Thomas James has a brief post that describes what's really holding us back from space settlement.

He also joyfully points out that moonbat extraordinaire Bruce Gagnon now has a blog. I expect that Thomas will be a regular visitor, and commentator.

Well, to be honest, I don't know that that kind of thing is holding us back at this point -- more that it's something we need to be thinking about for what comes after the initial commercial push. Experience shows that economies based largely on the exploitation of a single resource and dependent on outside players for key economic services tend to be economic "one trick ponies" whose fortunes are tightly linked the (often volatile) market for that item, rather than the diverse and dynamic and ultimately self-supporting economies we'd no doubt prefer to see in space.

I'd back up further than that. Way before stock markets and such let's talk agriculture, plumbing, carpentry, paper, pencils, power generation. I read a small bit recently about the Army doing research into water reclamation in the food preparation process (interesting because it will have to be cheap, and useful with dirty water that hasn't been micro-specified to absolutely determine precise levels of contaminants). While a lot can probably be exported offworld a viable offplanet existence is going to require us to make a good bit of the mundane, everyday stuff necessary out there, out there.

JSAllison, space infrastructure technologies are only an issue AFTER there is a requirement due to market forces. So the market comes first. First you develop an economical way to get into space, then orbit, then start building space hotels, then there is the monetary incentive for better environmental/recycling systems, etc.

Bruce Gagnon calls Hillary Clinton a "neo-con sellout". I think that says all you need to know about Bruce's chances of affecting American politics...