I think the whole colonization angle is widely overblown and it&#x27;s become embedded in our views about space by a century of genre fiction most of which couldn&#x27;t break out of the colonial mindset.<p>Technology is going to destroy birth rates and scarcity and machines will rapidly eclipse our own abilities to do anything and so future man will smartly answer the question of inter-planetary and perhaps interstellar travel with &#x27;machines not people&#x27;. Eventually we may leave Earth on some scale but I doubt we&#x27;ll ever run out of room or resources here and be forced to leave.