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Stephen Hawking: Human Survival Depends on Space Exploration
- losethos 15y agoI played with this: http://www.losethos.com/images/Machine.jpg http://www.losethos.com/images/Machine.jpg http://www.losethos.com/images/SoapCarvings.jpg http://www.losethos.com/images/SoapCarvings.jpg I played with this: http://www.losethos.com/files/SimStrSetup.exe http://www.losethos.com/files/SimStrSetup.exe I played with this: http://www.losethos.com http://www.losethos.com I've done my hearts desire all I want. God says... C:\LoseThos\www.losethos.com\text\BIBLE.TXT He shall surely be put to death. 21:6 And the children of Israel repented them for Benjamin their brother, and said, There is one tribe cut off from Israel this day. 21:7 How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing we have sworn by the LORD that we will not give them of our daughters to wives? 21:8 And they said, What one is there of the tribes of Israel that came not up to Mizpeh to the LORD? And, behold, there came none to the camp from Jabeshgilead to the assembly. 21:9 For the
- jphackworth 15y agoSpace exploration is like selling off your stocks during a tech bubble: it's obvious it needs to happen sometime, but it's really hard to figure out when the right time is. Unfortunately, that means for-profit organizations underinvest. This is one of those cases where it really does make sense for government to encourage the sector with investment, although it seems like X-prize-type systems might work better than NASA-type systems.
- leak 15y agoFalse. Humans are, by default, gonna fuck shit up. I don't care what planet we end up on. We're going to destroy ourselves before the lack of resources destroys us. That's just me tho.
- iwwr 15y agoThe point being, space expansion would prevent the sudden eradication of the human technological culture. Politicians, warmongers, prophets and priests will continue to fuck things up, but distributed redundancy means not everything is destroyed at once.
- leak 15y agoI'm not sure why I'm being downvoted. Anyways, who says Earth created "Politicians, warmongers, prophets and priests, etc.."? Kids fight among themselves without any of these lovely things to help them. As does everything in the living world.
- chc 15y agoYou're being downvoted because you missed the point and continue to do so. Nobody said that earth created those things, or that going into space would somehow make us more compassionate. The point is that being spread out across interplanetary distances reduces the need for bad people to take truly drastic measures, and mitigates the damage that any particular disaster can do. Even if we a madman managed to blow up the entire world, as long as he can't do so to every world that humans are inhabiting simultaneously, humanity will live on.
- geon 15y ago...which is exactly why we need to spread out. Dont put all the eggs in the same basket, etc.
- Rastafarian 15y agoOn the other side, while we're on one planet we can fix ourself. But once spread across the stars ... wars, fanatical religions, police states, etc. may stay with us forever.
- kooshball 15y ago> we can fix ourself looking at the history of the human race, it seems unlikely we'll ever "fix ourself". > wars, fanatical religions, police states, etc. may stay with us forever. if anything i believe the wars, fanatical religions will stay with us forever since they're a part of human nature. regardless of which planet we're on.
- Rastafarian 15y agoCivilization changes human nature. The same way our civilization produces dogs, caws, sheep, etc. it also changed us into a less aggressive, more cooperative being with way way way higher self control. EDIT: I can give you countless examples. Compare the human reactions in developing countries with those of say a London native. You'll see that just a few centuries of life in big cities have given Englishmen incredible manners and self control.
- tsotha 15y agoOh yes, we saw that over the summer.
- calebmpeterson 15y agoA good point. The question then is "does civilization change human nature itself or just the contract between members of said society?" Extreme circumstances seem to break the social contract of a civilization and reveal that human nature didn't change much if at all.
- Peaker 15y agoLand exploration lead to having many different kingdoms, which scaled wars up from inter-tribal wars to inter-kingdom wars. Later, world wars. Space exploration will scale wars up from inter-continental world wars, to inter-world wars, which are much more massive.
- PedroCandeias 15y agoRight now I'm sitting in Portugal, Europe, typing this on a laptop which was designed in America and manufactured in China. And we're not at war with one another at the moment. I believe there may have been a few consequences to exploration that were far nicer than war, trade chief among them.
- koolkelso 15y agoNot only that, if we've become advanced enough to finally decide we should genuinely spend our efforts on exploring space, by then perhaps a humanistic consciousness could have emerged rendering war irrelevant.
- Peaker 15y agoSure, there are times of peace, and there are times of war. But history tells us there likely will be wars.
- geon 15y agoInterplanetary warfare would be extremely resource intensive. You can't very easily occupy a planet.
- tsotha 15y agoJust getting an army from one planet to another would be ruinously expensive. Also, without some big leap in propulsion technology it's going to take something like a year for the invasion force to arrive. That gives the defender a whole lot of time to think about how he's going to respond and prepare accordingly.
