[Lore]

We're going nowhere off ths planet. Reason being, we're in a net energy deficet right now and it would take tremendous amounts of it to front an off world population of any consequence.

In the meantime we're squandering all available cheap energy to satisfy our consumption of planet side gadgets and stuff. On top of this, we haven't even begun to account for the future wants of emerging third world countries.

All of which will make little difference as we will be expending every possible resource in the next 50 years just to hold onto the population we now have.

[dinopello]

I think there is a non-zero probablility that humans will inhabit other planets (including space habitation in that) at some point in the future. Only once we have driverless, flying cars though. First things first.

[jedrider]

Yes, the future of mankind is in zero-gravity outer space where we can do asteroid mining to satisfy our need for gadgets. We won't need our bodies either as they are too frail for that environment. We'll all be robots playing with iPods in outer space. It all makes perfect sense NOT.

[KaiserJeep]

I am seeing driverless cars here on the roads in Silicon Valley, and they are becoming more common and we have started the engineering refinements for mass production.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/08929ada-4eca-11e4-a1ef-00144feab7de.html#axzz3G2co6gye

Flying cars have been around for decades - light planes and helicopters. In fact "Airparks" are making a comeback all across America with wealthy people.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/living-in-luxury-air-parks-1402008458

Having flying cars taking off and landing on our roads and streets has always been possible, but first you would have to bury all those overhead telephone and power cables. Sensibly we have restricted such activity to airports and airparks, floatplane-capable bodies of water, and private airstrips and helicopter pads.

Just as most of you were unaware of these facts, unless you were paying attention, you would not know of the steady advances in space technology - judging by the opinions expressed in this thread, none of you are paying attention.

Again - and I don't know how many times I have to say this - knowledge will never be lost again, now that we have bit-perfect and permanent digital storage. We preserved everything we did and everything we learned in Project Apollo and the Space Shuttle, and those space transportation systems were retired for the same reason we retired horse-drawn buggies - they were obsolete, decades-old designs.

Perhaps someday, after Earth has died, there might exist the equivalent of Amish in space, using "Plain" chemical powered rockets, just as did the humans a couple of centuries before, when life was still possible upon the surface of Earth.

[dinopello]

Hey, I'm all for resources for UAV, UGV, AI and all that. It's how I make my living ! I also therefore know the state of the systems. It's an exciting time for technologists. Here at work, we've invented a working time machine. So far it only goes in one direction but we have a roadmap to get the rest working.

[Quinny]

How ridiculous! The idea that anyone could think that life in a man-made environment could match life on earth is totally off the wall. Have you no experience of nature at all?

[Henriksson]

Anyone up for living on Antarctica? I hear it actually has a breathable atmosphere, and is economically accessible.

[KaiserJeep]

Yes, Quinny, I have been living on this planet for 63 years. I remember when it had a whole lot fewer people (two point something billion) and didn't smell so bad, and the Ecosystem was not crashing in an ever-increasing downward spiral of species extinctions. This is not the same planet I remember, and if the topics we talk about here are real, the planet is about to become a lot more hostile place to live on than it already is. The prevailing opinion here says that Climate Change is unstoppable, as is human overpopulation, and there is no way to survive the end of cheap hydrocarbons other than to die back to a few million people.

The planet is doomed, about to become an environment more hostile than space. As has happened many times in the past. The speed of this sixth known mass extinction, caused by human overpopulation, is unprecedented. The world dies around you and you can do nothing but deny reality.

The first stage of accepting disruptive news is denial, which is where most of you are in this thread. The five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

I have no doubt, many of you will die still denying the reality we live in. Those few that will survive will have left the Earth, and it will be a squalid and dangerous place. Soon afterwards, population will surge again, and we have a few centuries to develop systems for interstellar travel. But perhaps we will not need them - the environment of space may kick the stalled progress of human evolution into high gear again. Either that, or we may take charge of our own evolution via genetic engineering. Change is inevitable, denial is irrelevant.

