Well said Sylvia.
I have given up looking to politics as the eventual forerunner for the future space industry. They are all too focused on the timespan of the next 4 years, and while some can see beyond the end of their nose, none can see beyond the reach of their arms.
It’s possible that another country will have a base on the moon before we(look how fast China’s been moving these past couple years).
I strongly believe it will be one of the major corporations that eventually fund a massive endevour to populate and resource mine the moon. Money is a great motivator, and we know how corporations like to make money off new and interesting things…..

(Space Quotes…)

“The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to
keep all its eggs in.”
Robert Heinlein, speech

Keeping our basket at the bottom of a gravity well is not safe. Sooner or later something will land here and “alter the environment” in minutes. We need to be in space for many reasons.

Well, Sylvia, you and I have had this converstation before so we might as well have it again. I remain unconvinced that resources from space will ever significantly improve the lives of people on Earth.

I do believe the public greatly benefits from “spin-offs” of technology development, particularly space technologies. I do believe space exploration is vitally important. I do believe space colonization is a critical undertaking. I agree that we have a limited window in which to undertake these activities. But to proclaim that space can be the savior of humankind on Earth is just, in my opinion, a misguided statement.

It’s like saying human migration out of Africa 100,000 years ago into Europe and Asia should have been done to save Africa, or the colonization of the New World should have been done to save Europe. These things were done for the benefit of the people who got to go, not the ones who stayed behind, and it was no picnic for the pioneers. So it will be for space, only more so. The physical isolation between Earth and colonies on other planets in the age of rockets will exceed the isolation between Africa and her colonies during the age of walking and between Europe and her colonies during the age of sailing ships.

The motivation, much less the ability, of colonies on the Moon and Mars and Asteroids will not be focused on saving Earth. It will be rightly focused instead on creating a extended zero-gravity / low gravity civilization for themselves that will view our current centralized high-gravity civilization with the same contempt and curious disdain we reserve today for stone-aged tribes in Africa. How can it be otherwise? Future colonists’ bodies will be adjusted to lunar or Martian gravity (he says blithely, knowing that such adjustment has yet to be demonstrated). They probably won’t ever be able to come to Earth and survive such a visit, much less enjoy it. This kind of biological isolation will result in disdain of Earthlings, not compassion for them, that will be as strong as the physical isolation separating the future citizens of space and those who remain here on Earth.

Under those circumstances of dual biological and physical isolation, why should space colonists want to save an overpopulated, depleted petri dish instead of focusing on building their own type of civilization? When you discover that motivating reason, we in the First World today will be able to apply it and start saving Mother Africa from AIDS and genocide and famine and desertification – all of which we have the technology to do today, but aren’t using. You think the motivations of future spacefarers will be any more altruistic than what we ourselves exhibit today just because they’ll never live under a blue sky?

Do I think space exploration and colonization is critically important in the evolution of human culture? Absolutely. Conquering space is just as important a historical event as conquering continents and conquering oceans. But it’s not to be done for the benefit of Mother Earth any more than it was done for the benefit of Mother Africa. It’s done for the benefit of the humanity in general and the colonists themselves in particular. Evolution is all about the survival of the best adapted and their representation of their species in the arena of life, not the salvation of all individuals of a species. The latter is the domain of religion.

Let us not waste effort exploring the trees when we have everything we need right here in our soiled nest…which will surely last forever.

Ricky, I think you are in many respects right as far as independent colonies are concerned. Though I believe strongly in the importance of colonization, I agree that colonies on other planets will be of direct benefit only to the people who live there. However, taking the pressure off Earth — the physical pressure of overpopulation and the psychological pressure of having no frontier available to the adventurous — will surely improve conditions on Earth. Furthermore, the discovery of new worlds will have the same effect on our civilization that the discovery of new lands by European explorers did: it brought about the Renaissance! The beginnings of modern science, as well as the flowering of the arts, followed from this expansion; although living conditions in Europe weren’t altered, there was a more hopeful spirit which led to a great deal of intellectual progress.

But in saying that extraterrestrial resources are essential for preserving the environment of Earth, I am not talking about colonies. I do believe oribiting L5 colonies are a good idea and will probably develop later if not sooner, but they are not actually necessary. What is necessary is the use of solar power from space, the use of minerals from the moon and asteroids, and the moving of polluting industry out of the biosphere into orbit. If this is not undertaken, Earth will eventually become uninhabitable, both because of degradation of the enviroment and because as resources become scarcer and scarcer, there will be more and more fighting over them, until the survivors either starve or kill each other off. This is what happens to any species confined to a territory beyond which it cannot expand, unless resources are imported. As long as we lack the ability to import extraterrestrial resources, we will go on playing the zero-sum game we’re in now, without any realistic hope of peace in the world — and it will get much, much worse before Earth is abandoned for colonies, assuming that it’s even possible to establish colonies under such a scenario, which is unlikely.

