Can we someday make colonies on other planets?
Also the moon?
Would the cost outway the advantages?
Would YOU like to live on another planet?
Wow - kind of a lot of questions I’ll take a shot -
Colonies on other planets - not in the near future - we need the technology to get there, and even next to light speed would take generations - we’d first have to learn how to sustain ourselves from generation to generation to get there, and that’s not our strong point right now (think Biosphere II)
Colonies on the moon - why not? Mir’s been up there a long time, so presumably it would be almost childs play to set down a permanent base up there and maintain it - but the costs would probably outweigh the benefits when there are people starving in the world.
Sure I’d live on another planet.
This really isn’t a GQ (General Questions) topic. It belongs in IMHO (In My Humble Opinion), because it is a poll-type thread. General Questions is for questions that can be answered definitively one way or another. Asking how a computer works is a GQ topic. Asking people about their favorite type of computer is an IMHO topic. Clear?
OK, on to the question at hand. I’d love to live in space. I think it would be safer than living on Earth (more safety precautions, fewer people) and you’re guaranteed a helluva view! I’d live on the moon, Mars, or in orbit around Jupiter, wherever they decided to establish a colony. A space station would suit me just fine. Especially if I could go outside in my own suit! 
As for costs/advantages: They don’t now, but I think they will. Population is rising, sending our stress levels up with it. Soon space colonization will be our only option to prevent massive overcrowding problems. At that point the funding will appear. The alternative is unthinkable.
Yes.
Yes.
Maybe, but I doubt it.
Yes, but in a manner of speaking I already do. 
I think you mean to other solar systems. The planets in our own solar system are only a few years away using standard space tech. (aside - at “next to light speed” - a few stars are only a few years away too, but they probably don’t have nice terrestrial planets for us)
To the OP…
-
Yes. But we need to develop the tech some more. Actually, we will HAVE to develop colonies on other planets if our species (or the next evolutionary form of our species) wants to live past the next 500 million years (the sun will start getting too hot for us.) The Mars Society is avidly working toward putting a colony on Mars. Also aside from setting up a self-contained colony, it may be possible to terraform another planet to make it Earth-like.
-
Yes.
-
As I said in #1, it’s life or death in the long run. So the cost is worth it eventually. Right now, the cost vs. advantage is debateable.
-
I would certainly like to have an extended visit on another planet. But, IMHO, Earth is by far the best place to be for a lifetime (hopefully we don’t mess it up too much).
good questions.
It’s not as easy as it looks. We can put up a station like MIR or Freedom because the structures don’t have to be very strong (no gravity). This makes them light, and cheap enough that we can afford to lift them into orbit.
If you want to build a colony on the moon of any size, you’re going to have to build it in place. This means learning to build strong structures out of the lunar regolith, which is not easy. So before we do that, we’re going to have to explore the moon some more and send up some prototype manufacturing gear.
Then you have to transport consumables to the crew, the most expensive of which is water. Recent discoveries indicating that water may exist on the moon would drop the cost of maintaining a base there by an order of magnitude or more.
Look how difficult it is to keep permanently manned stations in inhospitable areas on Earth - McMurdo station in Antarctica cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and the Antarctic climate is a tropical paradise compared to what we’ll have to deal with on Mars.
NASA’s already got projects under way to address some of the technology problems we’d confront in trying to set up a colony on a new world. For example, some one has already created an experimental building material that could be mixed with Mars dust to make bricks. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/marsbars000814.html
A full-bore colonization effort isn’t likely to happen soon, though, because of the tremendous costs involved, as others have already mentioned. No single nation could really afford the budget for a permanent colony, and as the space station building efforts go, we clearly also have a long way to go in working out the logistics of a multi-national cooperative effort.
Would I like to live on another world? Well, as a lifelong sci-fi addict, I’d have to say that waking up to a view of Saturn’s rings from Titan would be really cool. 
Space colonization
On the subject of deep space colonization, I encounter two fundamental problems: propulsion–i.e, getting there in the first place-- and adaptation to the environment–i.e.,survival.
