I think you are to conservative. Look back at the past 100 years for example. We had barely invented flight, let alone space travel. To say we will just be starting to get out of our solar system to me seems silly. Technology is increasing at an exponential rate (so far) and I would expect it to continue growing exponentially for a very long time. I would say it will take no more than 500 years for us to develop the technology to easily leave the solar system. My best guess would be closer to 250 years.

As far as terraforming goes, small planets are not ideal for terraforming. They lack the large gravity required to hold an atmosphere in place as well as (generally) having weaker magnetic fields, meaning solar winds blow away the atmosphere. Then there is the problem of muscles atrophying on a low gravity planet. Thus I would not expect any planets much smaller than Mars to be terraformed.

I could see our society going down various paths...
First there is the fairly common 'space federation' where we spread our colonies among the stars.
Second is a bit different... We would spread ourselves among the stars in large harvester ships essentially strip mining the galaxy for the profit of the rich living on the few enjoyably habitable worlds. We would become the locusts of the universe.
Third is somewhat unlikely, but not out of the question: Religious fundamentalism pulls us into a dark age for hundreds of years.
Fourth is like the third: Nuclear war breaks out shattering much of the civilization which we now have, delaying further progress for hundreds of years and turning large areas of the earth into desolate, radioactive wastelands for a hundred years or so.
The fifth is highly unlikely, with its likelyhood decreasing as our technology increases: An asteroid or other huge disaster wipes out nearly all life on earth before we make the jump into space.

One of the biggest questions will be, what happens to the poor? That will be a defining question as much or more than anything else. One thing I can forsee happening is the lack of a need for unskilled labor. Anyone who does not get or cannot afford an education will be left in poverty. The overall yield per person will incease dramatically while the wealth disparity grows between skilled workers and unskilled workers due to automation. With a lack of unskilled jobs, the poor could find themselves not in a poverty trap, but in a death trap. Now, I do think anyone likes this outcome, and therefore it will likely not be the outcome. I can, however, predict a radical change in how economies work will be the result. Some hybrid of capitalism and (true) communism would be my best guess.

Our future is certainly in space, but I would predict large spacecraft will be just as important or more important than planetary colonies. The effort it takes to terraform a planet is huge in most cases, and the payoff is just as huge. However, due to the large timespans involved and the massive resources involved in terraforming it will be fairly minor for at least 1000 years.
Colonies, however, will pop up fairly rapidly on nearly every large body in the solar system (within the next 200 years or so). On large asteroids, primarily mining colonies capable of gathering huge amounts of raw material. Low gravity bodies would have some mining colonies but also some space tourism (after all, what hooks visitors more than a place which literally takes the weight off your shoulders and has an exotic view?). Larger bodies could have more permanent colonies planted on them, occasionally resulting in all our terraforming.

One of the largest obstacles to overcome will be figuring out how to get around Einstein's pesky theory which sets a speed limit on our spacecraft. But I think some day we will figure out how to bypass the speed limit... All we need is another Einstein or two.

I would also not be suprised to see artificially created sentient beings. Androids who are essentially human.

I agree with the poverty thing. Ultimately androids will take over the labor that humans can't do efficiently or effectively such as custodial duties, garbage collection, construction, and so forth. And I say androids because building several specialized robots that preform only one specific task would ultimately be too costly for the corporations that create them and the businesses that contract them. Androids, being human-like in form, can "learn" to use human tools and can therefore become capable of a wide variety of tasks. And unlike a human, an android doesn't need to sleep, eat, rest, or even breathe, making it far more efficient and effective than human laborers, who must stop to eat and rest and sleep. Not only that, but androids don't need pay. They have a one time fee.

I don't think I'm being too conservative on the issue of interstellar travel. The technology to leave our solar system exists now. The only problem is that trips to even the nearest star, at the fastest possible speed, would take years; for comparison it only took Europeans months to cross the Atlantic to the New World (a surprisingly similar situation). What I meant was that the ability to quickly travel between star systems, to defy the speed of light, is still centuries away. We can make great leaps and bounds in technology, but to jump from fueled rockets and theoretical space elevators to space warping engines and theoretical worm holes is a leap that won't occur in merely half a millenium.

