Too bad that IF we somehow don't destroy our shared, sole, naturally hospitable habitat, and that's an enormous if, all of this technology is privately owned, unlike the public space endeavors we starved to give the people profiting off this a tax breaks.
We're creating a future where if we succeed in making any brave new human colonies, they will be exploitative resource extractors for private companies, not humanity, and people will be born into interstellar company stores they can never afford to escape.
I used to be all in on space, what changed is knowing who we have become and seeing the blatant lack of any noble values or aspirations to take with us. Our owner class is literally pushing for colonization because they need to grow/metastasize, and strip mining the paradise we inherited that they've already conquered and saturated to the point of ecological disaster is no longer enough.
It's pretty obvious that if we can't succeed in finding homeostasis on this, the only planet we will ever know that is completely suited to our biology, we will absolutely die on the vine attempting to set up a persistent presence anywhere else, all of which will be lethally unforgiving.
There's no growing/metastasizing our way out of the many crises our reckless growth/metastasis has created.
Too bad that IF we somehow don’t destroy our shared, sole, naturally hospitable habitat, and that’s an enormous if, all of this technology is privately owned,
I disagree with your conclusion. Just because someone does it first, doesn't mean that that will be the only person to every do it. In fact, if it is done successfully once, then the second person to do it will be able to succeed with a fraction of the effort.
As an example, SpaceX pioneered the commercialization of rocket reuse. There now two other groups doing various versions of reuse for commercial rockets.
unlike the public space endeavors we starved to give the people profiting off this a tax breaks.
The commercial space ventures are getting a small fraction of the funds that are going to the public efforts. I'm not sure how you're casting that small fraction as starving the public efforts for funding.
We’re creating a future where if we succeed in making any brave new human colonies, they will be exploitative resource extractors for private companies, not humanity, and people will be born into interstellar company stores they can never afford to escape.
Yeesh sounds like you are down on humanity generally, referring to the growth of our civilization as "metastasizing" like it's a cancer. I don't expect that expanding into space will solve any big metaphysical problems or anything, but you shouldn't turn your nose up so quickly at the benefits of growth. The first space settlements beyond little research outposts probably will be some kind of resource extraction, since any human settlement needs to be economically viable and that's what they've got up there. I'd be very happy to make the world a lot richer with cheap raw materials while reducing the need for environmentally damaging mining on Earth where there's an environment to damage.
Reckless growth of an aspect(humans) of a larger but still finite organism(Earth's ecosystem) that aspect is completely dependent on but indifferent to the damage its growth is doing, because it keeps doing it as it is its only imperative, is what metastatic cancer does.
I know our species worships the idea of infinite growth/metastasis with reckless abandon as fast as we can, but that recklessness has consequences.
No the American and Chinese government ones that have launched so far are both robotic. This Dream Chaser one that's supposed to test this year is manned though, we'll see how that goes.
The current Dream Chaser is cargo only, but Sierra Space would like to build a crewed version that launches without a fairing. The cargo version launches inside a fairing with folding wings.