Yes:

If we remain true to who we are, we'll conquer barriers previously thought impenetrable:

The first humans out of Africa,
Across the land bridge of Beringia to North America,
On rafts to Australia,
In narrow keeled longboats from Scandinavia to Iceland, Greenland, and "Vinland",
To the moon,
and ultimately to the stars.

We are essentially naked apes: we don't run fast: we see poorly in the dark, our other senese are similarly dull, we lack sharp teeth, claws, bone-crushing power.

And yet,

We live in all extremes: the arctic, the Sahara, mountains and in all other climes.

Mankind, if he and she remains true to the mold that the Creator set us in,

will cross the cosmos, and defy the doom of the dinosaurs.

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"Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless, and do no wrong". (Knight's Oath, Kingdom of Heaven)

I'll talk to you in 2013.

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We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. ~ Swami Vivekanand

HWNN1961 wrote:

Yes:

If we remain true to who we are, we'll conquer barriers previously thought impenetrable:

The first humans out of Africa,
Across the land bridge of Beringia to North America,
On rafts to Australia,
In narrow keeled longboats from Scandinavia to Iceland, Greenland, and "Vinland",
To the moon,
and ultimately to the stars.

Nicely said. And I hope that is how things turn out.

But suppose we run out of time. For example, suppose tomorrow it is discovered that a huge black hole will destroy the earth in two years. What, if anything, should we do differently?

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Now there's no way you can prove that the universe makes sense, but there's just no fun in living in the universe if it doesn't make sense... -- Asimov

'But suppose we run out of time. For example, suppose tomorrow it is discovered that a huge black hole will destroy the earth in two years. What, if anything, should we do differently?' - rvw,

No more weeding, shaving, ironing, dieting, shopping with the wife. Come on black hole!

As an optimistic idea, I tend to follow Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End.

Advanced(mutant) babies will survive.

The problem with black holes is that the more mass they swallow, the more power they have to attract more mass to swallow (... as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on).

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Now there's no way you can prove that the universe makes sense, but there's just no fun in living in the universe if it doesn't make sense... -- Asimov

Interesting question.

It freaks people out now, but I imagine we'll start redesigning long before we actually settle the whole solar system, so by the time we need to engineer low gravity humans we'll be pretty comfortable with the technology. Human engineering is going to get serious in about 25-40 years with prototypes appearing in around 15-25. At first, it'll be simple, "good" things like removing a genetic predisposition for heart disease or various cancers, and adding genes that make people resistant to the same sorts of problems will appear around the same time.

Then we're going to start adding stuff. Specifying height ranges seems pretty likely. Genes that give someone a predisposition to stay thin will almost surely happen. Adding IQ points seems inevitable.

When it comes to actually having people live off-world, though, we're going to come up with all kinds of weird changes eventually, but to start off with I imagine things that will make humans more survivable. Radiation resistence seems to be an important requirement, and there's some evidence to suggest we could have a genetic component for that.

We might also breed genderless humans due to the vagaries of sexual reproduction in high radiactivity, low population environments. I doubt that one, personally, but somebody is probably considering it.

Low light vision will probably be a requirement the further we get from the sun. The ability to exist at lower temperatures will be similarly important. The ability to enter into hybernation might be induced by technology, but it seems to me that a genetic manipulation could still do something similar without requiring the ability to unfreeze a person. Some sort of low-energy consumption "night-time" torpor that is based on the hybernation of terrestrial animals seems practical.

Lungs are an issue for those who want to live in space. I imagine a genetically engineered algae that survives inside a genetically engineered, low-metabolism human's chest cavity producing O2 might let that human survive for hours without taking a breath. Similarly, food processing might be expanded to include things not normally considered part of the human (or even mammalian) diet.

Eventually, I suspect humans will be engineered in such a way as to grow into the technology around them. That is, with no arms or legs, but a purpose-grown nervous system that directly operates equipment, uses sensors on that equipment as input, etc.

Either that or the robots will kill us all off first, and then THEY will settle the solar system (and then the stars) in our stead.

It was strange. As I began to read that sentence, "It freaks people out now,..." I was having exactly the same words pass through my mind until the word "long".

My sentence read, "If freaks people out now, but I imagine we'll start redesigning long before we have the good sense to know how to do it right."

Actually, I think we will merge the body with electronics to such a degree we will become bionic. At that point, we'll have no problem populating the solar system, if we don't exterminate ourselves first through stupidity. I call it 50-50 at best.

Ain't I a ray of sunshine?

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A great many people will think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. ~ William James ~

I'm a little lost by the mention of the asteroid. Are we talking about December 21, 2012, or some other date? Also, I highly doubt that at the rate we're going at now, the earth being destroyed would be a blessing.

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"Unless someone cares a whole lot about something, nothing is going to change. It's not." - Dr. Seuss