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Last try, because it's late.

The 1969 Space Treaty will be toast the minute our government realizes it will make tax money from real estate taxes on lunar settlements and orbital habitats. I think they've already realized that, and that's why they passed the recent Space Tourism bill, as a first step in that direction.

The investment money you mention has been holding off, waiting to see what the regulatory envionment is going to be like. For 50 years, the government has maintained a death-grip on NASA's monopoly. It doesn't matter that the ESA can launch a satellite cheaper; there simply isn't the infrastructure to have a put-people-into-space industry. Tourism will open the door; encourage the development of spacecraft, habitats, and more. It's the thin edge of the wedge, and while NASA will still have a role in big-ticket projects like the initial exploration of Mars and pure-science missions, Virgin Galactic is going to be the true herald of the new age.

The future of man in space, other than in venturing beyond our own solar system and discovering Class M planets, is going to be in manufactured orbital space colonies. the moon and asteroid belt have the resources needed to produce a self sustaining development system. Just add people and livestock to seed extra-terrestrial agriculture and plant life, and then see humanity quickly become fruitful and multiply. Want to escape the possibility of strict population controls with one or two child limits worldwide, go to space. Want to avoid Logans Run-esque age-based euthanasia policies--go to space. Once we break the earth's gravity well, we're a third of the way to anywhere we want to go in the solar system....

not only that, but space colonies could become havens for social experimentation where they could self-govern, live the way they want to, without interference from Washington or anywhere else on earth. We could simply abrogate the 1969 treaty, as we did the ABM treaty (signed with a nation that no longer exists--why Russia claimed a contiunace of validity of treaties is beyond me--seems illegal), and at this point it would not get much negative response....

Virgin Galactic is going to be the true herald of the new age.

More power to Virgin if they so much as break even after 20 years.

The Treaty is firmly in place and the State will hold the monopoly to space resource development for a long time to come. It might prove useful to note the distinction between Space Tourism and Space Development. Space Tourism is never going to be more than a sideshow to what could be with private Space Development. State Resource Development will never happen. Private Resource Development could happen, but only if the citizens somehow move the State to recognize that the State already has asserted sovereignty over the entire universe and must allow for private property rights to celestial resources to be claimed if we are to ever move significantly into space--ever get past the present limits to growth.