Following a line on a graph is a way to confuse yourself into thinking you have some knowledge about the situation, when in fact you just have a summary of one facet of the past.

It could be that we're "past the peak", or that another peak is on the way, or even that we'll continue to shed jobs at roughly this rate for another 5 years. Which one is most likely doesn't depend on the derivative of a curve but rather on the economy's overall state and momentum.

In this case:

Oil/Energy is relatively cheap.

People are scared.

Debt is very high and getting worse.

We're still fighting multiple wars.

The financial community is addicted to scams and is still in possession of the Congress.

Overall, magic 8ball says we're still in for rough stuff. I think. That said, I'm still buying oil stocks :]

Late to the party but:

So as long as someone says nice things about me and is willing to talk to me then they should remain immune from critique? If I ever start thinking that way, I'll probably be joining Chuck Todd at MSNBC.

I'm so glad you think that way. If only more people did.

< screed >

People talk about a moonbase as though that would be better than all this unmanned probe crap we've been screwing around with for 20 years. Not by much. It'd be hideously expensive, largely because every mission would need to start on the surface of planet Earth. Here's more like what we need:

A massive orbital infrastructure:

Power generation: some of which is delivered to Earth, some used in orbit.

Manufacturing: Some stuff we already know to be easier to manufacture in freefall. Once the market gets its claws into manufacturing in space, we'll find lots more.

Recycling: The ISS already does a halfway decent job of recycling its O2 and waste. We could do a lot better. All that would mean less junk to haul into orbit for *every* mission, only to be abandoned because we don't have the fuel to bring it back.

With all that in hand, it'd be easy to build a permanent station orbiting the Moon, build special-purpose Moon landers that take off from it and land on the surface, and build craft who never touch the surface of a world, but ply the routes between. Then, and only then, do we build the Moonbase. Same with Mars, Saturn's moons, and Jupiter's, whenever we can figure out how to deal with the godawful magnetic field.

*That* is how space will really become the cornucopia of the human race. Once the orbital infrastructure is in place, we can haul some asteroids into Lunar orbit and let the party really begin. The expansion of GDP would make the Industrial Revolution look like a nice lemonade stand. Teleoperating robots at million-km distances might even bring jorbs back to the rust belt. Doesn't really matter where you're sitting if you're running waldoes.

Meanwhile, yeah, by all means let's just waste our money arguing about healthcare, invading countries halfway around the world, and spending billions on election campaigns.

For every dollar we waste on lost causes, if we put only ten cents towards fusion and the space program, we'd generate ten dollars worth of finger-in-the-dike leverage.

< / screed >

You're welcome to your nihilism. Don't expect anyone else to share it. I for one want the human race to become whatever it may become, if we can finally get ourselves out of the cradle.

Going to Mars is orders of magnitude more difficult than going to the moon, btw. $500 billion is probably not enough.

That's a particularly misleading or ignorant statement. Space travel is quite cheap, once you attend to the requirements. Sure, if you insist on beginning every mission from the surface of Earth, it gets progressively more expensive. So let's not do that.

@Yminale: I'm sorry there is no magic in your universe. Take heart: the great blessing of nihilism is that eventually your troubles will be over.

The trick is to not travel in space over great distances until we have the infrastructure set up properly. Read my original post.

You don't send landers in the first wave, you don't even send a space station. You send a power plant and a fuel depot. Then you sling raw materials at the depot for a few years, catching them with automated waldoes. You probably miss a few. Darn.

Then, when you have enough stuff onsite for the people who are to follow to have a lot of margin for error, you send spacecraft built in space over. Those spacecraft don't have to carry boosters to get out of Earth's gravity well, because they start far out already. Thus the cost is dramatically reduced.

Also, because the manned craft don't have to bring the kitchen sink, they can accelerate much faster, reducing the travel time.

Finally, because you've taken the time to build up really robust freefall recycling equipment (which you take along), you're not required to haul a massive amount of supplies along on the manned trips. Resupply is already waiting at the other end, including fuel for the return trip. You don't send the manned missions until massive oversupply is in place.

I honestly think the asteroids are much more interesting. We can bring those home, and use the raw materials right here. The leavings can become the skeletons of new stations. Beats the holy living hell out of strip mining.