Abandon Earth Or Die, Warns Hawking 973
siliconbits writes "According to famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, it's time to free ourselves from Mother Earth. 'I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space,' Hawking tells Big Think. 'It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load.'"
I've been trying.. (Score:2, Interesting)
..for as long as I can remember.
This is pretty much what I've been telling people (Score:5, Interesting)
We either leave this planet together, or we die on it divided. I think the greed inherent in human nature will prevent us from ever getting organized enough to leave this planet for another.
This actually kinda reminds me of a conversation we had last night....we watched the original V miniseries, and were talking about how stupid it was that they allowed the aliens into factories around the world simultaneously instead of just a factory or two at a time...but then, if they did that, countries would argue over who got to host them first. ::shakes head:: stupid human beings...
I submit this possibility (Score:5, Interesting)
Die. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not even practical (Score:5, Interesting)
Bacteria (Score:3, Interesting)
I think a more realistic plan would be to seed suitable planets with bacteria and just let evolution take care of the rest. Simpler lifeforms are much more resilient to extremes of temperature and atmosphere and are suitable for cryogenic storage for the long journeys. Animals higher up the evolutionary chain are too closely adapted to Earth to survive elsewhere really.
It doesn't matter... (Score:1, Interesting)
...the other planets don't want us.
Meh... (Score:3, Interesting)
Me thinks that the future of the human race is where we belong, here. We are probably thousands of years away from workable space travel. Perhaps we are stuck here for a reason, and perhaps this is an opportunity for all of us to start working out our issues and learn to live together with reasonable differences.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:5, Interesting)
The space race was sped up by the arms race between the USA and the USSR. Both just wanted to prove they were better.
But this isn't really "war" in the conventional sense is it? And it was the period during which the fastest and most impressive aerospace advances came. So it would seem that a good dickwaving competition is at least as good as an actual war.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:5, Interesting)
>>>I think the greed inherent in human nature will prevent us from ever getting organized enough to leave this planet for another.
In Robert's Heinlein's "Man Who Sold the Moon" it was greed that propelled humans to the Moon and Mars and outer planets. In fact that's pretty much true in every science fiction universe, even the utopian Star Trek. People don't do things for rational reasons like "we might go extinct" - they do them for personal gain, or a desire for a better life than the crappy one they have now.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:4, Interesting)
War is one impetus to evolve technology, but it's hardly the only one. Pure curiosity is one that would as well, just not when people are behaving in such a belligerent, greedy fashion as they do currently.
Other options (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like we could incrementally approach this goal by doing less-expensive, lower-risk things first, like colonizing harsh terrestrial environments (Ocean bottoms, antarctica, salt flats, sterile deserts, etc.).
If we can make a self-contained, self-sustaining colony on the earth, then our species is more robust (we can survive the loss of all the plants, for instance, or if we've colonized the ocean floor, we can survive when supervillains ignite the atmosphere), and we get some experience learning the ins and outs of closed ecosystems.
Once they work reliably, then we can add "in space" to the project description, with all the additional cost and complexity that implies.
No, you're right (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people, however, are likely to misunderstand your post because, quite simply, they don't even begin to appreciate how much energy it would require to colonise another planet, or how likely we would be to exterminate ourselves by destroying our atmosphere if we even diverted significant resources to putting lots of stuff outside it. Basically, between "let's get off Earth" and "oh look, space colony", they engage in lots of vague handwaving about nonexistent technologies, nonexistent methods of energy generation, and nonexistent materials, the ability to create any of which in great enough quantities would imply a civilisation that really wouldn't need to waste them on a colonial experiment.
Re:Not even practical (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, and cosmological timescales are so much larger than ours. If we wait another 10000 years then it'll go from 65.50 to 65.51 million years since the dinosaurs went extinct. There's nothing here that needs doing now or in the next ten or hundred or even thousand years. We could easily have spent another million years on the monkey stage, there's no reason to think we need to get off this rock the same cosmological millisecond we figure out how. We're much better off figuring how to head off killer asteroids and hope 12000 km of earth means someone will survive on the back side if we're hit by a massive gamma blast. And if shit happens in our solar system then the whole system may be FUBAR, it's not really until we have a habitable exoplanet that we have a real backup to earth.
Fulfill our destiny! (Score:5, Interesting)
What's wrong with dying? We all do it sooner or later as individuals. Why should the race last forever?
Because we may be the only chance for life on earth to spread to other planets, ... ever.
