1) getting enough stuff out of Earth's gravity well
2) getting a reasonably self-sufficient population for survival and manufacturing of survival goods
But once you get there, the lack of a big gravity well makes this a lot easier. Low-G or zero-G is a lot easier to move stuff around at the small scales. How much could I lift on the moon?
I'm torn between a moon base and doing enough near-earth asteroid captures to build a space hab. Political support would probably be behind the moon base first, but a space hab built from captured asteroids might be cheaper.
Anyway, once you get a big enough base in space and some manufacturing, build a couple orion pulse nuclear ships, or some nuclear thermal equivalent to hop around the solar system quickly. Then we can probably start mining high value asteroids.
Then Mars and Venus start making sense.
Maybe we can find a closer brown dwarf than Proxima.
1) getting enough stuff out of Earth's gravity well
2) getting a reasonably self-sufficient population for survival and manufacturing of survival goods
But once you get there, the lack of a big gravity well makes this a lot easier. Low-G or zero-G is a lot easier to move stuff around at the small scales. How much could I lift on the moon?
I'm torn between a moon base and doing enough near-earth asteroid captures to build a space hab. Political support would probably be behind the moon base first, but a space hab built from captured asteroids might be cheaper.
Anyway, once you get a big enough base in space and some manufacturing, build a couple orion pulse nuclear ships, or some nuclear thermal equivalent to hop around the solar system quickly. Then we can probably start mining high value asteroids.
Then Mars and Venus start making sense.
Maybe we can find a closer brown dwarf than Proxima.
THEN, we can go for some nearby stars.