In his 50-years NASA anniversary lecture, Stephen Hawking called for the World to spend a lot more money on manned missions to the Moon, Mars and eventually to other stars. In a move to conserve humanity from catastrophes on Earth he would like to see an increase in the money spent for space exploration to about 0.25% of the world GDP, and a manned base on the Moon to pave the way for more adventurous missions to Mars.

While I guess it would be nice to save humanity, we should also think about the technological progress that would have to be made before pulling something like this off. A lot of the technology and research coming from this would eventually trickle down to us plebes, hopefully raising our standard of living, increasing the size of our TV’s and perhaps even help save us from one of the dooms-days people seem to be predicting. All in all, it is just a lot easier for the public to relate to space exploration when there are actually humans on board, and my guess is we’d see a boost of students in natural science studies as well as in the general interest in science/astronomy.

Hawking also mentions that, in the long run, we should aim outside our own solar system, and towards interstellar colonization. That is, colonization of habitable planets around other stars, and he suggests this should happen within the next 200 to 500 years. While it’s impossible to say how technology will evolve in this timespan, it seems reasonable to estimate that in that time period our technology could be good enough to start discussing that. As you may remember, we here at Reducedmass have already lined up some possible methods for reaching the stars.

Other than that, you should go read the Wikipedia article on space colonization if your more interested in this stuff. They cover both solar system as well as interstellar colonization.