If we botch it this time, life may not have enough time to evolve another space faring civilisation. Think about it. Though doing nothing we may seal the fate for all of life.
We are part of a much larger ecosystem, without which we cannot survive. If we travel to the stars, so does life - which will continue to evolve.
If there is some great project humanity should try to tackle, it would be this.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky said it first. (Score:4, Interesting)
"The Earth is the cradle of mankind, but one cannot remain in the cradle forever."
- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935)
Re:I submit this possibility (Score:3, Interesting)
OK it's a fantastic improbability, but an alternative explanation in which you're both right has been posited by James P Hogan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giants_series [wikipedia.org]
Re:Where to, how? (Score:3, Interesting)
I fundamentally agree with single stage reusable, but I don't know if we should aim for doing that from Earth's surface. Earth is a deep gravity well and has an atmosphere which necessitates extra power to counteract atmospheric friction and extra power to carry the extra weight that comes with heat shielding. We should instead establish a space base in GSO [wikipedia.org], with space elevators and Earth-based railguns to get humans and materials up there, so we can then have an interplanetary spaceflight system between that and the moon and Mars, which don't have significant atmospheres and have comparatively weak gravity wells. In terms of fuel, getting to GSO is halfway to anywhere in the solar system, so this will let us use far less fuel than launching everything from Earth.
The one breakthrough we need to go even further than that, in my opinion, is effectively using hydrogen+hydrogen nuclear fusion as a fuel source. Then we could just establish our main base around Jupiter and stick a hose into the planet and voila, free fuel for everyone.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:4, Interesting)
Use electricity to create liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. No, really, it's just that simple.
Well, now you're moving the goalposts - first you ask about energy and then you blame it on lift capacity, which isn't the same thing at all. But the answer is equally simple - if we need that much lift capacity, we simply build that much lift capacity. As with energy, it's just an engineering problem.
The real problem has nothing to do with engineering, or cash, as many posters like to think. (Mostly because it lets them get their Twenty Minutes Hate in, using the current or past Administrations as the topic.) It's that there isn't anywhere to go in space. It's all about economics. Transport grows and prospers because it fills a need in moving people and goods from point A to point B, and in space there is no point B. (This is why the 'colonization of North America' and 'subsidize rockets like the government did railroads and airmail' models so beloved of space enthusiasts won't work.)
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if all of humanity was unified, we'd still die eventually if we stayed here. This planet has an expiration date. It's nice to pretend that if we were all hippies and lived like cavemen, that it'd last forever, but that isn't the case.
Unfortunately, everything you say is also true of the Universe as a whole. Eventually, heat death will mean that thought itself will become physically impossible. Is it possible to escape into other universes? Maybe. Does that mean we should forget about space travel and put all our efforts into figuring that out?
But wait a minute. Supposing we had descendants traveling around space a billion years from now. It is far from certain they would be recognizably human. They might not even be mammals.
So should we give up on the future?
I think the notion that we should explore space in preparation for abandoning the Earth is misguided. I have no doubt that people sincerely believe this, and I even recognize that interesting philosophical arguments can be made for it. For example, the idea we might have to move off the Earth prematurely because we'd fouled our own nest raises the question why we might survive in hostile space when we could not survive on the benign Earth. The answer might be that humans are not very good at dealing rationally with plenty, but we have our minds wonderfully concentrated by imminent death.
Even so, I think that it is somewhat unnatural to be all that concerned with the fate of the human race in the distant future. How many of us let our day to day actions be guided by a concern for humanity ten generations in the future, much less ten thousand?
The real reason to explore space is not for the extension of the human species' longevity, but for the maximization of human experience. Imagine human experience as a rectangle which sits on a two dimension axis. The X-axis is time, and the "escape Earth" position seeks to maximize the area of the rectangle by stretching it as wide as possible. I have no fundamental objection to this, but it should not be undertaken at the expense of the Y axis, which is the personal growth of individuals in any single generation. At some point humanity will be facing the end of its term and can rationally seek the extension of the species' lifespan, but that is not anytime soon. When that point comes, we will be best served by developing a culture which is creative, informed, and adventurous.
That's the real reason we want to explore space. Space exploration is an adventure both metaphorically and manifestly so. That it is a multi-generational adventure only makes it better. When we have lost the zest for exploration, we have lost the capacity to grow, and are running on the momentum of prior generations.
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think human longevity advances are the only way to "cure" this. Make it so that human lifetimes can span more than a few decades, and people will suddenly be *way* more interested in not pissing in our own nest. Even if only the very rich can afford it, they're the ones with all the power, so it would still help.
