It is said that everything comes at a price and that can't be truer in the context of human progress over the course of past centuries. Yes, we have quite literally achieved sci-fi levels of progress and we are positioned to do even more unimaginable things in the future.

All that has come at a cost though and will continue to come at a cost, which is the planet's resources. All our endeavours are being fueled by a gargantuan amount of resources that is available on our planet.

But no matter how large a pool, it can always dry over time, if we continue to deplete it and the same will be true of Earth's resources. So, to fuel the next centuries of development, there is only one way to go. Space.

Space truly is the final frontier. It has an almost infinite seeming amount of resources that we can use for thousands of years to come. But some scientists think otherwise and a group of them have proposed that more than 85 percent of the solar system should be protected, so as to limit human exploitation.

Is It Really Necessary?

Let me give you a context. There is an asteroid called '433 Eros' and it is estimated to contain more gold than we have ever mined in our history. And that is just one rock in space. The current known asteroid count according to NASA is 795,064 and it is estimated that there are millions of them in the Solar system.

Plus, we have whole planets which contain even more resources on them that can potentially be used and colonised. So, all in all, I think it is safe to say that we are good for at least thousands of years to come, since we are only now getting started with space.

But according to what scientists estimate, we could have a shortage on our hands within the next 400 years. That doesn't make sense to me, considering just how much is out there.

Even if that were remotely true, I think they are ignoring the technological progress we will make within that time frame that could allow us to go even beyond our solar system and into other stellar systems. If that becomes possible, even larger pools of resources will be at our disposle.

If you think about it, it is kind of a race between our exponential technological progress and our need for resources to fuel that progress and it is only a question of what happens faster and I lean towards the former.