I have to say, the first tentative steps we're taking into space as a collective are a move in the right direction for the survivability of the species. By 2012 the population of earth will be 7 billion peoples. Soak that in for a moment. It wasn't until 1800, that the earth reached it's very first billion human earthlings. It took another 130 years or so for the next. 1999 we reached 6 billion hairless monkeys. As you might have gathered, the increasing population of planet earth is accelerating rapidly. We're going to need a lot more room, and a lot more resources if we're going to continue to expand, industrialize, modernize, and other words with -ize as a suffix.
Lucky for us we have a space program. NASA plans on getting us back on the moon by no later than 2020, and set up a permanent base of operations. Manned Mars missions soon to follow with the construction of a long voyage exploration vehicle built in low earth orbit. Happily, when the wayward explorers arrive, they will have plenty of water. Thats right, the Mars lander found ice water and orbital observations suggest loads of it, just inches below the surface of the polar region. The lander with its scooping arms scrapped away a few inches of rusty Martian dirt to discovery white gold! (which shortly afterward began to evaporate due to Mars' low atmospheric pressure)
This is frankly exactly what I wanted to hear. Water is life! And now we have access to it far from our blue ball of a world. Water is not only useful for simple human survival, but for the oxygen our astronauts will need for their extended stay, and extra fuel (in the form of hydrogen) for when they need to leave, either in a hurry, or at their leisure. I'd prefer that they hurry up and start sending base camp construction rovers to set up a staging area for colonization right now, but as with anything, these things cost money. (ahh, to be a trillionaire)

One can dream, one can dream ...