As you say, future colonists will build a new and independent civilization, which will benefit humankind as a whole rather than Earth specifically. But they will not have time to do this before Earth is too depleted to jump-start the effort unless livable conditions on Earth are maintained. If we are are to reach the large-scale colonization stage, the importation of extraterrestrial resources must be undertaken by residents of Earth, for Earth’s benefit, long before any colonies of significant size exist.

I have never said, or intentionally implied, that the motivation of colonists will be altruistic. (Nor did O’Neill; on the contrary, in proposing that orbiting colonies beam solar power to Earth, he said that they would sell it profitably and thereby become rich enough to seed colonies elsewhere.) What I do say is that the self-interest of Earth’s inhabitants demands that we provide for ourselves and those who come after us. While it’s true that we have technology we aren’t using that could solve many of Earth’s present problems, we will not have it any longer than we have power and resources to maintain it. Just as in my Children of the Star trilogy, scientific knowledge will be of no help with respect to resources that are no longer available. And we certainly won’t have it if the discontent of the poor nations increases to the point where the rich ones must devote all their resources to self-defense, as well it may. It requires no altruism to see that it would be better, and more conducive to the establishment of colonies, to provide enough cheap power and manufactured goods to raise worldwide living standards–which with our present resources alone we cannot do. Nor need there be any altruism on the part of Earth-based companies who develop these resources; as is often pointed out, once we’re established in space it will become very profitable, just as development of new territory always has.

I know you and I have argued before about the feasibility of beaming power and importing goods from space, but that was nearly 25 years ago when neither of us had enough technical knowledge to judge the issue. I still don’t, but there are others here who favor solar power satellites and who I’m sure can debate that point more effectively than I can.

I saw Gore’s presentation on global warming, and I was quite impressed. He’s clearly a politician, but he’s a politician with a clear grasp of the issues, and who has spent a lot of time with scientists in order to understand complex issues and simplify them for a general audience. I don’t think that he’s doing what he does to score points with anyone — he started talking about the internet and global warming well before the mainstream — I think he genuinely cares about these issues, and is willing to spend political capital to make things happen.

That being said, I believe that the "choice" between space exploration and the ecology is a false one — both are trivial expenses compared to the immense sums of money that are wasted by the US on things with no long term benefit to mankind. Is it _really_ necessary for us to spend more on our military than all of the other major countries on the planet put together? Is it _really_ necessary for us to spend $200B screwing around in Iraq? Is it _really_ necessary to spend $100B cutting rich people’s taxes? Compared to that, a few $B spent on actually enforcing anti-pollution laws, or inspecting the food we eat, or getting NASA focused on getting humanity off of the planet, is a bargain!

And, of course, there are plenty of cases where being ecological doesn’t cost more money — many companies have saved money by recycling "waste products"  – all they had to do was to stop and think about it!

The "space vs. earth" decision is playing the a fool’s game — we should be arguing for "space AND earth" vs. "greed and corruption". Which side do you pick?

To those of you who got here from the link to this thread at my website: I have just noticed that in this reply, which I wrote hurriedly, I didn’t distinguish
between “independent colonies” and colonies in this solar system in the foreseeable future — something I’ve discussed in more detail in comments on another thread here, which I don’t mean to contradict. Colonies on the moon, and on Mars at least until the distant future, will not be economically independent of Earth, and will necessarily depend on benefits to Earth for their existence. Because Ricky and I discussed colonization at length many years ago, I responded here in terms of what I assumed he had in mind, distant-future ones and colonies in other solar systems. In the long-term sense, I agree that independent civilizations will be of direct benefit only to themselves; but I’m not suggesting that there will be no tangible benefit to Earth from lunar and Martian colonies during the next few centuries — although they are not as high a priority as the use of energy and materials from space that could be undertaken sooner than colonies can be established.

It seems to me that, excepting that portion of the population that is very wealthy and views space expansion as another way to remain so, the people who will choose to settle other planets will be the most altruistic, or at least will have the survival of the human race in mind for the first few generations. If they do eventually stop sending aid to Earth, we’re still better off than we were, right? Hmm… I’m no expert, (I just came here from Sylvia Engdahl’s site and read a little bit,) but isn’t there something that Earth’s ecosystem can support more easily than any other known world? I mean, that the colonies/settlements will need to get from us? Actually, I probably wouldn’t be included with that pronoun; I plan on being in space as soon as possible. And not just because I’m envisioning playing around in low-G, though I would hardly call myself a paragon of the human race.