As far as costs are concerned, I think that it's a matter of priorities. Eliminating hunger and poverty would require only a fraction of what is spent on military expenditures on this planet in one year. If we took just half of the military budget of the United States alone and applied it to space research, I'm sure that a viable rocket propulsion system could be developed within our lifetime. There would also be enough money to build a fully functioning orbiting space station, part of which could be used as an assembly factory. Who knows, with fully-funded research in many disciplines geared towards living in space and on another planet, it would finally make economic sense to set up a self-sufficient base station on Mars, probably by using a multiple shot approach.

I'm not imparting any new information here. I'm sure that everyone on this board has heard these arguments before. But with the world economy in the state it's in now, I'm not surprised that space research budgets have been cut to the bone.