Hawking: It's Space Or Bust For Humanity

[Canid117]

Jesus Christ, I know. I don't think you people are getting my point. I was simply agreeing that it truly is Space or Bust for Humanity. EVEN IF we didn't nuke ourselves into oblivion. EVEN IF we managed to live in peace. I understand the Sun can maintain itself for BILLIONS of years still. No matter what happens in the hundreds or thousands or millions of years, for the survival of the species and life on Earth we would have to leave eventually.

True but thats a loooong ways off.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Well if we do figure out a fast way to travel space, we always could just leave the milkey way when the sun explodes but that is still millions of years off.

Billions, actually.

ya know what I meant.

Technically, you're still correct.

 

[randomsix]

And Hawking again proves why he's the man.
But really, this idea should be pretty obvious. Wars and bombs keep getting bigger, and the Earth can only scrub the fallout so quickly.

 

[Alar]

I'd really like to start having it in my lifetime... hell, I'd settle for colonies on the moon or in orbit of Earth.

Please?

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

So the physicist is giving a lecture on humanity. Maybe he should stick to the whole going to space part and not worry about what the rest of us do.

How is he "giving a lecture on humanity"? He just reinforced stated obvious stuff that most already know.
Oh, and, btw, physicists are, undoubtedly, among the smartest people on Earth so to stop them from applying their knowledge in any other sphere of human life is just wrong.
In other wrods, the guy is saying smart, if a little too obvious things, and you're reprimanding him for it.

 

[knight steel]

Yeah space travel seems like our only option but there's just a few problems that will make it nearly impossible:http://www.cracked.com/article_18547_6-reasons-space-travel-will-always-suck.html

 

[Jared]

What he says does make alot of sense. With population expansion, and also with the resource situation we will need to leave Earth one day, to spread to the stars.

The sooner we can put all our resources towards that goal, the better

 

[Evilsanta]

Asalways what Hawking says make alot of sense. I do hope that we will have some kind of space travel and/or a colony on an other planet before we nuke ourselves.

 

[jspheonix]

I don't think we HAVE to go into space, I just think as a species we need to grow up. There are always going to be problems but I think space is a stretch, we need to find habitable reachable planets first, as well as solar/fusion powered engines to get us there. As for the sun stuff people are putting up... lets be realistic, the species is having trouble making it through the next 200 years, let alone billions, and we would have most certainly evolved into something else or be extinct.

 

[mad825]

wait! the earth environment is already stable? with a approx of 8 billion people and an expect 9 billion before the end of this century and we are already facing troubles which could alter our very daily lives as there isn't enough resources to go round due to the limited amount space on earth, it is very unlikly that this earth is going to support 15 billion when the time comes.

 

[Flamezdudes]

...says the guy who's basically nothing but a voice in a wheelchair...

Oh, don't be so ignorant.

I agree entirely with Hawking on this, but i think that it's going to be insanely difficult for humanity to last another 200 years without fucking shit up. If we do, then WOO HOO!

 

[Eagle Est1986]

Everyone listen to Hawking! And put me on the first ship outta here! Damn shame it's gonna take us so long to be able to do the distances required to colonise another planet.

 

[imnot]

finally a scientist (sort of) who is doing something more useful than say, making robots that can dance.

You people keep worrying about the sun.

I am more likely worried for the fact were are straight into a collision course with the Andromeda system.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070529091407.htm

Yes, there I said it. We are going to die, EITHER WAY if we stick in the Milky Way. Savvy?

The Andromeda Nebula is a galaxy, and the odds of our solar system being destroyed are pretty slim. Watching Andromeda move ever closer to the Milky Way be one hell of a spectacle though.

Pretty slim? I would say pretty inevitable. Now I agree this process will take billion of years before we are actually caught up in a danger but still, we ARE going to go fusionw with this thing. Even if we survived that long enough and made world peace, if we cannot bail from this entire system. Well...I don't know what to say. Rock on!

mabey we could avoid it by doing a galactic barrel roll?

 

[similar.squirrel]

Agreed. There's no way this planet is going to be able to sustain us, the way we're going now.

 

[Player 2]

Well if we do figure out a fast way to travel space, we always could just leave the milkey way when the sun explodes but that is still millions of years off.

Billions, actually.

ya know what I meant.

But what are you going to do after you've left? All the other stars will be dying as well.

 

[johnman]

So where do we spread out to? Sure you can have faster than light travel, but there nowhere for us to go with it. A colony on Mars wont last without supplies from Earth and we have no idea where a easily habitable planet is, and space is a fucking massive place.

 

[johnman]

You people keep worrying about the sun.

I am more likely worried for the fact were are straight into a collision course with the Andromeda system.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070529091407.htm

Yes, there I said it. We are going to die, EITHER WAY if we stick in the Milky Way. Savvy?

The Andromeda Nebula is a galaxy, and the odds of our solar system being destroyed are pretty slim. Watching Andromeda move ever closer to the Milky Way be one hell of a spectacle though.

OT: I'm tempted to say "no shit," but I have a bit more respect for Hawking than that. It's pretty obvious that we must leave Earth at some point, and I'd rather that be now than later. Besides, it's not as though the technology needed to colonize the Moon, or even Mars didn't exist, it would just cost a metric fuckton of money.

According to that article life on Earth will be pretty much screwed by that time anyway, what with the sun getting hotter and boiling the worlds oceans.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Charles Stross recently made a great blog post on this subject.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/08/space-cadets.html

Basically, it's not clear how large a system you need to support human civilization. We don't know how to build biospheres from scratch yet, and indeed there's worryingly little research being done on the topic (which may become a screamingly important priority in another half century, if the most pessimistic climate change projections are accurate). We can make a rough back-of-the-envelope guess at the size of human population it takes ? given abundant raw materials and a favourable biosphere ? to maintain a technological civilization; it's many orders of magnitude larger than the proponents of Heinlein's nostrum that "specialization is for insects" may be comfortable with.

It may be way too expensive to have any meaningful human population living in space, detached from earth. He argues that ideas left over from the colonisation of America have dominated thoughts about expansion into space too much giving us highly unrealistic beliefs of what is possible in the "final frontier" of space.

There is another speculative future that comes from traditions like Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men which describes humanity radically changing several times in order to survive. The species might first have to radically change to survive on this planet. Even more radical changes might be needed to live in space.

I think that not making this planet uninhabitable for us is a less scary option.