Gregg Maryniak is the chief officer of the X PRIZE Foundation, an organization offering a $10 million prize to stimulate the creation of a new generation of launch vehicles. He has served as chief executive officer of the Space Studies Institute in Princeton, New Jersey and is one of the founders and faculty members of the International Space University.

He believes there are important psychological reasons for human space colonies.

Maryniak agrees with the Frederick Turner thesis -- America is shaped by the frontier experience. According to Maryniak, any students who are raised in lands that have been settled, such as American, Canadian and Australian students, are shaped by the idea of building a new frontier. "Their heritage of expanded frontiers gives them a psychological need to continue to expand," he said. In addition to our heritage's driving force to build new frontiers, Maryniak also believes humans can overcome limitations on Earth and gain religious and economic freedoms when they move to space.

Peter Kokh, president of Moon Miners' Manifesto, offered another view. "Every time humans have moved into a new habitat, they have had to do without some of the resources and tools and food sources and materials to which they were accustomed in their homeland and learn how to make do with a different set of resources, tools, plants and animals -- and often in a new climate." As a result, humans have learned a new way to be, and to give creative expression to human talents and aptitudes.

1.  To Secure a Future for Humanity
2. To Build a New Frontier
3. To Find New Energy Sources
4. To Build an Industrial Settlement On the Moon
5. Better Quality Images of the Universe and More of Them
6. The SETI Effort
7. Mining
8. Learning the History of Our Universe on the Moon
9. Environmental Benefits
10. Meeting the Challenge