- atarian 15y ago"People are like dung. When they're all together they smell really bad, but if you spread them out they fertilize the land." Forgot who the author of that quote was..
- shrikant 15y agoI've heard this about money - "Money is like manure. If you spread it around it does a lot of good. But if you pile it up in one place it stinks like hell." See http://www.quotecosmos.com/quotes/27137/view http://www.quotecosmos.com/quotes/27137/view.
- PedroCandeias 15y agoI agree with Hawking. But we need to understand why space exploration isn't happening and what's being done about it. Space exploration is different from earlier forms of exploration because the technological and financial requirements are a couple orders of magnitude higher than they have ever been. Also, we have yet to find natural resources up in space which would justify the expense of mining them. That's why it isn't happening at the pace some people expected after Apollo. But with the latest developments in orbital tourism, and a world population that's generally wealthier than it's ever been, tech and financial huddles will fall in time.
- andyl 15y agoNo. If we can't make it work here on earth, where we have everything we need, how are we going to make it work somewhere else? Before going into the galaxy, we have to fix ourselves and our society. And we can do it.
- zeteo 15y ago> Before going into the galaxy, we have to fix ourselves and our society Space exploration, i.e. NASA, takes up 0.6% of the federal budget, and decreasing. The Great Society programs, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, take up 54% and increasing. So, be happy: as a society, we've decided that an extra 1% on grandma's pension is worth more than a Moon colony and humans on Mars (quite likely to have been achieved with double the space exploration budget).
- Rastafarian 15y agoYou've made an interesting point, but budget is a very poor measure of effort. Grandpa's pension mostly circulates on Earth, while NASA budget throws extremely hard to design and produce stuff into space.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- highriseo 15y agoI don't think you can argue that the money that NASA spends does not circulate here on earth, NASA spends all there money on things like salary materials and other services that all exist here on earth. Sure its largely a different sector than grandma's pension gets spent on but it still positively impacts our economy.
- bff 15y agoNot really - a lot of the technology that NASA builds ends up being used in other areas, from materials science to computer engineering.
- Rastafarian 15y agoIs his new TV show worth watching?
- tsotha 15y agoHawking is wrong. The population isn't "growing exponentially". In fact, it's set to level off mid-century and start decreasing. We're not going to just keep growing like bacteria until we all die. Having said that, let me say a large extinction event is certainly possible - we may have barely dodged one in the late 1800s: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/has-the-earth-come-close-to-ending-in-recent-centuries/ http://www.theblaze.com/stories/has-the-earth-come-close-to-... But to plan for something like that we would be better off tunneling into the earth than trying to colonize Mars. The other planets will never be hospitable to human life, and there's no point in bothering with them until we have the technology we need to make the colonies independent. We're a long, long way from that, and sending more rockets to the moon doesn't get us any closer.
- moe 15y agoIn fact, it's set to level off mid-century and start decreasing. Have these kind of predictions ever worked out? Last time I checked there would always be an unanticipated war or invention to ruin the beautiful projections...
- loganfrederick 15y agoDo elaborate on how war or inventions will make more babies? It's something I've certainly thought about quite a bit and would love to study more in the future, but the parent post was correct: The population in developed countries will be declining if there are no significant changes in how life longevity or increased birthrates (which can be affected by a lot of factors). For more information: Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Scott Burns (2004). The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need to Know about America's Economic Future'. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-11286. Description and chapter-preview links, p. vii. The Age Curve: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FAge-Curve-Profit-Coming-Demographic%2Fdp%2F0814401813&ei=REDITpDFEMW4tgeR6az6Cw&usg=AFQjCNH_FHspko0wd3fub_IoJRO0y3XuDQ&sig2=x4FSUTSHc5Z2WWmPTV4CCA http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&#...
- moe 15y ago
- TechNewb 15y agoConstellation should be restarted.
- alexwolfe 15y agoUnfortunately colonization with conventional spaceflight is not realistic. It would be far easier and exponentially cheaper to try to colonize the dessert than any moon or planet in our solar system. However, if we can figure out a way to travel very quickly without the use of fossil fuels than things start to get interesting.
- ew 15y agoEven at the speed of light the closest potential planets we could colonize at 4.5 years away. Now think about communication. Telling your parent's "hi" would take 4.5 years in either direction, even if we could ensure the signal gets back.
- bnegreve 15y agoHowever, I believe a large global and unrealistic goal such as space colonization would help people to get along.
