Humanity was let down by its governments that ran space programs. Space research and exploration activities of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s made it legitimately seem as if we’d get a research outpost on the Moon by 1980; research bases and lunar hotel resorts for the rich by 1990; a city by 2000; a Mars outpost by 2010; industry and orbiting space hotels for thousands by 2020; and by now, an Island 3 type O’Neill cylinder well-under-construction to house millions per habitat in its 1,000 square kilometers (400 sq. mi). This image could have been New New York…
Getting Out There
We’ve talked for decades about “Space Elevators” to geosynchronous orbit to make space accessible at low cost. They might be adequate for cargo, but they would be slow. Traveling at 300 km/hr (190 mph), passengers would have to live there for five days, while passing through the Van Allen Radiation Belts, to cover the 36,000 km/22,500 miles to geosynchronous orbit.
Creative engineers have provided better plans and we could have space access with the simplicity and cost of booking an intercontinental air flight. Time will be reduced to just hours for a flight to your destination in orbit, with the same arrival and departure schedule (and radiation exposure!) as an aircraft. It will surpass any incarnation of a space elevator for both efficiency and comfort.
One intriguing possibility (among many) is called the Lofstrom Launch Loop (LLL). It would stand 80 km (50 miles) tall, using an active (or dynamic) support system, while providing a runway on top. Using electromagnetic forces for launching and landing eliminates rocket fuel for that process. Current rocket launch costs range from $2,720 per kilogram for a SpaceX Falcon 9 to $19,000/kg for the Electron Rocket. The LLL could get that down into the double or single digits per kilogram.
Using a large LLL, it could launch 16,000 kg/day (six million tonnes per year) at $3/kg and would collect $18 billion per year in gross revenue. Amortized costs and operating expenses included, the LLL could pay for itself very rapidly, and launch all the necessary starting material for a lunar base at 1/500th of the lowest possible chemical rocket cost.
What is Active Support?
Active support means that something moving will transfer kinetic energy to the structure giving it a continuous upward thrust, like a stream of water coming from a hose to form a parabolic curve. However, anchored by cables every few hundred kilometers will keep the LLL flat over its 2,000 km (1,200 mile) length. Being well above the thickest part of our atmosphere, it will allow us to reach escape velocity easily while reducing the launch costs.
Such a system is supported by a moving element inside which is suspended magnetically, and therefore is friction-less. It would be turned around magnetically at the end of the journey and returned providing lift twice per circuit around the loop. This cycle would repeat endlessly, and once operational, the only power required would be for maintenance of the speed at each end of the journey.
Somewhere To Go
In the next decade or two, thousands of people per day should be able to access space. Launch vehicles could range from just six passengers all the way up to 737 aircraft-sized. What would so many people do and where would they go? Well, as science fiction author Robert Heinlein said when stressing how hard space access was, "Once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere".
With a Lofstrom Loop, or other launching technologies that do away with chemical rockets, space travel will be cheap and common. As a result, a workforce to build infrastructure will be readily available for this new frontier. Your job might be in construction and engineering; it might be facility maintenance; it might be in administration and planning.
And, of course, with private enterprise involved, there is no practical limit as to occupation—if Hilton builds a space-hotel, you might be a housekeeper, chef, bartender, or barber! They will need everybody.
Back to the Moon
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We would have a lot of catching up to do, since our politicians wasted the 80s,
90s, 00s, and 10s. Once we get back to the Moon, at first we’ll set up self-landing temporary surface inflatable habitats, later adding more permanent buried habitats for radiation protection. That will provide the living space for the first workers that will monitor the robotic development systems, but still be on hand to solve problems beyond the robots’ capability.
Part of the initial task will be power generation, followed by mining and solar-
powered smelting to make building materials in situ; right now it is too expensive to launch all the needed materials from Earth’s gravity well, but the Moon has plenty. We’ll have to suffer the expense of old fashioned rocket launches to get started. Solar furnaces can smelt, and automation can create the metal parts to begin building infrastructure to expand the mining operations.
Construction of a magnetic rail launcher will quickly follow to get the material 
back to Earth orbit, or wherever it’s needed. And yes, asteroid mining might occur for particularly rare materials like nitrogen, but most of what is needed can be found on the Moon.
We may start almost immediately to build underground in the plentiful lava tubes, putting lots of rock between us and the surface radiation. Lava tubes on the Moon can be many kilometers long, taller than the Burj Khalifa, and wider than a football field. Making bricks out of compressed lunar soil would make constructing buildings easy and economical.
