[Urbane Guerrilla]

Inasmuch as space colonization is the thing that will actually make money up there -- and money up there can fund all kinds of space science -- I'd say this time they have it right.

People doing hardhat stuff, people making rocket fuel, people mining iron asteroids for high-grade, and no environmental protection problems (others instead, like the cosmic-ray environment) because there's no biosphere up there, shortorder cooks learning how you flip a burger in zero G -- this is what actually puts people in space. Any science fiction fan could tell you that; guess it fell to this one this time.