Humanity has reached a point in its existence where it can begin to fathom settling the stars. The resources of our fair planet are being depleted and the growth of our populations is not stopping. We continually waste resources fighting amongst ourselves to decide who gets what is left. It has become apparent that mankind cannot possibly hope to survive while it is confined to this one planet. The necessity of colonization of planets in our solar system, and others, and the development of the needed technologies, especially propulsion, has become a pressing matter, but still few people are willing to look at it. Too much attention is being paid to politicising and war-mongering and not enough to the future of mankind. It is imperative that we move into space before we exhaust our viable resources.
Thoughts?

That's not the best idea.
Some parts of what you stated are contradictions, too.

How might I be contradicting myself. I see no contradictions or logical fallacies. Why would this be such a bad idea?

Excuse me a second, the Star Trek theme song seems to be stuck in my head.
That said, how do you plan on moving enough people into space to even begin a colony on another planet? How do you plan on creating enough fuel?

Bottem line, space exploration and settlement on this scale is impossible at the moment.

Once again, the technology is not avalable now, but if focus is put into it, we will be able to colonize space soon. While the size of the initial colonies does not need to be large in the begining, their mere presence will provide invaluable data to the research community and heavier colonization would follow improvements in technology.

The greatest limitation to these endevours is the lack of vision of the governments of the world. Space is not given the priority it should have. But the fact is, humanity must move into space or risk extinction by exhausting its resources of by destroying itself with nuclear weapons.

Again I am reminded of Star Trek.

In any case, the main problem here is fuel. No viable space fuel exists yet to propel a craft of signifigant size past the moon- which is not a feasible place to support life. There are plenty of scientists researching new fuels, escpecially at Nasa. We can put a probe past the limits of out solar system, but they are small and destined for a one-way trip. Until a fuel is developed, the entire concept is difficult.

Did you know that one of George Bush's personnal goals was to assist NASA in establishing a "moon base", through which further space exploration would be possible?

There have already been spacecraft envisioned that use thermonuclear devices to propell themselves. Further research is being done on the development of nuclear propulsion. Furthermore, if a colony is created on the moon, it is entierly possible that the way ships would be launched from there would be by the use of large and powerful rail guns or coil guns. This method would be much more efficient than conventional chemical or nuclear propulsion and the lack of atmosphere and significant gravity on the moon would make this ideal. However, as long as there is no focus on this research we cannot make any real progress.

GW wants to go on an expedition to Mars before there is an active moonbase. That is silly.

I think he has a point. Send an expedition to Mars and see whats there first. Confirm a viable area for colonization, etc. Then make plans to start on the base for colonization, working from the moon. That way you don't build everything on the moon only to find that Mars won't work after all. On that note, Mars and the moon Europa are the only places where scientists can even dream of life, due to neccesities such as oxygen and water.

Sending an expedition to mars, manned no less, without building a moonbase is not very intelligent. Much more resources could be saved for the expedition if a moonbase existed first. Furthermore, were any important discoveries made on mars, exploiting them would prove much more difficult if there was no moonbase. And if there was an accident, rescue would be impossible if we had to launch ships from Earth, but from a moonbase there is at least some chance of helping.

People do not need oxygen and water silly. We are capable of surviving wothout such anemities. Good lord.

The sick thing is that there are people who actually beleive that.

As far as overpopulation, its far cheaper to expand horizontally than vertically. Many "futurists" have speculated that we could build more man-made islands, or at least structures based on water. We've already buit man made islands. Why not expand some of theese operations?

The idea of putting buildings on oceans is imperfect. You can only put so many structures up before commercial traffic is impeded. Not to mention any adverse natural effects- something that would have to be evaluated years before a project.

I have no doubt that this will come to pass. But a more permanent solution will the colonization of space.

Colonization of space may one day be ineventable. However, we must focus on water installations first. They can help us prepare for space by testing new designs and theories. For example, hulls of underwater labs would have to be extra strong to resist pressure. Similar hulls could be employed on planets where air pressure is excedingly high. Did you know that astronauts at NASA train in water tanks to simulate (at least in some sense) sensations of space? I think this could be applied on a larger scale in select bodies of water.

Space exploration on a massive scale is too idealistic at current time. Simply too much still needs to be developed.