Final destinations in space

I just finished Robert Sawyer's _Mindscan_: cool book, which reinforces my
notions about uploaded humans as the most logical interstellar explorers.
But another feature of the book is a very upscale lunar colony for the
mortal husks that the uploaded copies leave behind. Interesting, and creepy
too.

Which occasioned me to think again: For all the back&forth about manned
exploration, I'm not hearing much (here or anywhere else) about permanent
human habitation off this planet. That is to say, you leave the earth, and
you don't come back, ever. Hopefully, you live for a while in space before
you qualify as recyclable organic material.

The key, I suppose, is the linkage between motivation and finance. There
was a gap of more than seventy years between the European discovery of the
New World and the first permanent Settlement on the North American continent
proper. Greed and religion featured prominently in future developments.

Is any such motivation in sight for off-world habitation by humans and other
species? We've burned up nearly four decades since Apollo 11, and still
there is no St. Augustine or Massachusetts Bay Colony anywhere off-planet.
Granted, it costs a bundle to reach escape velocity by whatever means you
choose, and destination development is a long way from cheap. What sort of
motivation is finally going to make the capital start to flow?

I'll say this, and you can take it as gospel: If someone had offered me,
when I was a single man in my twenties or thirties, a chance to be on a team
that settled the moon or an asteroid, I would have signed on immediately.
Even now, as I stand between retirement and dotage, if I had a shot at
talking my wife into settling permanently on the moon, I'd make every
persuasive argument possible. Eventually 1/6th gee would be a blessing to
our aging bones -- but I don't have tens of millions of dollars lying about
to pay our one-way fare.


Jim McCauley


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