In 2018, I bet that within the next 60 years (2078), humanity will have:
- Asteroid mining (e.g. 16 Psyche)
- Created an industrial base in space using resources mined outside of high gravity wells
- Have a space based colony using spin gravity with 1000+ people that is 90% self sufficient with resources taken from non high gravity wells such as asteroids
- At least one large asteroid / non-earth moon will have a permanent human presence
- Small colonies on both the moon and mars
- Vegetables, meat (probably cloned) and fish (aquaponics) will be produced in space
My colleague thinks my time frame is too aggressive, I think my time frame is actually quite conservative and hope to win the bet before I get to 98 years old.
Reasoning
My reasoning behind my prediction is that as soon as asteroid mining (primary economy) starts in earnest, there will be an incentive to produce materials outside of earth's gravity well. Very quickly, industrial production will be done in space (secondary economy), probably located at Lagrange points, with only the highest value items being shipped back down to earth. As soon as the industrial production is in place, a tertiary economy will arise, servicing the humans who work in space. Even if we have advanced AI and robots, we will still need people up there, and they need to live somewhere. The most logical at this time is a spin gravity solution for long term inhabitation (O'Neil colony cylinder or something similar). I am placing a large number of people on the spin gravity cylinder simply because to make it produce enough g, you must make it big. If you make it big, might as well have few with a reasonable population on them. Due to the cost of shipping food from planet side, food and other supplies must largely be produced in space, even with a lower cost of shipping due to advances in space flight, we are still bound to the tyranny of the rocket equation. Mars and the moon will have colonies and at least one other moon or asteroid will have a research station - kind of like McMurdo in Antarctica.