When I saw the title of this blog my stomach tightened in anticipation of the usual billionaire bashing – and the usual libertarian/conservative backlash. Happy to see the Avweb readership rise above that fray (mostly).
Most mature sci-fi stories portray spaceflight as routine drudgery. Staples such as hyperspace or even fusion drives are sadly not around the corner, but contractor flight crews servicing permanent outposts may be. I think many observers sense this intuitively, and this is the actual source of Paul’s ennui.
I’m in my mid-50s, and I hope to live long enough to see serious commercial exploitation of space resources beyond telecom and remote-sensing. And to forestall another typical debate, it’s acknowledged that the manned/robotic ratio of such enterprises depends on the state of technology at that time.