The Ted talk speak has optimism. And I never realised that rocket economics were so much closer than what I have been told all my life. One more reinforcement to not believe the conventional wisdom until I see the data.
SpaceX and other US corporations are humanity's best hope at survival. On the long time scale, we have two choices as a species. Spread out across the solar system (and eventually universe), or become extinct.
NASA has thrown in the towel on space. They're still consuming billions, but the results are now limited to very low end robots. Most of our space probes of the last decade could be built by college students while intoxicated. I know this, because I was one of those drunken college students dorking with robots. Don't get me wrong, sending robots ahead of humans is very smart as well as cost efficient. But you know NASA isn't planning any steps after sending the cheap disposable robots.
On the plus side, we have US citizens taking the step forward. It's in its infancy, but even at its current stage, US citizens have a more significant orbital capacity than 95% of the countries on the planet. I remarked to MicroBalrog that US satellite radio companies have more of a space presence than his country, which is allegedly quite advanced.
I do not have faith in the US government reaching the stars. I do have faith in the American people at least putting boots (and drills) on the ground of the Moon, Mars, the belt, Io, and who knows what else.
The idiots are screaming about depleting the world's natural resources. Actual AMERICANS are saying, "Hey, dude? Titan has a couple hundred times the amount of liquid hydrocarbons of the entire planet..." I look forward to the day when Exxon-Mobile is launching insanely giant tanks of oil back at the earth from the other side of the solar system. It's called a bloody ion drive. Sure, it takes a while, but that's the point of logistic pipelines. Doesn't matter if it takes six months or a year for the oil to arrive via ion drives or whatever, if you have a delivery every two weeks.