Several famous scientists, such as Freeman Dyson, have come out in favor of space settlement. However, many proposals, speculations, and designs for space settlements have been made through the years, and a considerable number of space colonization advocates and groups are active.
There are yet no plans for building space colonies by any large-scale organization, either government or private. Because of the present cost of sending anything from the surface of the Earth into orbit (around $1400 per kg, or $640 per-pound, to low Earth orbit by Falcon Heavy), a space colony would currently be a massively expensive project. It would also have to deal with the as-yet unknown issue of how humans would behave and thrive in such places long-term. It would involve technologies, such as controlled ecological life-support systems, that have yet to be developed in any meaningful way. Space colonies are generally conceived as organizational and material structures that have to provide for nearly all (or all) the needs of larger numbers of humans, in an environment out in space that is very hostile to human life and inaccessible for maintenance and supply from Earth. A space colony would set a precedent that would raise numerous socio-political questions, and the mere construction of the needed infrastructure would currently present a set of huge technological and economic challanges. To date, no space colony has been set up. The most common objections to colonization include concerns that the commodification of the cosmos may be likely to enhance the interests of the already powerful, including major economic and military institutions, and to exacerbate pre-existing detrimental processes such as wars, economic inequality, and environmental degradation. The two most common in favor of colonization are survival of human civilization and the biosphere in the event of a planetary-scale disaster (natural or human-made), and the availability of additional resources in space that could enable expansion of human society. Many arguments have been made for and against space colonization. Space colonization (also called space settlement or extraterrestrial colonization) is the hypothetical permanent settlement and exploitation of natural resources at celestial objects other than Earth. As such it is a form of human presence in space, beyond human spaceflight and operating space outposts.
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