Unless you're going to just plant a flag and bugger off, you're going to have to set up colonies.  The earliest of space enthusiasts realised this.  The trouble is, and it is one that still plagues colony advocates today, is the question of what do you do when you actually get to another planet.  When Columbus, that oft cited parallel, discovered the New World, he found lands lush with life, fresh air, water and all the good things of life.  When  spaceships touch down anywhere in the Solar System, they find inhospitable rocks.  

So, space colonies have a depressing tendency to be self-sufficient affairs that require nothing from the planet they are on except raw materials, which begs the question of why go in the first place.  If you can scrape a bare living off of solid rock, why not set up your colony in Death Valley or the Gobi Desert and be done with it?

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