And there are ways around the lack of gravity and magnetic field. For instance, imagine building a gigantic ring like structure around a world like Mars, which lacks a magnetic field to protect its atmosphere from solar bombardment. By placing giant towers at each pole and emitting a magnetic field from the ring to the poles, you could create and artificial magnetic field around a planet to protect its atmosphere. In the same way you could also charge the atmosphere and have the magentic field not only protect it, but hold it in place. Of course, something that large would take years to build and incomprehensible amounts of money to fund it, not to mention it would consume an amount of energy that no feasible source known to man can produce. Unless, of course, you were to harness something like zero-point energy that can be gathered from nearly anything and produces enough power to power not only the ring, but perhaps even beam some back to the planet's surface in the form of microwaves as excess.

Are you going to publish them, or was "writing" a typo when you meant to say "reading"?

And now to the point:

I think you're being a tad extreme here. We humans have a violent history--I'm not denying that--but the discovery of alien life would be momentous. I mean, we'd have to be pretty scientifically adept to explore space in earnest, right? So why would we spend centuries researching interstellar travel, build a starship, and go all the way to another planet just to kill the natives? I think we'd at least study whatever we find, and if that life has established a civilazation, maybe try to make contact. That's one reason I have a slight beef with movies like Independace Day and War of the Worlds: a species that wontonly destroyed anything it encountered would be very unlikely to evolve sentience, let alone get interstellar travel. 

But then again, who knows? Maybe when our decendants sit in the captain's chair and take to the stars, they'll have conquistador dreams. They may wear priests' robes, or brown shirts and jackboots.

My pont is, we won't know until it happens. All we can do is hope, dream, and pray that we survive long enough to take to the stars.

...Woah. Went a little overboard there. Sorry if I freaked anybody out.

Option 6: Our society continues on its current path and focuses most of its resources on information technology. As we become more dependant on connectedness and the availability of information, the prospect of leaving it all behind to go cruise around in some tiny little ship become unthinkable. Exploration ends, and humanity retreats inwards to the infinite possibilities of virtual reality. See: Matrioshka Brain

Back on topic, I like science fiction for the unusual concepts it supplies. Amazing gadgets, engaging mysteries, and possible futures are all interesting, but my favorite stories are the ones that make me go, "Whoah! I never thought of that before." I've found Vernor Vinge, Charles Stross, and to a lesser degree Peter Hamilton and Cory Doctorow useful in this regard.

By that I mean we would be like the aliens in the movie. Not purposely hunting for life and killing it, but searching for star systems with planets and then mass strip mining them for every ounce of material we can find. We would likely leave systems with life alone, at least until we had finished studying them. But we would destroy every other non-life supporting planet in order to secure more resources.

I wouldn't be suprised to see Mars colonies appear before 2050. After all, that is the goal of the new NASA craft 'Orion.' NASA hopes to get to Mars by 2020, and so at most it will take until 2030.

Why are you so pessimistic, Seth?

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Offtopic: Phalnax, is the typo in your name intentional?

I have my reasons and them being that it is impossible to get most ofthe nations to get along, plus nobody really wants to fund space exploration.

The biggest thing we will see with in the next 100 or so years is the improvements in nano technology. Current experts on technological development predict nanobots will be able prolong the human life time forever, and thats easily technology available in 100 years. Whether or not it will be utilized remains to be seen, expect it to be expensive initialy. Also with Nanobots we are looking for an end to all illness

The Net effect will be an even greater increase in population which will force human expansion into the stars. Also the deveopment of AIs will be essential for human development. Eventually everyone will be able to have there own AI which can link directly to their brain Using Nanobots. Basically this will make all Humans extremely intellegent. What i would do to see our race 1000 years from now.

Well, if I have to say what really draws me into science fiction, I have to say . . . EVERYTHING. I grew up with science fiction(and Classic rock, but that's another story ^^) especially the original Star Wars Trilogy, I even have the video cassettes turning into fossils in my house. One of my fondest memories of science fiction is reading Issac Asimov with my dad on a train at God knows how late at night or early in the morning . It's the story that really draws me in.

