Who will be the next Space Power?

exactly
and can someone recap how we got here from the next space power?

Ughh. I can't believe I have to be the one to say this. You guys know the reason the prostitutes didn't get pregnant right? It wasn't luck or primitive birth control. The guy just pulled out. Not much to it.

If not for the economic reasons, what is the point of existing. We are here to progress, space is that progress. Exploring has also been in our nature, we've done the world basically, the next step is space. Also by creating colonies on other planets we increase our chances of coming into contact with alien life, however while this will definitely not happen in our life time it has to start somewhere.

Why would sex be pleasurable if not for the sole purpose as an incentive to reproduce?

It went from space to population to sex.

Not to mention homosexuality has existed sense the dawn of man.

I think we can safely conclude that we're not hardwired to reproduce. Not back to the topic, you guys go ahead and talk silly phantasmagorical things about how space is all cool and stuff. I'm going to pull out of this conversation.

Yhea thats pretty avious, and add the fact that the human repreductive system is incredably uneffective there was a minimal chance of pregnancy unless the dude fucked up and at just the "right" time.

STDs however...

Since were back to space I'm going to say how useful a colony on other planets could be because we could just use it as a staging area for even deeper exploration and understanding of the universe.

Ok, so we'll use a worthless colony as a staging area for more worthless colonies? The massive costs for shipping materials back and forth will be massive. And we can't understand much more abut the Universe from the Moon than we can from Earth.

do you not read other peoples posts? i've already explained how we can ship stuff back to earth at a fraction of the current cost.

No, I havn't dug through 7 pages of irrelevence to find the one post about this subject.

And no, you can't. No matter what it will always be cheaper to dig in Africa than the Astaroid Belt.

You obviously haven't read any past posts and also you seem to not understand science at all.

The massive costs will be massive, that's so redundant that it's redundant.

we as said in the past debates returns on a mars colony can happen in as little as 5-8 years with a minimal cost of shipping resources back by using a coil/rail gun to push it just past atmosphere and into orbit around earth to be collected.

I was here back at Page 1 or so. I read a few pages back but it was stuff like birth control in prostitution back in Roman times.

And no, I do understand it. I also understand that spending billions of dollars to get to the Moon for the sake of getting to the Moon is a pretty shitty idea. Especially when you think abot how many lives that money could save or how much research into Earthly things we could fund.

again as i've said before, the only way for humanity to live on is going to space. if we stay, all we doing is stay here with the same big problems with less and less resources to help fix those problems

You missed the entire on-topic stuff then and also if we explore space we can find new places to get resources for Earth and to provide answers to many things in science.

Eventually it'll be economical or at least less of a waste. But currently there's still tons and tons of resources everywhere. It's just a waste of good taxpayer money.

@ RonaldRaygun
You clearly missed or ignored the point. The point is that in some capacity, humanity will expand as a species and to encourage non-reproduction is less inconsequencial and more on the 'Great Leap Backward'.
So, you can't contribute any useful ideas to the thread, so you are going to pull out?
The point of the colonies is less to get resources from their respective locations and more to capitalize on the self-sustaining nature of the environments that can be constructed. The point is to move people THERE to reduce population strain HERE.

@ Nobody in Particular
The thread went to sex because RonaldRaygun laid out the presumption that all of our problems and why we want to expand to space come from overpopulation and he suggested to more or less stop reproduction across the board. I disagreed, stating that accomplishing it would be niegh on impossible as reproduction was a part of our natural 'programming'. He countered that it was not and so the arguement [which I missed] ensued.

@KaraKoran
If you're not going to even bother aknowledging what is being dicussed, why even post? If you post you automatically subject your opinion on a matter to the judgement of others. By refusing to answer their challenges, you are doing little more than trolling because you are not substanciating your post.
On the subject: Yes, it would be more cost-efficient to do stuff in Africa. This whole thread was about the future BEYOND just the next few decades to less than 3-4 centuries [if we are that lucky] and what will be done, specifically by whom. The point of the colonies is not resources but terrictory. Land to put people on that has the capacity to be entirely self-sufficient in order to relieve population stress back home.