My point is that Man cannot exist independently anywhere but Earth for any length of time. Just won’t happen, we would need too much too fast. It would behoove us to take good care of this place, including limiting population.

They shoot deer and elk if they are overgrazing, don’t they? In order to have a smaller population live healthily?

I’m not proposing people be shot, but birth control is an extremely viable option.

“Find a way to make money out there and the investment will be made.” You’ve answered your own question, its up to the business community to do this, not government. The government can discover, explore, even survey, but sooner or later business has to actually step up and do it.

The riches are there all right, with few of the messy drawbacks, as you point out. The problem is convincing investors today it is worth their while. I just don’t see that happening any time soon, and certainly not now. (And I mean REAL investment, leading to bases, settlements, colonies, not get rich quick schemes like tourism). At any rate, we are not going to settle this argument by talking about it. It will be settled by the market. When the corporations start populating the solar system and the permanent offworld habitats start getting constructed, then the argument will be over.

As for the economic viability of the Age of Exploration, of course it paid off big time–in the long run. But the original investors who fronted the money often lost their shirts, and usually, the success stories were totally unanticipated and greatly delayed.

The big success of contemporary government space programs has been scientific. Comsats, GPS and imagery notwithstanding, no investor would have spent millions for Hubble, Chandra, Kepler, Spitzer, IRAS, Hipparchos/Tyco or any of the other great space observatories that have revolutionized astronomy. And although basic research always pays off eventually, none of these has made a nickel in returns yet.

The Gilded Age tycoons who financed the great reflectors that made the 20th century explosion in astronomy possible were philanthropists, astronomy was their hobby, and they spent their own money on Hamilton, Wilson, Palomar. Modern corporations have to justify their charitable activities to their stockholders.

I simply do not see that the wealth of space will become accessible enough for earth-bound investors to become interested in it any time soon. Only government will be available to carry out that role for the forseeable future. And so far, at least for those scientific applications, it hasn’t done too badly.

El Dorado is out there, but it’s a lot further off than we thought.

The big long-term money will probably be in raw materials and power, although specifics like this have a way of surprising us.

Just asteroid resources alone would be worth it once the technology is mature enough.

Here’s a new link to my article on the subject. Keep in mind I wrote it over 30 years ago, and the numbers would be different now.

A proven resource with big demand will command large investments with long-range returns.

Look at oil and gas.

U.S. companies alone spend over $50 billion a year on exploration and development.

The Prelude floating gas platform being built by Shell will cost ten billion dollars.

NASA’s annual budget is about $20 billion.

Depending on the source, the entire Apollo program cost between $105 and $170 billion current dollars.

Find a way to make money out there, and give people any kind of technology to work with, and they will go. I’ve spent most of my life trying to help bring this technology into reality.

El Dorado is out there waiting, with no endangered species, no ecologies, and no natives.

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By the way, I don’t see the Age of Exploration as an economic failure.

Recommended Wikipedia article here (usual Wiki caveats), along with the links right above it.

As for his original point, “Is Man really serious about colonizing the Solar System”, the answer to it is, like the answer to so many of the other Great Questions, “Yes and No”.

Space exploration is expensive, very expensive, extravagantly expensive; in terms of money, effort, and resources. Up to now, only governments have had the resources to pull it off. If the payoff were large enough, private enterprise would be able to borrow the money to do it, but so far that has not been the case. The returns may be great, perhaps even inevitable, but it is too indistinct and too far off in the future for it to attract financial commitment from anyone today.

There have been space-based businesses that have proven extremely profitable, such as orbital communications relays, and to a lesser extent, navigational systems and earth resources platforms. But even in these cases, it is government, not business, that has taken the initial risk and investment and even the lion’s share of the maintenance costs. Later, when the enterprise proved viable, the benefits and profits were handed over to the private sector. I am not being critical of this, this is part of the function of government, it is one of the reasons we have government and it would be churlish to forget that.

Our historical models for this are flawed. The New World was explored with money from both private and public sources, and those early maritime investments were probably comparable to space funding today, as a fraction of the gross domestic products of the societies involved. Columbus was originally financed not by Queen Isabela, but by a rich merchant who was pressured by Isabella to bankroll him. I don’t know if his banker ever recouped his investment, although the Spanish Crown certainly made out. Columbus and his heirs, of course, only got pennies on the dollar.

But although the Age of Exploration may have showered great benefits on the world, the nations and companies which initiated it did not fare so well in the long run.

Part of the reason for this is the security requirements of profitable far-flung colonies also required great spending on armies and navies to secure them, and these costs were rarely entered in the same ledger as the one where the profits were inscribed to be shown to the stockholders. Also, the colonists (such as our own forebears in North America) often felt no need to pay for their share of their own maintenance and security. It appears sometimes there is indeed a free lunch.

In the 14th century, China had the best maritime technology* and was a competitor to Europe and the Arabs in the world trade and colonial sweepstakes; but gave up the race primarily due to a lack of enthusiasm from its government to support its own merchants. The Middle Kingdom paid a great price for its failure to embrace Mercantilism.

Again, we are faced with the wide gulf between what is possible, and what is probable. We can go anywhere we want in the Solar system. But even if we can eventually make a buck on it, it will be our descendants that do so. We will take a bath on the investment.

*In the 13th century, the Chinese developed the first truly viable, huge, ocean-going, multi-masted cargo ships, equipped with an efficient fore-and-aft rig which could sail to windward, a centerline rudder, compartmented hulls, accurate charts and magnetic compasses. Europe and the Arabs never brought this all together until centuries later. The Chinese exploited trade in the Pacific littoral, and even sent a fleet of hundreds of merchantmen and warships across the Indian Ocean to Arabia, but a new Emperor, beholden to business interests eager to maintain their monopoly on local commerce, withdrew his support to the merchants eager to expand foreign trade with the west and to break the Arab monopoly as middlemen to the Silk Road trade.