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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Capn Charlie" data-source="post: 6642180" data-attributes="member: 16046">This is a great example of why your timeline seems a little rushed as compared to mine.  In a pure tech scenario great wonders could be accomplished in a relatively short period of time, but it is the social, economic and governmental factors that impose the "speed limit" on change.  Could we go to space right now and build habitable stations out in the belt?  Yes, 100% with the tech we have right now.  However, all the powers that be with the resources (read: money) to make this happen have no real interest in this endeavor, because it just is not profitable at this juncture.  We could build a sublight pusher ship, with a nuclear drive (check out the orion) that could journey between stars, but we don't.  In my setting, I deal with lack of momentum and plateaus in tech and policy with ever escalating "space races" between world powers.  America didn't colonize mars because they needed more iron oxide, they did it because otherwise china would have gotten there first.  The sino-russian alliance was formed to beat the Americans to Titan.  The only reason that Japan and South Korea even launched a mining expedition to the inner belt was to put in actionable claims that the corporate mining outfits couldn't contest.  Then a whole pissing match of bigger and bigger cargo ships for moving supplies and conveniently doubling as warships to defend interests...   In my setting we just literally growl at each other and posture, and squander trillions in treasure with no immediate return just to play keeping up with the joneses, and in the process accidentally find the untold wealth of space.  Once we bump into aliens we insanely begin to explore and colonize to 'beat' them there, a way they don't even think, until they start to copy our behavior.  Heck, in my setting we have almost as well developed a space war fighting doctrine before we leave our system as the galactics do, and they've been interplanetary for thousands of years.  Keep in mind, this isn't my prediction of how things actually play out, but it's a compelling narrative (I think) and casts humanity in one of its best roles, as the barbarians shaking up the status quo and not understanding "No".</blockquote>

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