Which is true: in the wild west, there were already people living there, and penguins are not so good at building bars or stocking them.
What I was trying to say was that it doesn't matter the problems, there will be people who do these things because they can. And actual pressure doesn't matter if there is apparent pressure. Look at America going to the moon - there was no actual pressure to go there, but there was the apparent pressure of there being a need to go.
Sure, Fenspace is really big ("we're the greatest, largest country, off this planet earth! (as long as they keep Quebec)"), but people have a hard time grasping that (including the Fen). They look at the space around the planets, then the asteroid belt, and all that empty space is ignored. It doesn't really matter that the solar system can support a huge number in space - there's already a number up there, we can't ignore their claim, and we don't want to deal with them anyway. Most interstellar colonies are going to be Danes going "For the glory of our people, we shall leave this planet! Goodbye, NAFTA!". As well, there's always people looking to the horizon - and space is the biggest horizon out there. They'll do it because it's in their nature, and they're going to be the ones leading the way for colonization wave after colonization wave.
But basically every problem is surmountable by effort - mostly making the equipment cheap enough. But it's mostly time - and we haven't gotten a good enough grasp on the future of Fenspace to really tell where things will go from here.
What I was trying to say was that it doesn't matter the problems, there will be people who do these things because they can. And actual pressure doesn't matter if there is apparent pressure. Look at America going to the moon - there was no actual pressure to go there, but there was the apparent pressure of there being a need to go.
Sure, Fenspace is really big ("we're the greatest, largest country, off this planet earth! (as long as they keep Quebec)"), but people have a hard time grasping that (including the Fen). They look at the space around the planets, then the asteroid belt, and all that empty space is ignored. It doesn't really matter that the solar system can support a huge number in space - there's already a number up there, we can't ignore their claim, and we don't want to deal with them anyway. Most interstellar colonies are going to be Danes going "For the glory of our people, we shall leave this planet! Goodbye, NAFTA!". As well, there's always people looking to the horizon - and space is the biggest horizon out there. They'll do it because it's in their nature, and they're going to be the ones leading the way for colonization wave after colonization wave.
But basically every problem is surmountable by effort - mostly making the equipment cheap enough. But it's mostly time - and we haven't gotten a good enough grasp on the future of Fenspace to really tell where things will go from here.