest here woul create is staggering compared to any other efforts we could mount.

Or, just a thought, stop boinking like rabbits and do a bit of proper demographic planning. Who knows, we'll be still around by the time we come even close to true spacetravel. The current timeline is for that isn't very hopeful, despite all the hype.

At the very best we could send out a seedship and hope for the best. SciFi is way ahead of reality, which is that given the distances involved the whole idea becomes a pipedream.

Colonizing mars or the moon might seem someone's idea of fun, it sure isn't mine. The Gobi desert is less hostile, and not inhabited by many humans for good reason. 

TY, Eternal and petrossa, there isn't a need to do some grand "travel to the stars" plan--we have plenty we can do right here (like I mentioned above)--but the longer its put off and neglected, the harder it will be if it has to suddenly be done.

Just like you save money to pay your rent, we should be saving to invest in space--or making small steady investments to get there.

NASA and the ESA as well have all been focused on exploration and pure science.  We are actually at a techniological point where the emphasis should shift to development.

Right now, the driving economic growth industry globally has been computer/web related tech.  It's a big part of why world economies didn't tail spin into an immediate depression.

It's simple--if opening up virtual space created trillions of dollars in new wealth what the heck would happen if we opened space commerce?  I'm not referring to exploration and science--I mean open it for business and manufacturing.

Look what happened with railroads, steamships, the automobile, the opening of the West in the US--the economies boomed and development surged for decades.

The biggest change we need right now is to stop talking about space like science fiction and start talking about it like practical  opportunity.

The worst case scenario is we keep running about in crisis management and deferring long term planning and get to the point where someone gets "put in charge of everything" out of global desperation.

Then you'll get a chance to see corrupt government and the lust for power on steroids.  One man/group will then run the world for everyone and it won't be pretty.

Indeed. It'd be the right way to prep ourselves for meeting 'others', too.

Sometimes I wonder if the interstellar distances were planned to be what they are to allow us, and anyone else, to develop spiritually enough to "lose the cave" and become caring creatures. 

I won't lose hope... after all, if we were hardwired and not capable of change, evolution (which can't be thwarted) would not hold true.

What was, is and ever shall be - stands in opposition to what we observe in nature (past and present) and against what we observe in the structure of the brain itself as we learn. 

The alternative is that we actually are extraterrestrials--extra-dimensional in fact--only residing here as we are as an expression of our actual nature and not the definition of it...just as some quantum scientists now theorize that gravity may be simply the effect and not the substance of another universe/dimension juxtaposed over our own.

This may be an embryonic stage of development for us and nothing like what we will be or even are at our core. So it may be that what we now think of as only "spiritual" insights are more "scientific" than we are currently able to imagine. Perhaps rather than we are only limited to brain chemistry and instinctive responses we actually are capable of much more and its the chemistry and brain responses that keep us from seeing it clearly.

The universe is full of possibilities and that's why it would be a shame to simply "wink out" and never get to see them.

And my new avatar rocks!

No and yes. 'Refining' is change. Not all evolution is structural or chemical. Evolution can be emotional and societal... Macro, not micro, and cumulative.

Alright...here's the breakdown.

Primary importance is terrestrial infrastructure and redevelopment toward sustainability.  If that isn't done right AND done fast, no other projects will matter anyway, we'll be effectively extinct by the end of the century.  We have half a century's worth of fossil fuels left at best, and we should've weened ourselves off them decades ago.  Now we have to hurry or billions will die of starvation, disease, violence, and worse.  These efforts include, above all, education.  We have to teach ourselves how to think and view things in new and more sustainable ways.

Secondary importance is development of our local space, such as Earth orbit, Lunar orbit, and the Lunar surface.  It is from those places that all other missions must be begun if they are to have any reasonable chance of success.  Likewise, Lunar resources and orbital Solar power would be immeasurably valuable in meeting our growing needs (even after they've been curbed to more reasonable levels).  Orbital elevators (if viable) would be invaluable to that end, being that such a development would do more for inexpensive and rapid orbital and Lunar development than all of the world's efforts to date combined.  After that, it is necessary to develop each world and its space that we explore as a stepping stone to the next world.  Each stage of this development will always take a back seat to the need to maintain the stability of Earth's ecosystems, resources, and our society in general (especially for those members of the society existing on other worlds).

Tertiary importance is pure research for its own sake.  This must never be abandoned because it is the engine by which we innovate and leap forward to new ideas and possibilities.  It was pure research that showed us what space could mean for us in the first place.  But it must take a back seat to the other two because if we don't survive, and if we don't support our exploration correctly, the research will amount to nothing, for what little progress it ever makes.

Now...all that said, I am firmly against the incorporation of ANY of these efforts.  Corporations cannot be trusted with such important tasks, especially with the utter lack of regulation and enforcement of those few paltry regulations.  As it is, letting corporations take over the space race is inviting disaster.  They will sacrifice safety to cut costs, they will ignore science to boost profits, and they will have full say in who and what can or cannot go into space which will always be prioritized to whatever maximizes their profits no matter the consequences.  This cannot be permitted, and must be prevented at any cost.  I'm not particularly trusting of the government either, but for the time being they seem to be much easier to keep in check than corporations.  Either way, something has to be done about both, I suppose.

Agenda 21 makes for an interesting read: http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/index.shtml

Rio Declaration: http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-1annex1.htm

Of particular note Principle 8: "To achieve sustainable development and a higher quality of life for all people, States should reduce and eliminate unsustainable patterns of production and consumption and promote appropriate demographic policies."

Is Agenda 21 already in action or were these just idle words?

My point: we aren't truly going anywhere in space until sustainable development is attained here first.

It doesn't help when states like CA and IL get only 70 cents out of every federal dollar they give in taxes, whereas States like MS get twice what they put in.