What do you think will happen? I think space settlement seems pretty interesting, though I can't really decide on its likelihood. Space settlement, it seems to me, would also cause humanity to branch off into separate species, since the requirements for life in space are different than on Earth.
With growing population and technology, the future's pretty much open for anything, assuming we don't blow ourselves up too soon.
Poster #35, GRB does indeed mean a Gamma Ray Burst.
As for corporations "saving" their CxOs from certain doom ... let's not forget that they'd have to come up with the infrastructure to even achieve such a thing. There is NO infrastructure for living in space. None. (Our space stations cannot serve as long-term living environments.) That "invention margin" represents a large risk that such a save probably won't succeed. On top of that, these corporations would only be gearing up to save the LEAST CAPABLE of Humankind. It'd be like putting people like George Bush, Paris Hilton, Leona Helmsley, Martha Stewart and other elitists on an island (an airless, irradiated and rocky one at that) like some sort of twisted version of "Survivor". These are not survivors! They are used to being SERVED by the REAL survivor classes -- the working men and women of America. Said working folk will largely not be going up on the post-NW lifters. That's just another large risk of failure.
On top of all THAT, what the corporations and governments can come up with on their own is not a survivable set to reform Humanity from the remainder. Like I said originally, elitist survival attempts will only work for so long, before a really strong extinction event comes along and wipes out the largely inbred survivors from the last event.
The only thing that will ensure continuation of the Human species unto the Heat Death of the universe (or whatever the End of Everything really is -- see the wiki on the subject) is getting large numbers of Humans off the Earth as Step One of a multi-step plan. That will ensure that a minimum Human civilization base will be planted as a seed in the solar system in order to form Step Two: development of a Human interplanetary civilization. (Note my implied Step Zero: Human planetary civilization ... which is still debatable since it's so unsustainable! However, we DID achieve Step Zero for the interim, since it does allow us to achieve Step One if we so desire it.)
Once Humans are established as an interplanetary race, the race is invulnerable to planetary events like a single asteroid strike or GRB-atmosphere effect. However, Humanity would still be vulnerable to Sol-based and higher-GRB/supernovae-based threats. Remaining solely within Sol's system is not a survivable option for aging with the universe. True, it does essentially and automatically give at least 1 billion years of survival over at most 100 million on the Earth. But even that will end. A super-GRB or nearby supernovae will put an end to Step Two.
To ensure Humanity survives with the aging of the universe, it must take Step Three: seeking of interstellar transportation systems. By then -- and again, if they put their minds to it -- Humans should have found a way to stop all aspects of the aging process. That will help immensely if interstellar transportation remains a centuries-long effort for each hop. Even then, there is a way to reduce passenger-subjective time to a certain or practical minimum by creating relativistic slingers and catchers at each source and destination star. These extreme linear accelerators will be millions of miles long and use enormous stores of energy to sling payloads up to 99%+ of lightspeed ... while the energy load can be recaptured at the catcher when it decelerates the payload. It'll still take 4.3 years to get to Alpha Centauri, but the passengers need only experience several months of that time due to time dilation effects.
Once Humans figure out how to use the resources of a solar system to establish interstellar transportation systems, they merely have to do what they do best: be fruitful and multiply. That's Step Four. Then, even a supernova within the Milky Way can't kill Humanity. The only things then that could kill the race would be:
1. Hyper-GRB ... an event in the core of our galaxy or between certain hypermasses causes such a strong burst of radiation that tens of thousands of lightyears are sterilized
2. War ... where one part of Humanity (or another spacefaring race) tries to kill off Humanity.
3. End of the Universe ... some scenario which involves contraction or dissolution of all matter in the universe.
4. Vacuum Phase Change ... which might happen if our current vacuum is NOT at its lowest energy state.
We can do something about #1 since we can use relativistic effects to get out of the Milky Way; using 1g constant acceleration, a ship can reach the Andromeda galaxy (2M LY) in about 30 years, ship time. True, I'm hard pressed to imagine a propulsion system that could produce 1g for 30 years. But imagine a linear accelerator that is extremely large -- the length of several diameters of a solar system. Inside the launch area of this Intergalactic Launcher is another accelerator (like one of the then-standard ones used to toss payloads from star to star), packed for compression of length, also packed with fuel for itself to operate, and finally packed with a payload of a Human colony. This huge package would be whipped towards Andromeda at .99c or more. When the package gets inside Andromeda suitably near a target star, it unpacks the accelerator, charges it with the fuel, and then fires itself in reverse to the vector of initial motion. This would put the payload (the colony) at a dead stop (with adjustments) in Andromeda, and will sent the accelerator onward on the original vector but at an even higher energy. The new colony could then proceed (using assumed long-lived Humans) to the nearest star and then restart the star-jumping process anew.
We can do something about #2 by placing Humans far and wide so that warfare would be unable to find all the Humans. Given the hugeness of interstellar distances and the even more enormous volumes they outline, this shouldn't be too difficult. As they say in war: "don't bunch up".
We can't do anything about #3 and #4. If the end of the universe dissolves matter itself, we will quite simply go out with it. The phase change (unlikely, but possible) will be much worse, since we'll never see it coming (as it immediately follows any light wave it produced) and will be much less able to stop it or adjust to it since it will involve a basic change to spacetime.