As for the thousand years into the future, part of me thinks humanity won't last that long, the self-destructive species we are. But if we all make it through, I don't see us getting to far past the threshold of our solar system.

I'm pretty sure we'll find some kind of life out there, but it's going to be very simple and small.

Phalnax not Phalanx haha. That's a Greek Formation. Mine is mispelled on purpose because that's how I thought it was spelled and it stuck

Aww shucks, I'm flattered lol. +1 Karma. I do have titles for my futuristic ones, and it's so original and I'm NOT going to say it though yet.  And the 'Alternate Earth' has a title but it's not as good as the future book title(s) and it's not Alternate Earth.  I may change it if I can't come up with anything.  The books have a title as in the series then a subtitle.  So it would be like Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. Titles would be in that format except my main title is more creative. But I hate Star Wars, and don't get me started why lol.

-Phalnax

PS: Phalnax is a character in a book that I already finished but haven't published. It's the one that I first wrote

Even with nanobots the human lifespan can never be infinite, not unless you were able to download your entire personality, complete with memories, into some kind of virtual world. The problem with cell division is that every time DNA is copied, part of it is lost. That is how aging occurs; as part of the DNA is lost, the newer cells are weaker than the older ones. This continues until the organs are simply incapable of meeting the demand of the body; the demand increases as the ability to produce decreases. Even if nanobots were able to repair the DNA after every division, mutations occur in the DNA and are unpredictable and cannot be repaired without destroying the DNA (and cells won't stop dividing for repairs). Eventually, no matter what, a cell mutation will occur and create tumors and ultimately lead to cancer. That's why there isn't a cure for cancer, because it isn't something you can cure. You could remove the tumors, perhaps even use the nanobots to do that, but ultimately the cancer will win. You can destroy it once, but it will come again. And again, and again until you eventually die.

i think every one here can not comprehend the human races technological capabilities. look at us 2,000 yrs ago, we were nothing but primitive people who were just beginning to understand civil life. the next 1,000 yrs we conquered civil life, sea farring, the earth itself, and we began to dream of flight. in the last 1,000 yrs we had a major boom in technological advancement, mastering: mechanics, electricity, industry, flight, the auto mobile, space flight, the computer, the micro chip, voice amplification, communication networks, 3 dimensional imagery, sound, sight, the atom, government, etc. hell the majority of these all happened within the last 100 yrs. and in fact and opinion in order  for us to be able to create a stellar or galactic government we must first bring peace to all the nations of earth and educate everyone to the highest level of technology at that time, but this is almost impossible because of our greed, competitiveness, and jealousy. and  before we could even be able to consider a united earth the world would be consumed in war, with each nation claiming they are the ones to bring peace and that other nations are only trying to prevent peace thus resulting in multiple world wars and possibly a nuclear winter, a time of technological setback, and after we are done scarring the earth with bombs and destroying nations out of the ashes a world of anarchy will set in for a period of time while different factions attempt to bring the world back to it's former glory, new nations will rise and new boundaries will be drawn and another world war will persue to unite the world resulting in the rise of technological advancement once again then we will master space flight and colonization, where then our war will be moved to the space between earth and mars due to our competitive nature and each nations desperate need to be the victor, also resulting in a unbelievable leap in technology. only once a person or group looks at what is best for the human race and realizes something needs to be done and steps in and finally unites the world can we be at peace, now that the world is finally at peace we will focus our thoughts and research on bettering life and technology resulting in our first exploration of other worlds outside our own solar system. with a world now at peace, the war machine will be abandoned and we will greatly focus on advancing exploration and transportation technology, basically we will become like the T.E.C., without the need to build new weapons, we will be technologically inferior to any violent alien race that we encounter. as for finding life out there, we will and it won't be simple and primitive. we are one planet of nine in one solar system among thousands upon thousands of other stars in a galaxy among several million other galaxies in a proclaimed infinate universe, to think we are the only intelligent lifeforms out there is purely ignorant, simply put we are way to damn full of ourselves

AncientEmperor