Those that believe mankind will, eventually, reach the stars are collectively holding their breath. They wait for the day when someone, somewhere, will give them a viable and cheap method of hauling mankind out of earth's gravity well.

I've seen this scenario before, in a game. No civilization will build horse cavalry, because they would be obsolete within a few centuries -- rendered obsolete by the far more powerful, computerized, modern armored tanks. So instead of going through the growing pains of using light, and then heavy cavalry, then adding in musketeers and mounted riflemen... The civilization waits. Defensively holding its own, until it can strike out with the nearly unstoppable modern armored tank.

The civilization that waits, dies. It stagnates. Its ability to wage offensive war is never developed. That civilization -- in game terms -- loses its edge, and plummets into failure.

We, humanity, the citizen of the planet earth who are not in a game... Are playing a game. We desperately await the day when we can waltz out of earth's gravity well, and then go playing amongst the stars like the Science Fiction heroes of yore. Our technological progression is such that, in the course of attempting a mass exodus, alternate and more economical means of stellar exploration and colonization can be discovered in a timely manner. If we do not soon begin making beauracratic, economic, and social sacrifices towards a global or national exodus movement, then we run the risk of losing our momentum for all time. Extinction is a very real possibility.

Doomsday naysayers and similar pessimists have rallied around every conceivable notion of 'the end of the world'. A plethora of books exists that detail possible routes to extinction: viral or bacteriological infection, asteroid impacts, cometary collisions, nuclear war, God's Judgement, alien invasion, and more. The odds of these events coming to pass are... astronomical. Unfortunatley, the more we learn, the more extrasolar possibilities arise for terrestrial extermination.

Supernovae, neutron star axial x-ray illumination, multiversal disfunction, brane assymetry, and other, stranger notions of quantum and cosmological upheaval are becoming more and less understood with each passing day. More understood, in that we are becoming more aware of them, and are beginning to chart them. Less understood, in that we are just beginning to realize how dangerous our multiverse is, not only on earth, or in our solar system, but in all existence.

Now that we are conscious or these events, we must prepare to counter them. Our species has survived thus far because of altruistic genotype expressions, and the ultimate biological altruism is the mass exodus of humanity, and all biological progression to date, to the stars. In essence, we represent all that DNA-based life can hope to achieve -- a means of spreading to the stars and beyond.

There may be a God. There may be an organismic-level quasi-sentience that selects for the best and the brightest in life. Or it may be a sense of duty to all our ancestors and all our kin on this world. Whatever the personal reasoning and motivation, we must reach for the stars as soon as we are able.

We are now able.

All necessary subsystems are in place to develop interplanetary cruisers capable of artifical gravity and self-sufficiency on the order of decades. We do not yet need to develop interstellar cruisers or multigenerational craft, but in learning from the mistakes we make and the sciences we advance building an interplanetary cruiser, we will set in motion all else.

What is most difficult, now, is justifying a fundamental shift in paradigm regarding economy, productivity, and education. Those nations capable of contributing to a multinational consortium capable of creating interplanetary cruisers are comfortable with the status quo, and see no reason to justify the massive expenditures of manpower and resources necessary to step away from earth. Those nations that are incapable of contributing to a multinational consortium simply cannot afford to lose a fraction of their GNP for something with few visible cultural or national returns.

The painfully slow progress of the Voyager and Pioneer craft shows us that true science in our solar system is a slow process, measured in years that exceed the term of office of popular government officials. Possible justification through military spending has been excised because of international treaties to prohibit the spread of war into space. No political office can apparently afford justifying the necessary paradigm shift to create or aid creation of an interplanetary cruiser.

Construction of the pitiful International Space Station is slow, awkward, and fraught with patchwork political agendas. The billions of dollars required to launch even so small a structure into space has proven almost uneconomical for pure science, or even commercial science.

Without a national or international catastrophe of extraterrestrial origin, there can be no spur to develop an interplanetary cruiser. Therefore, only one solution presents itself that is politically, economically, and productively possible: a new messiah. This solution beats the hell out of causing a species-level threat to goad humanity into interplanetary travel. (Such evil would also run the risk of a backlash that slows or halts further development.)

A new messiah. A human being capable of inspiring those around him to great feats of altruism. A person whose charm and wit can bring smaller minds up, to see the beauty of sacrifice, hard work, and a goal of reaching the stars.

No other option seems viable, in real time. No other single-generation answer presents itself to logic.

The question becomes, then, to wait, or to become. Waiting for presents inherent risks, as noted above; in fact, the waiting game is precisely what this essay attempts to shorten. Becoming the new messiah, or a paltry facsimile that inspires others to try and become the new messiah, is the only answer I can see. But I have no idea how to start.