Though it’s more likely that in the future, very few will care what is claimed to be responsible- there will a multitude of stories. And in final analysis, ISS is as good as any.
Opening the space frontier could be like a rain cloud forming.

In the future perhaps ISS will also be claimed to start a world government and/or governments in space. The UN by such time could seen as League of Nation.
It seems to me that if there are nations in space, we will get earth government but not until such time.

At the moment to me, in terms opening the space frontier, the skies appear quite clear and there no accurate weather forecast.
Clouds do appear, but when it rains is it going light drizzle, or Noah’s flood?

Now, why could ISS be seen in the future as the starting of the opening of the space frontier, the beginning of governments in space and the formation of Earth’s world government?

Other than farce, how could have anything to do with reality?
A very simple answer could be it continued during a time in which the space frontier opened, and perhaps ISS will still exist by the year 2100.
Another simple answer could be the ISS “beginnings” could be said to have started before the end of the Cold war. And because space will seen as important in the future, few will understand how unimportant space was at the turn of 21 century. Because space is both very important and also utterly unimportant.
The only reason we do not have colonies on the Moon and Mars is due to space not being regarded as important. Which is a mind boggling idea, even at the present time, and would be more outlandish to anyone in the future which is say, living on the Moon.

The other reason ISS could regarding as important is because it is an activity in which nations on earth are involved, and it could be that eventually China could become involved. And additional nations also could join. ISS has a chance of “growing” in the future, it’s possible that even if ISS fell out of sky tomorrow that in future it will seen as significant.
ISS has already taken the step towards having commercial launch providers resupply it. That is huge step in terms of NASA “evolution”. And it result of such steps will probably not be erased
if ISS fell out of the sky tomorrow.
I see other aspects regarding ISS which could be “hopeful”:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=28619.0
And find this organization possible being hopeful:
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2012/04/casis-finally-d.html

ISS will not be important because of it’s hardware. It will important because it’s possiblity of forming “social organization”. And could a part of why it rains.

If you already have a large carrier aircraft available, like the StratoLaunch aircraft or a used 747-400 aircraft (costing $15-million), then air launch of an SSTO is much easier than ground launch of an SSTO.

Ground launch of an SSTO lowers your engine Isp by as much as 10%, because you have to design an engine with a lower expansion ratio for sea level flight. This can be almost a 1,000 m/s delta V penalty for ground launch SSTO versus the 10% higher expansion ratios of air launch SSTOs. Air launch SSTO payloads are potentially 50% to 100% higher than ground launch SSTOs because of their higher engine expansion ratios.

The only thing missing for an air launch SSTO is a high-performance/high-thrust reusable upper stage engine, but it appears that the SpaceX Raptor engine and the XCOR/ULA LH2 upper stage engine will provide this breakthrough.

I think that StratoLaunch and XCOR are waiting to get their 1st generation vehicles into service by 2016, and then they will announce orbital air launched SSTOs that will be operational after 2020. The market for these vehicles and their perceived technical risks will look different by 2016.

~Jon

Anom,
A stratolaunch-launched SSTO would be 95% as difficult as a regular SSTO, if not more (because of the complications of air-launch). The energy gained from the plane is nill compared to getting to orbit.

That said, it’ll be interesting to see what concepts do come out of them when they feel they’re ready to start working on orbital systems. I’d be surprised if it were an air-launched SSTO personally, even with Dan’s previous work on the topic. But we’ll see when they’re ready to start talking about next steps.

~Jon

Having an industrial society on a 0.38g world is what will open up the solar system.

Private property pays for the whole thing.