Ch'i

Our space program is neglected and expensive. They can hardly get a man to Mar's, even if they tried (which they don't because of the reasons above). My point was that "getting a handle on space", which to me means being able to travel between planets & colonize them, will not be a priority for quite some time. When it finally does become a priority it will still take an even longer amount of time to reach that state. You have to take into consideration the fact that we will have to switch from being an oil based society to a more ecologically-sound-renewable-energy based society. This change will be abrupt and will set us back. Seeing as how things are currently going, we aren't going to get it right the second time. The leaders of the US right now are idiots, so they probably won't realize what's going on until two years after the last drop of oil burns up. With that in mind, I see us reaching planetary colonization at the speed of litigation and political disputes. Austrailia is looking promising with their recent breakthroughs in solar power, but they don't have much of a space program; 500-1000 years seems reasonable to me.