Do you think we will ever be able to colonize a new planet?

Able, yes, but it will take private funding, because government will never be able to "sell" the ideas, and ethics gurus will make sure of that.

Yes, of course. We colonized this one, didn't we?

YES if we can survive we will be able to colonize other planets!

There have been many Earth like planets discovered in the past few years. The current issue is the distance. When we can actually travel long distances, in short amounts of time, colonizing the universe will not be a problem. Adapting will be the problem.
Can we do it? Yes
Will we? Yes

If we don't destroy ourselves first. Colonization of other planets lies in the distant future. But we already have the capability of annihilating our own species!

Yeah. for sure.

Yes, but it won't be in our lifetime and certainly not in mine ... damn it! Heh!

FIRST...WE HAVE TO BE ABLE TO COLONIZE OUR POLITICIANS....

We are already out there living on other worlds! People are abducted frequently and used to populate other worlds! If nothing else our genes are out there and will eventually make the return trip back to Earth,only to find no one here to receive them! Why is it these postings are never added to the file when I click on answers?

I believe we could, but I really don't see the benefits in doing so. I mean, the only plausible reason we might is if we run out of room on Earth. And if we run out of room on Earth, it means there are so damn many people that all the resources are being devastated, in which case we wouldn't have enough excess resources to colonize a planet anyways.

It's like Alcatraz. Alcatraz was eventually closed because it was way to difficult to transport essential resources to it, like fresh water and food. And that was just across San Francisco Bay. Imagine how hard it would be to transport supplies all the way across space?

I believe we could and will colonize other planets for research and maybe luxury resorts, but I don't believe a large-scale community is sustainable.

Outside our solar system, who knows, maybe not.

Within the solar system, yes, definitely it will happen.

All we have to do is survive long enough as a species and it's inevitable.

of course we will, some day. i'm ready to try now.

Its inevitable, the way we spend our resources we may have to, soon. The universe is itself an ecosystem. Human role in this ecosystem is that of bacteria on earth. We burn through our resources and multiply rapidly, but leaving in our wake fertile ground for life to start anew. Its a fun thought to entertain.

We would if there was the need to go there. If it was economical to travel there and we knew it was there (the planet that is), then it would happen. Anything short of that would require a desperate need to leave (asteroids, climate collapse etc).

We could "technically" build one today without too much needed innovation, but it would be a very harsh environment and you wouldn't live to see the place you went due to the slow speeds involved only your great great descendents would.

This planet would need to be a nice Human friendly planet (ie nice temperature, atmosphere make up, gravity etc) otherwise it would need something worth the enormous cost and technology to adapt to it (some unknown material of great worth for example).

The other sad point is that colony ships would never be feasible to move an entire population to that planet, so if we needed to leave ours then there would be alot of people left behind (you just need to look at the transport of people to the americas it was never heavily depleting the countries people left from). There simply isn't the capacity to move the people.

This of course is somewhat negated if you had a "wormhole" as you could just run trains or cram people into it, but it depends on the resources and cost of them and how many you could build.

Another thing of note is that if the new planet is not very close to our own, you could potentially be altering the humans there. A good example would be if they lived on a planet with half the gravity, the bones of the newborn colonists would adapt to this and wouldn't grow to normal strength. This would mean that when they were on earth their muscles and bones would be under twice as much force as they are used to. This is potentially harmful when the gravity is vastly different as they may not even be able to set foot on our planet without medical intervention.

So I'd say we could be able to colonize a planet, but the chance of its occurence is very small unless space technology becomes common and more advanced coupled with a need to go somewhere else (the resources of the solar system dwarf what the earth has to offer).

We have pretty much destroyed this planet, I don't think we should be allowed to go and destroy another one as well. As people have said, if we don't destroy ourselves first then yes we will probably be able to, but not in this solar system, we will have to wait until we have the ability to travel to different solar systems. After all the Universe is infinite so the probabitly that there will be another planet out tere which we could happily live on is there.

There will eventually be numerous colonies on the Moon - most likely scientific and mining outposts, with perhaps one major population centre. The Moon will always be stemmed by lack of volatiles - water, oxygen, carbon, all are going to have to be mined from dust and rock, and heavily processed. The Moon will start off as a mining and resupply outpost for ships that will head to the outer solar system.

On Mars we will find our true space-feet. It wouldn't surprise me if once the techniques are refined for building Martian colonies and growing food in biodomes (first developed on the Moon, of course) if there is a mass emmigration to Mars, in an attempt of Earth-based governments to solve overcrowding in their own territories. Of course, we'll never be able to move enough people to Mars... by the time Mars is terraformed, it will already be overpopulated itself.

In an attempt to boost dwindling energy resources people will flee to Mercury - the surface will be covered with massive solar energy farms, with the collected energy being beamed back out to Earth and Mars to power the masses.

From there we will have already spread to the Asteroids - thousands of little self contained worlds, hollowed out of rocks, tough mining colonies gripping to life.

Further out, we will come to Jupiter - the four great Galilean moons, looking like unspoiled Edens to the masses back in the inner solar system. The 3 big icy moons might be thawed, massive city-ships could ply the waves, while on volcanic Io great mining stations process the lava and rocks. We'll hit a stumbling block though - some day there will be a radiation storm, and millions will be caught in the radiation belts of Jupiter. Thousands will die, native biospheres will collapse, and the Jupiter Project will be doomed...

But the more hospitable worlds around Saturn will beckon - Titan, Rhea and Iapetus. Lets just hope we dont disturb those beautiful rings in our quest to expand. :P

As for further afield... who knows what other solar systems might hold? But humans always find a way.

Peace.

Lol and sorry for such a long answer, just felt like it was needed. :D

There is nothing left for us to destroy...