I know this has been said a thousand times, but.. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's our mess, we need to live with it. The planet is still *exceptionally* salvageable, in the lifetime of genX even. No matter how cool we make the spacecraft, they'll still need raw materials from time to time, which would still mean strip-mining another planet somewhere.
Also, and I'm a cold-hearted bastard for saying this (obviously), but I think Hawkings underestimates the value of going hiking, climbing a mountain, going surfing, rolling around on the beach under a blanket just after watching a sunset, etc. Would there be new activities avail in space? Sure, but if we can't "sustain" our environment when it has massive automated systems for cleaning our air, producing food, breaking down waste, cleaning water, etc...then what makes us think we'd do better in a metal can where we have to recreate all those systems ourselves? The Earth should never be left because it's not sustainable. If it should ever be left, it should be because we want to learn and explore. G-d, why can't we have pure motives.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, there's the ethical question then of whether or not this is justified when there could be other forms of life already there on the planets we've targeted with our life-form "bombs".
And besides, wouldn't you feel foolish if all we did was manage to evolve cockroaches and influenza everywhere? They suck enough here on Earth, let's not help them colonize other planets!
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:1, Interesting)
If history has shown us anything, it's that these things usually sort themselves out. Yes, some proaction is required, but only minimal.
Personal addage:
For example, it only takes the ironic timing of a recent disasterous deep-ocean drilling event to close off any new deep-well drilling leases that were going to be awarded. And, don't forget the added bonus of shoving a very large shoe in the mouth of every politician, lobbyist, and oil-industry spokesman claiming that we're using cutting-edge technology and that safety precautions are taken to the highest order. And, it highlights the current government and industry corruptions that regulations, or the lack thereof, have allowed to fester.
Don't let these distractions gloss over the fact that we haven't yet learned to live with the planet, rather than on it.
Re:No, you're right (Score:4, Interesting)
Farmers don't manually mix soil and humus on a daily basis. They don't spend huge amounts of energy aerating their soil. They just make sure that worms live happily in it, the worms increase at an exponential rate, and they do (most of) the work of tilling the soil. :-)
I think that if you approach the problems of space colonization from a point of view that you have to do it all by yourself, with only the available energy that you have when you start your Moon or Mars colony, that you're doing it wrong
Also I think developing a toolkit for space colonization is very intellectually stimulating and exciting.
There should be an X-prize for a solar cell production facility that operates only on sunlight.
And another one for finding lichens that (veeeeeery slowly) weather Lunar regolith.
And another one for airtight cement locally produced from excavated asteroid bits.
Etc. etc. (you get the idea).
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Why would I want to have my tax dollars on this."
Who gives a rat's ass where it gets YOU? How 'bout your DNA? How 'bout my DNA?
One fucking rock, coming out of nowhere, can obliterate the earth. That's all it takes. Forget the Mayan doomsday calendar, forget the Biblical doomsdayers, forget all the freak seers and predictors. Just look at (relatively) hard evidence from earth's geological history. Rocks fall on the earth, every day. Some get pretty big. Rarely a HUGE mother falls. As the millenia pass, the chances of the MOAR (you saw the Mother of All Bombs?) coming in just increases. We have one asteroid belt - nothing says there can't be two.
Sorry, but I've preached on this same subject before - here and elsewhere. Shit happens. Imagine if all human DNA had been on that "unsinkable" Titanic. In effect, that's what we have today. All human DNA is on one single ship - the earth.
If it meant that our grandchildren can go to the stars, I'd let 90% of this generation starve to death.
The generation that isn't willing to sacrifice for the next generations isn't worth saving anyway. Kinda like the United States and it's huge ass national debt.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:4, Interesting)
Well and good, but where do we get the energy to boost enough humans and tools into space to create a viable life-supporting ecosystem elsewhere? Hawking is a physicist, so I'm a bit surprised to hear him proposing something like this without explaining where the lift capacity is going to come from. There's a reason why Pan Am never began the orbital shuttle service depicted in 2001: A Space Odyssey (aside, of course, from the fact that they went out of business).
The most important reason why nothing like the Space Clipper was ever built is not due to the launch energy required. It is the cost of building and maintaining an incredibly complex vehicle. Even if the energy used to launch the Space Shuttle were free its launch cost would be virtually unchanged. It costs NASA 450 million dollars per launch, the cost of actual LH2/O2 fuel (not just energy) is on the order of 40 cents per kilogram (for example) so the total fuel cost is on the order of one million dollars (!).
