Will we become a Space Faring Species in the next 150 years

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=22191.0

Quote from Robotbeat

In 150 years, there are at least 20,000 people on Mars (not necessarily in one colony). How did they get there? What are they doing? Why?

Try to provide unique but very believable answers, like Jules Verne. No "technological singularity" allowed (too easy). Try to have a different scenario from other posters. Everything must be based on real physics (or reasonable extrapolations), though engineering is more flexible (extra points if the engineering is realistic, low tech can also be interesting). Ready.... Go!

my answer
I do get tired of the defeatist thinking on this and other forums; we have gone from pre Flight to Wright Brothers and Space flight in about the same time that Robotbeat is asking us to imagine how we would set up a colony on Mars; in terms of human ingenuity and will, I don't think it is all that hard to imagine that in 150 years we won't have live births on the Moon, Mars and in Space Stations dotting the inner Solar System;
what I do find hard to believe is the degree of cynicism amongst the space community; it is as if the wind had been taken out of the sails of an American Cup yacht while racing to the finish line, and the crew just gives up;
what we will be doing, what we should be doing and what we could be doing in 150 years are 3 different things; and will basically depend on whether or not, we as a race, sit back and moan about the present, or our dreamers dream big dreams and we get inspired to do the “impossible”. By impossible, I don't mean warp drive or star-gates, I mean taking on projects that push the present envelop of human progress, advancement to the next level; Moon Bases, Space Stations, Mars colonies, Asteroid mining and maneuvering, and Space Craft that don't return to a gravity well; the technology is there to do it, we just need to bring it together;
In 150 years I would hope that we had begun utilizing ISRU (In Space Resource Utilization) through mining Asteroids, and bringing them closer to the Earth / Moon and Mars Systems; the Martians and Lunarians would begin building their own civilizations, to become independent trading partners of an Earth, Moon, Mars alliance in another 100 years OR LESS; perhaps we would have large scale Space Stations at the L-points between Earth / Moon, and Mars; Terra-forming of Mars and Venus would have begun in earnest, and the first person to reach a Jovian Moon would have returned; we would no longer be building space craft in gravity wells, but in space, out of materials mined in space;
This is what I see when I look to the future, not the same old, same old that a lot of you seem to think is our future as a race; there will be a time when the last of us baby boomers die off; there will be good times again between now and then and in the future; there will be leaders of industry, science and politics, born in this century that push the envelop; and there will be people who say, why, what is the good, we have problems to solve here on Earth;
but the final point is: the easy wealth has all but been run out here on this planet; if we want to advance, we need space exploitation and exploration; whether we do or don't, the results will be our legacy to the future; that is why answering the question at the beginning of this thread is important; not that the answers are accurate, but that they bespeak hope and imagination for the future of our children; our legacy to them;