...because 80% competing for 15% of the money is soooo much more civilized.

Then why are there so many cars in Europe?

Putin, for all of his shortcomings, knows a weakling when he sees one. And that a vastly superior military (that would be the US military) means nothing when headed by a weakling.

He also knows that North Korea wasn't going to repay those debts anyway, so why not try to make some lemonade out of those lemons.

The irony is that most of the people they pissed off are long dead, and half of Cuba now lives in Miami.

Note they weren't (and still aren't) lining up to go to the Arctic... which is a hell of a lot more accommodating than space is.

You mean the algorithms that were developed in the 1950's and are unchanged to this day? I suspect any C2 code used by SpaceX would be rather useless to them... but then again that has never stopped them from stealing it anyway.

All Russia has to do is be cheaper. So they make their craft lighter or some such.

China will have their 40 years in the sun, at which point they will be surpassed by Brazil or possibly Canada... who will have a good 25 years of dominance.

I doubt that. Competition will force them to upgrade their proven design. (To an unproven design, the irony.)

Computers are part of the reason the space program collapsed, also why a fighter jet now costs almost a trillion dollars to develop, and why 60 year ols planes are still flying while their 6 year old brethren are hangar queens.

Perhaps instead of reading about government mismanagement on various websites you should actually familiarize yourself with NASA.

That is true - Della Lu even found a sole survivor "Centaur" guarding his post singularity world.... "he" had technology roughly equivalent to hers. But they didn't come to earth.

Out accelerate the first, you mean. once you get close enough to the speed of light there is no outrunning anything.

That didn't happen in Forever War - however it did in his short story follow up (A Second War).

Well, I know the pond is there... but are there fish in it? I don't know until I see one jump.

Of course it will end. The sun will consume it eventually. This is on a time scale that is of no consequence to us.

Could a big rock come along and smack us? Yup. But we don't have to leave here to be able to stop it.

Could we one day leave and have every single colony wipe itself out? Damn straight. Maybe something/someone will come along and wipe out the colonies. Who knows. Maybe a plague could travel between them on ship and take everyone out.

That said, leaving Earth != insured survival.