THE COLONIZATION OF OTHER PLANETS AND THE SURVIVAL OF MANKIND - PART TWO
One of the main things mankind has going for it is its resourcefulness. You could push mankind into a corner, flush all the oil in the world into oblivion, spread horrific diseases upon a third of the population while starving another third, and still the last third would find a way to produce profitable ventures (medicine, food) to bleed any available money from the ailing two thirds to fund new space adventures. Cynic much? Actually, I don't doubt the generosity of a good number of people and the benevolent actions of more than a few, but there are certainly a far greater number of opportunists and those with a blind eye. Food enough to feed the world, but countless still go hungry. Money enough to clothe and educate the world, but still so many are left in squalor. Now, granted, I am in no way suggesting a dramatic push for world-wide communism, but there has to be some better middle-ground. Otherwise, if we can't be responsible when we have a ready supply of resources, how will we able to survive in a much more restricted environment? Will they, too, be able to let others fall into the cracks? To let others starve and die from lack of medical attention?
Perhaps the most important question remaining is this:
If we intend to inhabit and populate another planet or off-planet location, how will we be able to do so in a sustainable way in equilibrium with available resources and within the available space?
How realistic is the colonization of other planets? How soon will this be a plausible possibility? The Russians are currently booking space tourism for a mere $30 million and are booked until 2009. How soon will commercial ventures be capable of space travel and colonization? Would it be better for government or corporate avenues to pursue space travel? Who would be able to participate in colonization ventures?
Wikipedia has a nice informational page on the colonization of space. Ideally we will be able to develop a reliable means of transportation to/from any developed space colonies. However, they will also need to be able to be self-sufficient and able to survive under existing conditions with available materials and resources to produce energy and maintain life in a closed ecological system.
From wiki --
The argument of cost: The population of Earth continues to increase, while its carrying capacity and available resources do not. If the resources of space are opened to use and viable life-supporting habitats can be built, the Earth will no longer define the limitations of growth. However, since world population is expected to stabilize, living space may not be an important need in the future.
The argument of cost: Very many people greatly overestimate how much money is spent on space, and underestimate how much money is spent on defense or health care. For example, as of June 13, 2006, over $320 billion has been allocated by the US Congress for the current war in Iraq, in comparison it only cost $2 billion to create the Hubble Space Telescope, and NASA's yearly budget averages only about $15 billion a year, in other words the money that has been spent on the Iraq war could have funded NASA for approximately 21 years.
The argument of Nationalism: Space proponents counter this argument by pointing out that humanity as a whole has been exploring and expanding into new territory since long before Europe's colonial age, going back into prehistory (the nationalist argument also ignores multinational cooperative space efforts); that seeing the Earth as a single, discrete object instills a powerful sense of the unity and connectedness of the human environment and of the immateriality of political borders; and that in practice, international collaboration in space has shown its value as a unifying and cooperative endeavor.