The Final Frontier

"It is my considered opinion that, without access to space, without opening space for people to use, industrial civilization does not have much longer to live. At best, our near-future descendants will revert to the norm of history, which Alfred Duggan described as 'peasants ruled by brigands;' and it won't matter if the brigands retain a certain amount of high tech. At worst, our species will go the way of the dinosaurs - who enjoyed a far lengthier day and left the globe in far better shape."
-Poul Anderson, "Commentary" IN Anderson, Space Folk (New York, 1989), pp. 257-260 AT p. 259.

I quote this passage because it is by Poul Anderson and is pertinent, not because I necessarily agree with it. There is current experimentation with reusable spacecraft although not enough. I want to see human beings in self-sustaining space habitats because we need a defense system against asteroid strikes and because mankind should not have all its eggs in one basket at the bottom of a single gravity well. Whether access to space is the only way to save industrial civilization is another matter. If that civilization is systematically destroying the Terrestrial environment, then clearly we need to make some changes in that civilization whether or not we get off Earth soon. At the same time, what Anderson wrote about space is true:

"Yonder are all the materials, energy, elbow room, and wonderful discoveries to make that our species can ever require." (op. cit., p. 258)