Total Members Voted: 89
Voted for the last option, I don't think space settlement should be any country's primary spaceflight focus.But if I'm making predictions I don't think SLS will have any significant effect on getting any colony anywhere. Even if it is successful and gets a crew to Mars, it's designed to have a lifespan of 20 years, maybe it will be stretched out for a little longer, but do we really expect any settlement with more than a handful of people to be assembled in that timeframe? I for one don't see that happening.
I don't see how this is really any different than your Orion and Space Settlement poll. What's more, since Apollo and the Shuttle are dead as dodo's, there is no point in engagement in retrospective analysis.While I could see colonization as a government/commercial venture in the far future (not in the 21st century), I don't see it happening in the 21st century. I have made some spectacularly wrong shorter terms about predictions, but I won't let that stop me.I see research stations at best in the next 100 years. Maybe not even that.
No options for zero effect...or like negative effect?
I start from the assumption that the fundamental goal of why we put humans in space is/should be/has to be space settlement.
Moderators, I will grant this is somewhat off-topic, but I would ask that you leave this up, as its relevent to the discussion.Nibb31 - I would disagree, and there is data to support the idea that settlement is part of the goal, at least within the US. We've had 2 presidents cite settlement in speeches, we've have a law on the books that state that space settlement (see public law 100-685, section 217 a). It has been cited in multipile national reports (most recently the Augustine report, although the NRC report also did touch on it as well).
However, that actually isn't the main point. The main point is this - most people in the space business, and in particular the human spaceflight business, are in it because they want to go, and not just on a small scale. They want to be the settlers (I'll grant I have no data to support this directly, but I don't believe its an unreasonable assumption, and would want to see data before I dismiss it).
Therefore, if that is generally our goal, as a community, then that goal should be reflected in our national policies (since we live in a democratic republic).