It’s their cover piece from this week, here. I don’t hold a strong enough opinion on the future of manned space to argue their thesis one way or the other. I simply find it extremely problematical to extrapolate far into the future from present trends, particularly when dependent on a number of linked complex adaptive systems (e.g. geopolitics, markets, biosphere).
By the same logic, we should just give up on neuroscience, since the brain is so complex and our progress in understanding it, to date, so slow. I don’t think I’m a buyer on that proposition either.
Discoverers and Discoveries 