10,000 is not 'mass migration'. Space can offer boons to earth - but mostly if a asteroid mining business takes off and just dumps materials in the sea. You don't need mass habitats in space for that. A few overseers and support staff at most, sure. Then robots do the rest, at least until splashdown.
The Von Braun paragrim of space is dead. Man in space in any mass capacity is dead. There is no need for explorers, colonizers, barely soldiers. Some scientists, some docs, many engineers; yes. But to think Space will ever be more than akin to oil rigs or Antarctica is dead. There of course is always the potential for national dick waving and commercial interests to heat up, for warfare to arise, and thus why I said 'barely soldiers', but even that is rare. And will most likely be drones, laser sats, ramming sats, ground based laser arrays and so on than any manned cruisers fighting each other.
Earth is our home and our grave, and will be for 99,9999% of the billions who are alive now and will be, and thus earnestly deserves 99% of the global gdp. Space can make do with a percent or less. A select few will go to Mars, maybe, if we're lucky, will go on a HOPE mission or two, a few dozen or hundred on Lunar engineering and scientific outposts and floating above in LEO-GEO to the belt.
As for the rich in space - lol, no. Fuck them. They're a waste, they're not pressing anything. Governments with yearly budgets bigger than any corpo will push space advancement. No corpo is going to snag a rock for ARM or recovery. No corpo will by its own volition land people on the Moon, or even get a space hotel up. They've been yakking about that for forty years and zilch. Anyone who believes Spaceship will fly tourists around the Moon anytime soon needs to stop buying bridges. Here's hoping the FCC shoots that down and snags spaceship solely for scientific and national missions. The rich need to be put in their place.
And the sooner the USA gets out of its libertarian lite BS of commercial space, the better.
