Originally posted by twhitehead
The re-usability of the space shuttle, makes it an attractive option. It seems though that is its sheer complexity has resulted in massive development costs.
[b]In retrospect it seems obvious. With 170 bil to spend, we could be on Mars by now.
We are on mars. We just haven't sent humans there. The space shuttle for humans and the idea of sending ...[text shortened]... d far enough that it would make more sense to put the money into development of better robots.[/b]
I agree with that, at least in the near term (next one hundred years). Assuming our civilization can continue with its blistering pace of scientific and technological advancement for the next 100 or 200 years or so.
Any major blip in the world economy through wars, diseases, manmade disasters like in the gulf oil spill, or the consequences of global warming may kill all the world's space programs. I think at some point we need to establish long term colonies on Mars and further out just as insurance so a single planet strike like a large asteroid would not wipe us out.
Robots in the near term are the way to go for sure but eventually we need to get humans out of our Earthly nest and into space at large, first with lunar and Mars colonies then with interstellar vessels, even generation ships maybe, going only 0.05 c to get humanity away from this region of space.
In order for us to survive in the long term, we need colonies 200 light years apart or so. Of course at 0.05c that would be a 4000 year trip but maybe we wouldn't send actual humans but frozen embryo's to be grown into humans when the AI's onboard find a human compatible planet.
Maybe first making a livable space on a nearby moon while more intense studies of the target planet is started when humans would have presumably grown up, maybe a bit nutsoid being raised by AI's but at least able to reproduce and check out for sure whether a target planet is suitable for Earth style life.
Of course that is all science fiction which has been written already a hundred times over but if we make it unscathed through the next 200 years such a thing may come about for real.