Salvation via Interstellar Diaspora

I have thought a great deal about the future of humanity, and I believe it is critically necessary to establish self-sustaining populations on other planets, first within our solar system, and ultimately throughout the galaxy and universe. We have to get some people off planet Earth, so it's less likely all of us will be lost to a catastrophic extinction. Considering the deplorably ambivalent prevailing public attitude about financially supporting space exploration, I hope there are some visionaries that will persist in this far-reaching effort. The following article deals directly with this theme.

The Kline Directive
Benjamin T. Solomon, 09 Oct 2012 (blog post plus 6 subsequent posts)
lifeboat foundation: safeguarding humanity

Benjamin T Solomon is the author and principal investigator of the 12-year study into the theoretical & technological feasibility of gravitation modification to achieve interstellar travel in our lifetimes. The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive...

The Kline Directive
If we are to achieve interstellar travel, we have to be bold.
We have to explore what others have not.
We have to seek what others will not.
We have to change what others dare not.

Very poetic and inspiring, but also deadly serious, if you are thinking long term, very long term. This series of blog posts goes into much detail about each aspect related to interplanetary and eventually interstellar travel, including property rights for things like asteroids. The first post gives the overview, and only the hard-core among you will want to suffer the subsequent minutiae. In the past, I have often dreamed of such travel, and felt excitement at the thought of meeting other sapient species, other space-faring extraterrestrial civilizations. Nowadays, I would fear and perhaps ultimately decline such an opportunity, which would probably not occur in my lifetime anyway. Nonetheless, as a human being, I can still hope for the eventual galactic diaspora of mankind.

Crazy Far
To the stars, that is. Will we ever get crazy enough to go?
Tim Folger, Jan 2013
National Geographic – Special Issue:The New Age of Exploration

Once upon a time [1969], NASA proposed to send a dozen astronauts to Mars in two spaceships.  [Wernher von Braun suggested] a departure date of November 12, 1981. [But it never happened...] Why did [a Mars mission] seem more reasonable half a century ago? “Of course we were crazy in a way,” says physicist Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. “It would have been enormously risky...We were prepared for that..." These days it’s easier to outline why we’ll never go. Stars are too far away; we don’t have the money. The reasons why we might go anyway are less obvious—but they’re getting stronger...In the conversation of certain dreamer-nerds, especially outside NASA, you can now hear echoes of the old aspiration and adventurousness—of the old craziness for space.

I am without question one of those crazy dreamer-nerds.
Despite my fears, I might even go.