I disagree, my guess is that someday this will be a high school science fair project. IMO, the fact that the number of routes is so huge means that once a certain chemical complexity is reached, life of a sort will "condense out". This is very roughly Kauffman's scenario.
... I can definitely imagine that we will eventually be inventing new genes to produce new enzymes with novel functions, although I doubt we'll ever have any "from scratch" custom organisms larger than unicellular. ...
Developing new genes ought to be possible when the protein folding problem is solved. I too doubt that anything other than unicellular will be developed from scratch in a lab.
This depends to some extent on what is found under the ice of the moons of Jupiter.
I agree, but I also think this means we will never know the exact route that led to life on earth. I suspect this is what Yockey means.
As I understand it, there are at least two possible scenarios in pinpointing the causative properties that may have led to the origin of life. (a) identification through experiment (b) identification through discovery.
As far as the implications of laboratory experiments go, it is hard to tell what will or will not happen there. But it is certain that progress only belongs to those with an idea that something will happen and that causative properties will continue to be discovered. It is another piece of logic (solid or not) that assumes laboratory experiments identify or simulate conditions 4.5 billion years ago. This kind of thinking moves toward (b).
I do want to be careful about accepting Darwin's suggestion that the laboratory is the only place that such conditions will be recognized. He certainly wanted to hold that position--I'm still thinking through the logic.