“By 2100, a small self-sustainable population will be living off this planet”

O'Neill's ideas for Island space colonies launched considerable public interest, which has inspired many of the active players in today's private space industry. The X Prize has resulted in the first steps towards privately affordable space flight, while inflatable prototype habitats are already in orbit. Closed loop recycling of water and oxygen is already active on board the ISS. IN the 2020s a Moon Race should have led to bases on the Moon, with later ones on NEOs, leading to solar power satellite construction, and a growing space hotel industry. Such hotels will grow in evolutionary steps towards full-blown free floating city states, as proposed by O'Neill et al. Overcrowding, persecution/totalitarianism, and the classic search for new opportunities and new horizons will produce the people and the motives for such expansion. The end result will be a Cosmic Diaspora over the next 1,000 years, with a humanised Galaxy by 1,000,000 AD. The alternative is extinction.