Something to use in a future history

[james_davis_nicoll]

Quoted with author Doug M.'s permission:

Assume _arguendo_ that money spent on space continues to grow at a bit less than
2% per year for the next 90 years or so. Come 2100, total annual space
spending would be ~5x what it is today, or about $150 billion per year.


I once did a BOTE calculation of the cost of a manned Mars mission and came up
with ~~$600 billion in 2010 dollars. (If that seems high, consider that
Curiosity -- an unmanned one-way probe that will weigh just under a metric ton
-- is about $3 billion, while Apollo cost a bit under $200 billion in 2010
dollars.)

Amortizing that over a decade, it starts to look plausible for someone to do it
sometime in the 2090s. (Whether it would be a good idea, then or ever, is
another question.)

Which of course reminded me of this bit from the beginning of Forbidden Planet:

In the final decade of the 21st century, men and women in rocket ships landed on the moon. By 2200 AD they had reached the other planets of our solar system.