It was always the same with engineers, Stef had observed; nothing made them happier than to be given a well-defined and achievable task, and to be le… - Stephen Baxter

In the hearts of a hundred billion worlds
Across a trillion dying realities in a lethal multiverse—
In the chthonic silence—
All that could have been done had been done.
In peace and satisfaction, minds diffuse and antique submitted to the End Time.

But even the steady state, our best-hope future, may not be achievable without space.
Without power and materials from space we are doomed to shuffle a known—in fact diminishing—stockpile of resources around the planet. Some players get rich; others get poor. But it’s not even a zero-sum game; in the long term we are all losers.

It seems to me that the human race simply isn’t advanced enough yet to be able to trust any subset of itself with the power to run the lives of the rest.