Propulsion: aside from the socioeconomic and political considerations, you have to take into account the huge technological advances that would be required for a voyage that would safely transport humans (consider the physiological consequences of g-forces due to high accelerations on the human body) over the course of an individuals life span (no sense in arriving dead at your elusive destination) into a far away deep space planet.
What to use? Fusion devices won’t work for long trips. Solar sails? Still a long away from that. Antimatter? Possible the best alternative, although unless the passengers are put into a hibernation state they won’t survive the length of the voyage. How about wormholes? The fact that they are mathematical plausible entities doesn’t mean that they do exist. Besides how would you be able to open a wormhole at your desired destination, without getting there first to set it on.
Also to be considered: you need to find a life bearing planet and I’m not talking about a paradisiacal oasis which will match the standard of living to which we are accustomed. No way that’s happening. The odds against encountering something remotely close to what we now got are staggering.
Imaging our basic survival requirements: a planet close enough to its home star so that it provides enough heat, but not too close (remember Icarus); enough gravitational pull to provide a breathable atmosphere (too little gravity lowers the escape velocity of the planet which in turn can not retain fast moving particles such as oxygen); liquid water, etc.
How many exploratory missions would you need to find such a place? Plus once you do, there are logistical considerations. How many people per trip? A full colonization would imply millions of tons of human flesh to transport, you would need to go back and forth to pick people up innumerable times? Plus, what would people eat? The spacecraft can not carry enough food for the whole expedition (food = mass, mass = propulsion). So you would have probably need to recycle excrement and urine to provide for your meals-- who ever said that space food wasn’t good?
Insurmountable obstacles? Maybe. What to do then? At the risk of sounding excessively speculative, how about cloning? You take the DNA of the entire population, download their brains into the ships mainframe and, on arrival at the desired destination, clone them back at an accelerated rate ( so they will go back to their present age at moment of the trip), then plug them to the computer- the-matrix, anyone?–and reinsert their memories, and voila, you just got yourselves brand new clones. Impossible? Not more than carrying 6 billion people through a distance of several light years.
Of course, it gets easier if you got teleportation, but that is a whole other matter, not to mention the fact that it would make this discussion obsolete. So I’m not going there…
An even simpler alternative would have been to focus on colonizing a solar system planet such as Mars or Venus, but it wouldn’t be as fun, would it?
Now, to the second problem.
Adaptation to an extraterrestrial environment: even in we encounter a haven remotely accessible to life, we would still need to terraform it–i.e., plant trees, grow crops, alter the oxygen content of the atmosphere, to fit our survival needs.
Highly difficult, no doubt. But there is an alternative–and here the speculations really go off the charts. How about if the homo sapiens sapiens species evolved so it could adapt to whatever new surroundings it desired to colonize? Yeah, but how do you get around evolution? It takes millions of years, maybe even billions, anyone might argue.
Right on, but who said you couldn’t play God and condition evolution to your needs-- new genetic traits manifesting themselves at an accelerated pace. Say we are a space traveling species, we ask our alien friends for some of their genes, genes which have provided them with the necessary conditions to survive in environments different to the ones to which we are accustomed. We take the traits that we need and use them to genetically engineer humans able to resist the perils that newer surroundings may offer.
Or maybe simulation is the way to go. Make a model of the human evolution process and run it on the latest Pentium pc. Set it to evolve humans in the context of the environment you want to adapt to. Wait a few minutes while the simulation software iterates, then use its results to genetically engineer your new civilization. Piece of cake!!!
Uhmm, a crazy idea here, we could take better care of this planet we live on, coexisting in harmony with nature and limiting the destructive impulses which have so far characterized our evolution, instead of going into the trouble of changing planetary zip codes and becoming an extraterrestrial species.
At least for the next 4 billion years, before the sun goes red giant and we all get fried…
On to the last question, would I be willing to go to a galaxy far, far away? Hey, just give me a blaster gun and I’m there.