The importance of having a frontier to American survival

For a long time, I have believed that one of the things that has made America great was the presence of the American Frontier. The western frontier was always a place that tested people and either made them better or killed them. It contributed to our "can do" attitude and led in large part to the American ingenuity that produced the great technology-based economy that we have today. I think that this contention gained support in the interview that Hugh Hewitt had with Robert Kaplan on Kaplan's new book Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military In The Air, At Sea, And On The Ground. Kaplan said that a lot of the best military personnel that he spoke with came from modern types of frontier environments (0ut in Alaska, from ranches and farms). If we lose those places then we lose the kind of tough-as-nails men that Kaplan is writing about. This is why I think it is so important that we have to get large numbers of people living and working in the new frontier of outer space ASAP. It is going to take time and it is going to be a very different type of frontier, but space is an unforgiving, zero mistakes allowed environment that will test people and, once again, either make them better or kill them. I've got expand on these ideas sometime soon!