Add some LED lighting, paint the ceiling white and project blue sky and clouds (or stars) to make it quite homey would work. It might be problematic to seal off huge sections and fill them with air, but smaller sections with redundant airlocks could be quite possible as our technology improves. A secure “shirt-sleeves” environment—what could be better?
My Job?
The jobs on the Moon would be similar to elsewhere plus overseeing mining robots, or manufacturing, or water production. Lower gravity would make even the feeblest person six times stronger. And who is going to open the first retirement village where people can live to 130 because of reduced stress from gravity?
Certainly governments or universities will want to build a radio and optical 
observatories on Farside (the hidden, opposite lunar hemisphere that is shielded from Earth’s radio noise). The Industrialists will want to take advantage of low gravity physics to grow better crystals for computers and medical devices, or to manufacture other unique materials. Will you be a physicist, chemist, astronomer, or that person who washes the test tubes and mops the floor? Again, they’re going to need people for any job that is not automated.
How will you get to Farside or the next outpost or town? It seems likely that the
ready supply of aluminum will make construction of a vast monorail system inevitable. Not only would it be easy, fast, efficient, and economical, it would also be a boon to aid in communication and power distribution to all of the dispersed outposts. Much of the electrical energy would likely come from the permanent solar power stations located at the poles. Using monorail towers for distribution would make great sense.
Lunar Olympics
Somewhere around 2048 or 2052 we could hold an Olympic Games on the 
Moon. We might want to skip the discus, shot put, hammer throw, and particularly the javelin toss. Instead we can add the 3 km human-powered flight race, the 2 meter hurdles, the 12 meter pole vault, and the 20 meter long jump. Just for tourism alone that capacity for thousands of space travellers really ought to pay off for the lunar economy.
Mars
No mention of Mars, so far, which is interesting. Why not? In truth, humans may make an excursion to Mars in the next three decades. We’re on the verge of making practical nuclear fusion power available for everyday use here on Earth.
If we had a practical fusion spaceship engine we could spend energy like it was going out of style. We had preliminary plans back in 2013 for a working fusion engine. Such an engine could make a round trip to Mars possible in just 30 days at its closest approach, or 90 days when it is quite far away. Either way, it’s much better than 500 days travel (and radiation exposure!) for anything we can accomplish at the moment with current chemical rocket technology.
So the trip itself is possible in the next three decades, but for reasons of practicality we should rehearse and get our technological ducks all in a row. If we have infrastructure on the Moon, emergencies are a lot less of a problem. We would have surgeons, dentists, psychiatrists, and the ability to get back to Earth in just a couple of days, or the ability to consult with only two seconds delay time.
That wouldn’t be true on Mars. It would be at least eight minutes or as much as 48 minutes of signal delay for a round-trip radio signal, depending on orbital positions—not a good thing if you need help with a complicated surgery. There would also be two weeks where communication was impossible because the Sun would be directly between Earth and Mars, cutting off virtually all radio signals.
Of course there would be people willing to take the risk, and maybe everything would be fine despite the unimaginable odds of nothing going wrong for 500 days. Have you ever had a year and a half where absolutely nothing went wrong that you couldn’t completely handle on your own? Now add in airtight seals on your spacesuit wearing out, ultrafine Martian dust getting in your habitat and then your lungs and causing silicosis because of bad suit management, or a massive solar flare disabling half your shipboard systems.
Mars needs to wait until we have much faster ships that don’t rely on only travelling when Earth and Mars are next to each other, once every two years. So if you want to go, first get a degree in STEM (preferably in nuclear physics) and get to work making a practical fusion engine design. With that, everything else becomes practical—even gas harvesting on Jovian/Saturnine moons or asteroid mining!
The Takeaway
It is unfortunate that countries abandoned the ambitious path to get at least some humans off of the Earth after just a few lunar landings, and some space stations for research. We’ve been reduced to orbiting astronomical telescopes, a few robots, and some deep space missions to planets in our own solar system, but without people onboard. There are no humans any further from Earth than 450 km straight up on the International Space Station (ISS).
If you don’t think that is really a problem, maybe we should all remember that humans have only been here for 200,000 years, whereas dinosaurs were here and successful for 170,000,000 years, or 850 times longer than us. But they didn’t have the wit or wisdom to get some of their species off-planet in case a big rock came along… and then a big rock came along…
Remember:
The meek shall inherit the Earth
…the Rest of us are going to the Stars!