Colonising Space
From AdCiv
 The most significant answer is survival. At the moment we have all our eggs in one basket here on Earth and if nothing else it will be an insurance policy for our species, and other life. It is also the next great step for life inhabiting a new environment and spreading itself ever wider - something it has been doing for the past 3.7 billion years. The resources in space in terms of energy, material and places to live are effectively unlimited which will allow our civilisation to constantly expand while taking the burden off the Earth. Apart from anything colonising space will be a massive adventure, and we can't really pretend otherwise...Resources within the solar system are mind-blowingly huge both in terms of energy and matter. There are planets, many moons and uncountable asteroids.
In space the sun is always shining and there is no atmosphere to attenuates it glare. Solar power is the obvious way to go in, at least in the inner solar system. Either photo-voltaic for electrical power or solar furnaces for intense heat for material processing. Creating habitable places for people to live in this ultimately harsh environment is a matter of engineering – see advanced automation.   There are many places that we could locate these habitats, especially near Earth.  Gratuitous image of the Orion Nebula  Making the colonisation of Space a truly global collaborative process is an amazing opportunity to bring people and cultures together. Not a project of any one nation but a project of humanity with contributions from everywhere. The culture of openness is also the perfect way to start the spread of life away from Earth - it is the right attitude and the best way for people to get the most out of each other. It is not likely there is any other way it can be done on a significant scale. Doing it purely commercially is not the right basis for colonising Space and the lesser efficiency of that model over an open culture would likely only ever make it a small potatoes. It is due to the lack of commercial viability that no-one has left low-earth orbit since the Apollo program. But the Open culture does not need to revolve around current economics. Ultimately the possibility of Space colonisation is a matter of energy, material, information and intelligence — and all four are in massive abundance. Creating the infrastructure for a space programme to the scale necessary for launching even a small fraction of the population into space is likely to require the existence of advanced advanced automation.
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