- talkthetalk 15y agoTalk is cheap. We are pretty clear on what is required for space exploration on that level. How about he stops talking about it and instead comes up with the physics required for such endeavors: - Hyper drive/Warp drive or any other faster-than-light drives. - Shield generators providing the equivalent of 100km of atmosphere. - Sub-space communication devices or some other faster-than-light communication technology. - Inertial dampeners. IE gravity/anti-gravity generators. - Fuel and power generating devices to run the above technology. and so on
- pyrhho 15y agoA feasible cold-sleep system would solve a lot of these. As it means it matters a lot less how long it takes to get somewhere. I was reading "A Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge the other day, and his portrayal of that was pretty good. Basically on a long trip the crew cycles being awake and "on watch". So there are always some people awake to deal with problems, but everyone only has to expend a year or two of their lifespan on the trip. (As an aside, great book)
- ew 15y agoOther than Mars, any future humans living on any "M" class planets that we discover will be one-way, multi-generational trips. Unless we can travel instantaneously throughout the universe, exploration is pretty pointless since it'll literally take decades (in each direction) to communicate with our colonies, never mind bringing resources back to Earth. Either we're never leaving, a few brave souls leave, or we're all leaving. Really there's little incentive to leave unless the rest of your life, and your grandchildren's, and their children's lives are that much better off aboard a space ship than they are on Earth. Hawking also recently stated that if we ever met "aliens" they would almost certainly be aggressive toward us, which I disagree with. Hawking definitely doesn't give much credit to the human race, or any other potentially intelligent life forms. Unless instantaneous travel is possible (which it probably is, but not anytime soon), us and any other form of intelligent life in the universe are in the same boat.
- pagejim 15y agoIt is a great worry for me, that we have stopped looking out into the space with the kind of fascination that we used to. Unfortunately, most of the world's wealth and technology is somehow taking (pushing) us to our own end. With Nuclear weapons seeing ever more proliferation and irreversible climate change knocking on our doors, I feel that we might just not end up with enough time to save ourselves from Mass extinction.
- thornad 15y agoUnless we learn to live harmoniously with each other on this planet, why should we expand to other planets ? To perpetuate the same cycle of justified violence on ourselves and everything else? Look what happened to the Native Americans and all other indigenous populations, cultures, countries, when people brainwashed by a culture of greed and religiously, scientifically (eugenics), and more recently 'humanitarianlly' justified violence got in there to take their resources. Is this way of life worth preserving? Maybe there is something better, maybe a self-sustaining, thriving way of life that is in harmony with nature and doesn't need continuous conquering, colonization, resource raping and pillaging in order to be maintained would be worth exploring first, before we think about jumping ship? Maybe all this apocalyptic stuff is all BS, and it is just a sign we need to change something in the way we live, rather than we need to jump ship? The problem is some people would like us to not change at all, or to change such that they can maintain or even increase their power and privileges (see carbon tax scam). This is where the problem lies. The only thing we need right now is to wake up and separate wheat from chaff, inquire into ourselves, find our own truth of who we are and what we are doing here, and reject all theories imposed by any so called 'authority'. Forget about space exploration for now, it's just another distraction. Inner (and outer) truth is what we need right now.
- mkr-hn 15y agoYour comment sounds like a wordier version of "we should stop exploring space and solve all the problems on Earth." It doesn't sound any more compelling when you use more words to say it. We can continue to push our boundaries while working on improving things.
- thornad 15y agoNope, I'm not saying anyhting against space exploration. On the contrary. I actually did work as a contractor for NASA, and it was a dream of mine to work there. But I do have a problem with going there as an escape from the mess we can't face at home, and to rob and pillage some more - a pattern so common to our culture.
- jodrellblank 15y ago
- johno215 15y agoGood (but long) video of why NASA's goal should be colonization. http://vimeo.com/24260744 http://vimeo.com/24260744
- agentgt 15y agoAs a whole civilization is getting better. We are becoming less violent, less aggressive and more educated then ever. As the author of freakanomics says "Its amazing statistically how many people 'Do the right thing.'". Its also discouraging how Hawking does not back any of this with charts or numbers or something that would be convincing. I have to wonder if Hawking's agenda and outlook are from his own "selfish desires". Certainly there are more achievable options then the immense challenges of space. Like underground infrastructure or mass gene therapy that allows immense intelligence for all (think Limitless for all). Also have you noticed that most "dynasties" do not go out like a light switch. Its a very slow decline. Examples: Romans, Ottoman Empire, the Dinosaurs various music artists and athletic teams. I am betting that humanity will end in a slow boring decline.
- Lagged2Death 15y agoI'd like to cheer for Hawking's position, but I find the opposing view really convincing: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high-frontier-redux.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high...
- mostlyListening 15y agoThe problem with making predictions about a complex system (nonlinear system) like human civilization is that there are so many factors and variables that can affect the trajectory that accurate prediction is virtually impossible. You would think that, of all people, a physicist would appreciate that and thus refrain from making strong claims about the future trajectory of such a system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect http://necsi.edu/research/overview/prediction.html http://necsi.edu/research/overview/prediction.html