Hector

Space will be "the commons", just like the oceans are now. No one is going to bother defending vast distances of empty space. They will defend specific objects of value- a colony, an asteroid mining operation, a space station, etc- and claim anyone within a certain distance is violating their territorial rights. No different than today on earth. And we aren't aren't going to arm research ships anymore than we do on earth. The risk of conflict will be lower if there is the threat of force to hold others in check. Military strength restrains aggression from others. If both sides fear the consequences of going to war, neither side will start it (interesting aside, wars usually start when one side or the other misjudges their strength, and as a result, they feel they're getting less out of diplomatic negotiations than they should). Do you have any idea how many wars are fought over commercial interests? Many of the wars in the 1800's between european powers were fought over commerce. Commerce got the war of 1812 started, and the undeclared war between the US and france before that- just two small examples. Point being, commerce works best within the stable framework created by governments. If no earth government exists in space, pretty soon commercial interests in space will create new governments to manage colonies and interests out there. It's human nature, if we (whoever your government is) doesn't do it, someone else will, and you'll be at a disadvantage. Governments are frameworks which improve cooperation. They do go off the rails sometimes, or often (hey, they're just human institutions after all)- but they're usually (not always) an improvement over anarchy, which is the only alternative.

Indeed. If you are really serious about CO2, there's two technologies you need to get behind: -Fission (for obvious reasons) -Fracking (LOTS and LOTS of cheap natural gas. Use this as an interim fuel- can convert coal plants to it- and as a transportation fuel. It is economical and produces far less CO2 per unit of power than coal) Wind power is insane land use policy. Honestly it makes me mad when I drive through the midwest and see all the land used up by turbines. It also tends to produce the least power when you need it the most. Wind turbines are incredibly efficient machines for extracting money from taxpayers. They're not good for much else, except under very particular circumstances. Widespread use isn't a good use of resources. Solar makes some sense, in limited applications. Coating the desert in mirrors is nuts. Putting solar panels on your roof in a market where the cost of electricity is high makes some sense, but we shouldn't be subsidizing it with tax credits.

Space was militarized in the 1940's when the V2 launched. Space is the transit point for all ICBM's. The Chinese have anti-satellite weapons that travel in space, and the US has missile defense weapons that can intercept ICBM warheads in space. It's also the "high ground" in terms of communications satellites, surveillance satellites, etc. Saying "don't militarize space" is a pipe dream, and that ship has already sailed. If you want to colonize space, military is in fact an absolute necessity- you really want valuable space assets, and no means to defend them? That's madness, because human nature dictates if it's undefended, and valuable.... someone else WILL take it. Repealing, or ignoring the treaty is a necessity for viable colonization of space. Ignoring it is more likely.

Settle down guys. The best thing we can do is..... nothing. Seriously. Leave the free market alone to do its work, and the human species will do what it does best: adapt. To do that, we need resources. For resources, we need money. And that means not killing off half the population, or instituting harsh economic controls. Oh, and there's not going to be any apocalyptic global warming scenario. We're more likely to create apocalyptic scenarios by trying to prevent it (murdering half the population? Seriously?? Even draconian economic and CO2 controls would create apocalyptic economic conditions... you think 2007-2008 was bad? Or 1931? You ain't seen nothing yet, if you try some of the ideas suggested in this thread). Anyways, the models that predict apocalyptic warming are flat wrong. From 1998-2014 (16 years), there's been absolutely no trend in global temperatures, up or down. Our best models say, however, temps should be continuing to increase. They're not. Temps are now well below the confidence intervals of the models, i.e. the models are wrong. This doesn't necessarily mean global warming won't, or isn't happening. It does mean the rate and scale of the warming is almost certainly overrated. The science is simple: Doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels yields a +0.6C forcing. The models depend on positive feedbacks to amplify that forcing into catastrophic temps. The reality is, the actual temp gain observed is less than the forcing from CO2, which strongly indicates the feedbacks are negative (really, most natural systems have negative feedbacks, or they wouldn't exist for long). Ergo.... stop freaking yourselves out, grab a beer, enjoy life, and stop worrying about global warming. If you want something to worry about, there's plenty of threats out there that will kill us long before CO2 induced warming will.

Fairly easy to work around. I am building a Mun lander where the docking node is on the science bay. There's a decoupler between the science bay and the rest of the lander. So I can take the lander to the surface, return to orbit, dock with the return module, jettison everything but the science bay, and return home.