[Quinny]

KJ LMAO at you using the stages of grief argument - it's you that's in denial and bargaining that we'll escape to live happily ever after in feck&%$ space stations

[Lore]

Change "is" inevitable, there is just no guarantee that humans will be part of it in years to come.

I have a cousin that denies AGW, yet strongly believes in UFOs as proved by the hundreds of YouTube videos he's watched. I have to laugh when people confuse scifi for sci-fact.

[Subjectivist]

Wow most people who know me think I am extremely pessemistic but you guys make look like a wild eyed optimist!

[Timo]

With the pace of human technological advances presently occurring, we MAY end up setting foot on another planet in the next century or so. However, we won't ever live on any of those planets. The only exception might be Mars, and that's because of its proximity to Earth, and we presently have the technological means to make some use of its resources to ensure our survival if a few of us choose to go live there. But, in the larger sense, the answer is clearly no, we will not inhabit other planets. For starters, there are no other planets within our solar system that are remotely habitable. They're either far too hot, or far too cold, or they're gas giants with no surface to land on. Our only hope to colonize Jupiter would be to establish a permanent orbit. As for other solar systems, until we figure out how to travel faster than light, there is no way we would ever live long anough to reach any other solar system. That same logic goes for any other alien life forms traveling to visit us here on earth. We're not in any central location within the Milky Way, and this would make it very hard for any other life in another planetary system to find us. UPS calls that logistics. We're in a very lonely corner of our galaxy. To ever hope to find another habitable planet somehwere else in the Mikly Way, a sizeable number of people wold have to voluntarily be put into stasis, and blasted off into the netheregions of the galaxy, just like Voyager was sent off to see what it could find. With any luck, within 100,000 years, whatever computers on board designed to detect a habitable planet might find someplace, wake everyone up, and set up shop somewhere else. But then again, monkeys might fly out of my butt. Mars is our best bet, as is mining asteroids and meteors for their resources that we don't have here on earth. I actually think that is a very good idea, to be honest.

[KaiserJeep]

I think living in space is a great idea. I think living on planets is for fools. We can build the homes we want, anyway we want, anytime we want, in any place we want. We can have whatever atmospheric composition we want, any temperature range we want, and any amount of simulated gravity we want.

Think "outside the planet" if you possibly can. Just because you have never lived anywhere but the surface of a world does not make that the only possibility. Planets have inconvenient gravity wells that impose enormous energy requirements to overcome compared to zero gravity space. Planets have weather, the ground shakes randomly, volcanos erupt - no end of nastiness and danger. Nobody needs planets, when you can design and build any environment with any plant and animal species you wish to interact with.

In space, intense 24X7 solar energy is available, there are endless supplies of carbon compounds and metals in the asteroids, and masses of water greater than the mass of the Earth - millions of times greater if you include the billions of comets in the Oort Cloud.

Again, planets are for fools. THINK ABOUT IT. Again, just because you live on a planet, does not mean you cannot survive elsewhere, it only prejudices you in favor of what you know. But reason can conquer prejudice.

[KaiserJeep]

I don't believe in belittling other people or their opinions. I only ask of those reading my words that they think about what I have said, and form their own opinions. Understand that few in this thread are widely read enough to have an opinion on this topic, which fact has not at all restrained them from expressing their ill-informed opinions.

[Quinny]

The final frontier

[dissident]

If humanity will manage to reach inhabitable planets around nearby star systems, it will be sort of like spore dispersal. Some miniscule fraction of all the voyages launched will reach their destination to "germinate". Even a 10 year trip (assuming near light speed travel, which is not feasible) would involve a huge probability of failure. Any voyage that needs to survive generations (the feasible case) is almost guaranteed to fail.

People's impressions and gut feelings have been formed by decades of scifi crap. We'll be lucky to establish a space going society in our solar system. This is the bare minimum required to evolve robust technology that could take us to the stars.