How do we get from heto there?

>The question is:
>
>How do we get from our current level of space travel to a level of
>space travel required by the first Island One?

This may not be the most rational way for it to happen, but let's try this:

2006: the inflatable orbital hotel under development by hotel chain Bigelow
has the bugs worked out, and is opened for business. (Look it up on the
web, Bigelow is really doing this). Within a year the Russian Space Agency
has made five 2-person trips there.

2009: Bigelow turns a small profit on its orbital unit for the first time,
after a 60-Minutes special broadcast on the hotel the previous year. RSA is
seeking development partners for a 5-person craft, and Bert Rutan is rumored
to be working on a craft capable of reaching the orbital hotel. Lockheed
Martin is hard at work on an automated passenger module for its Atlas
booster.

2012: Bigelow has triped its capacity, and demand for weeklong stays (even
at $10,000,000 a person including transportation) is projected to keep it
filled. Two providers, the RSA and an American consortium, compete to
transport guests.

2015: Bigelow announces it is 2 years away from a "Space Timeshare and
Hotel" in GEO. It will spin to create artificial gravity, and will have a
few other basic comforts. It has contracted with NASA to supply certain
resources (mainly rocks for radiation shielding) from its new moonbase.

2020: The Bigelow-Hyatt group contracts with a startup asteroid mining
operation to supply as much water, oxygen and nitrogen as the supplier can
find in the asteroid belt. The startup thinks it can make its first
deliveries in 5 years, using mostly robotic equipment, but B-H is confident.
B-H is slowly adding capacity to its orbital timeshare and hotel, but
finds the economics challenging due to gravity well costs.

2030: Three asteroid-mining and lunar-mining firms are now competing for
B-H's business, and a steady stream of bulk raw materials (mainly gasses and
water) from sources outside the gravity well has reduced B-H's costs by a
factor of 5. Plans for a second orbital habitat, with both a hotel and
apartments, have begun by an European consortium.

2040: The first pure habitat is opened. Its main occupation: supplying
resources to the orbital hotel/apartment industry, including a small
electronics manufacturing lab and some experimental farms. It will also
have medical facilities and a 100-bed hospital. B-H and the Europeans
invest heavily, seeing a solution to their gravity well-inspired economic
bottleneck.

2050: A second pure habitat is opened, called Habitats R Us. Its main
occupation: manufacturing habitats from space-derived raw materials. It
plans a range of products, from something resembling Island 1 for about $10
billion, up to an Island 3 (if anybody can afford it). They have 2 takers
in the first 5 years, one a government, the other B-H, both wanting Island
1's.

2075: All this business has led to improved and cheaper access to space
from earth's surface (via hypersonic spaceplane elevator catapult whozits).
Once Habitats R Us has proved the concept and brought the price down some,
several real estate corporations have bought, and are drawing in the wealthy
using ads for spacious, exclusive residences in eco-friendly Island 1's.

2100: Enough mining and construction capacity has become available to bring
the price down on an Island 3 to "only" $20 billion. The Indian government
buys one for its most eminent citizens, but most of the business is by real
estate corporations. B-H, still a powerhouse in the field, submits several
terrain designs for hotel experiences: the endangered animal safari hab,
the ornithologists' dream getaway, the low-g sports camp hab, the O'Neill
Memorial Italian village vacation hab. Oh, and Disney wants one too. NASA
begins building a laser power beaming station to supply power to the first
Island 3 generation ship aiming to travel to the nearest planetary system
with an earth-like planet. Getting off earth is still for the well-off, but
the European Union is planning on buying 3 Island 3's over the next 50
years, to be stocked by the best and brightest regardless of ability to pay.
Rancorous arguments ensue over who would be the best judge of individuals'
qualifications for the program.

2104: Island 3's will continue getting cheaper to build, as more space
mining and manufacturing infrastructure arrives. Eight billion of Earth's
poorest can only dream of living in space, but the new human societies in
space have made some things better: solar power satellites have brought
electricity to almost every city and town in the world, and the continuing
electronics and robotics boom has given the poorest nations more and cheaper
gagets to take advantage of the cheap electrical power. A UN-sponsored
organization is raising funds to build a hab dedicated to starting a new
life for the poorest but most deserving from the most overcrowded countries.
Earth's biggest remaining problem: those nations where lawlessness leads
to theft, disease and misery, where no company will invest in the future
because any infrastructure they lay will just be stolen to feed some
generalissimo's ego.

OK knock it down.
Brad