The ticket price for the 30 passengers of the Space Clipper would be $30,000 or so if energy was the only cost, still quite steep compared to air travel, but nothing like the $15 million of the Space Shuttle launch bill.
Re:Why go up... (Score:3, Interesting)
Once you move off the continental shelf area, the ocean is in some ways far less hospitable than the surface of the Moon. You have tremendous pressures and have to go outside in some kind of environment suit. You can't grow your own food outside and there is no life to speak of.
Contrast this with the Moon, where low-pressure atmosphere in tunnels would provide almost unlimited living space.
Being in the ocean also wouldn't offer any protection against drastic seismic or impact events. While it was popular to think of the oceans as a vast toilet where anything we dumped would be recycled harmlessly, that is not really the case once you get beyond some pretty small quantities. This is mostly a result of a huge population - the ocean could absorb all we could throw at it in 1700 but not 2010. So habitats in the ocean aren't going to be immune to that either.
Add in the low gravity on the Moon, and it sounds like a really good starting point for an interplanetary or intersteller civilization.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:3, Interesting)
What nonsense! (Score:1, Interesting)
Human beings were not design to live in space. We need mother earth, we need a clean environment, we need biodiversity.
The solution is not to go to space, the solution is to save the earth. It's that simple.
And, BTW, if we've managed to trash the entire earth so comprehensively, what makes Mr. Hawking believe that we will not trash a space ship or a space colony?
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hawking is talking about self sustaining life without any support from the Earth. We are so far away from that it isn't even funny.
If we could seed a self-sustaining human colony on Mars, we could probably maintain life on Earth. A nuclear powered habitat underground or underwater, "City of Ember" style, would be easier than Mars or the Moon if for no other reason than we don't have to lift any mass out of our 11.2 m/s, atmosphere leaden, gravity well.
Some things we would need to figure out first:
1. A vastly more efficient heavy launch system. Quicklaunch is immediately promising in that regard. The squishy humans can take a chemical rocket, but the heavy stuff gets shot out of a cannon. A space elevator implies emerging mastery of nanotechnology, which would also have a high risk of mass human extinction (bio-terrorism, gray-goo, deadly nanopolution). Solid rocket boosters will never get us there with enough of our luggage.
2. A space station at L1. Shielding is tricky without the protection of the Earth's magnetic field but it is truly space, not like LEO. Hydroponics, asteroid capture for materials, solar and/or nuclear power, a linear motor launch system. It's feasible and asteroid capture could be immensely useful/profitable. Life support gases would be hard to maintain, even if capturing asteroids, but a heavy launch system would allow for a very large initial stock and multiple ultra-low loss gas barriers around the living quarters.
3. A moon base. It would be largely underground to avoid gamma rays and meteorites. Same setup as L1 but mining the moon rather than asteroids. Gravity is a blessing and a curse. The moon doesn't have the mineral content of certain asteroids and the mass is stuck at the bottom of a gravity well. Supposedly there is water, which is fantastic and worth a base all by itself. With no atmosphere and a big mass to push against, the moon makes a great site for a huge linear accelerator. It might be easier to orbit valuable asteroids around the moon rather than slowing them to a stop at L1 anyhow.
4. Finally Mars!!! By now we would have to have mastered building large structures in space. You'd need chip fabs in space, food and medical issues totally solved. A post-nuclear / nanotech apocalypse Earth should be looking rather hospitable around now...
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:2, Interesting)
Offtopic maybe but I need to post this; A pc with a streaming-capable connection is a receiver- so is any smartass cellphone. In Denmark, f.i., TV people push you to pay the radio/tv licence fee if you have a TV, and/or a radio, and/or a streaming-capable internet connection (64Kbps+), and/or a 'modern' cellphone.
So unless they ones in UK are complete morons no, you cannot get away without paying the TV licence. Unless you never allow them to peek into your space- but then again THz scanning is right around the corner, so good luck with that.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:3, Interesting)
Casualties are disproportionately among the young, who would otherwise be enjoying their most productive and creative years, with the old being destroyed only as an afterthought, if the enemy has the resources for overkill, if at all.
Similarly, in terms of material damage, any competent enemy is going to focus their limited resources on damaging the most valuable infrastructure first, leaving the junk for last, if at all.
By contrast, the processes of competitive pressure and controlled demolition, along with death by old age and age-related-ailments, tend to selectively pick off the outdated, inefficient, and old, quite the opposite pattern of war.