Move to new planet, says Hawkin

[DoYouEverWonder]

30 November 2006

The human race must move to a star outside our solar system to protect the future of the species, physicist Professor Stephen Hawking has warned.

He told the BBC that life could be wiped out by a nuclear disaster or asteroid hitting the planet.

<snip>

He said there were no similar planets to earth in our solar system so man would "have to go to another star".

Prof Hawking said that current chemical and nuclear rockets were not adequate for taking colonists into space as they would mean a journey of 50,000 years.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6158855.stm


And how does he propose we get there?

[Deja Q]

1. Given it's from the BBC, he'd probably suggest a TARDIS...

[ms liberty]

8. I'd love to take a ride on the TARDIS...

One of my impossible dreams - I have a soft spot for the Tom Baker Doctor (he was my first); but the Jon Pertwee Doctor would do just fine. OK, OK - I'd take any one of them!

[AnnieBW]

75. I'll Take the David Tennant Doctor

I've taken to calling him "Doctor Woo-Who". He's a hottie!

[katinmn]

2. Humans would just wreck that, too, unless they stop hating.

[Hardrada]

3. I thought the Mars thing might have worked out.

We could haul lots of stuff to Mars and make it work can't we. Tell me, can't we??

[bluerum]

4. Yes but if the power goes out just once, we are all dead. nt

[Massacure]

6. Mars only has gravity that is about 1/3 that of Earths.

It wouldn't be able to keep an atmosphere as thick as Earth's and the lack of gravity would create interesting effects on humans.

[magellan]

18. The gov't has a plan to terraform Mars

Oh, sorry -- wrong Genesis Project.

:evilgrin:

[Javaman]

48. Hey I saw Total Recall, there is a whole alien martian civilization

waiting for us to screw with and ruin!

[Cleita]

9. Well, I thought we could let THEM go myself. Maybe then we

could rebuild this planet into the paradise it could be.

[Kutjara]

5. It's easy.

You just take a handful of dilithium crystals, chuck them into a warp drive thingy, recalibrate the EPS manifolds and wooosh! You're boldly going where noone has gone before.

It's true. I saw it on tv.

[calimary]

25. Don't forget the Level One Diagnostic before you start.

Excuse me. I have to report to Stellar Cartography.

[Xipe Totec]

7. Hey, Dubya, the 'B' Arch is ready for boarding... n/t

[Mythsaje]

10. Actually, using ramjets and "generation" ships

it may be possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

Or, likewise, the use of a "light sail" might also offer a possibility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail

Generation Ships

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship

[Tesha]

43. Ahh, Sci-Fi standard plot #12...

> Actually, using ramjets and "generation" ships
> it may be possible.

Ahh, Sci-Fi standard plot #12... ;)

The problem you run into is that shortly after we launch the
Generation Ships, the warp drive is invented and those folks
travelling by warp drive show up on the destination planet
about 49,300 years before the generation ships. Then, when
the generation ships finally arrive:

o They carry a weird disease that humanity no longer has
any immunity to,

o Khan Noonien Singh takes over the whole place, or

o The Generation Ships' passengers discover that
the warp drive people all wiped themselves out in a
cataclismic war 49,200 years ago

o Etc....

Tesha

[Tellurian]

11. It would be alot easier to send every registered Republican to another planet

wouldn't it?

Let the Middle East continue their infighting without our interference.

Convert from gasoline to bio-fuels.

Strict environmental enforcement of corporate polluters..

Voila! The planet regenerates itself and good to go for another million years.

anyone who doesn't like the program...theres a FREE ticket to up there, with your name on it!

[Tesha]

44. Republicans and telephone sanitizers, ehh? (NT)

[lumberjack_jeff]

54. Welcome to golgafrincham. Beware of the giant space goat.

[Nick Fallon]

74. Nah!!!

Better them extinct.

[ldf]

12. i lost a lot of respect for hawking

when, in an effort to explain an error in one of his theories, he brought in the ever poplular "infinite universes side by side" angle.

every action resulting in infinite responses, creating alternate universes, existing side by side.

and then there is the string theory, with a similar theory of universes side by side, occasionally touching at some point, all the while the universe is on a few feet across. or something like that.

garbage.

but hey, i made a d in high school chemistry. so, like I know what I'm talking about.

still, sometimes we seem to go to incredible lengths to overcomplicate things.

:shrug:

[TankLV]

82. Let's see: Steven Hawking, one of the most brilliant minds, on the one hand,

and then there's you - a complete and utter moron by comparison.

I think I'll trust Hawking's theories and pronouncements over yours...

And I AM trying my damnest to be rude and insulting to you, too, in case your simple mind was wondering...

[buddysmellgood]

13. Uhg. I have a hard enough time just dragging my but into work. Another planet?

[HeeBGBz]

14. I volunteer

Seriously.

[ashling]

15. No. I will not move again!

I have lived on both sides of the country and several other states. Every time I move I end up leaving stuff behind, like all my Beatles albumns, and furthermore I get to load all ot the furniture and unload it from the U-Haul/Ryder/Penske/Budget/SpaceShuttle myself.

I refuse to move again. Go ahead without me. I get all the stuff you leave behind.

[lumberjack_jeff]

60. ... and you can't borrow my truck either. n/t

[arcos]

16. I still don't understand why there is a need to "protect the future of the species"... nt

[RC]

20. Arrogance. Pure Human arrogance.

If we were not so arrogant, we would not be in the mess we are in now. To survive we need to learn to live in harmony with nature, not destroy it for short term gain.

[pokercat999]

37. Exactly, we would just destroy another planet. Only

by starting out where we are now (technologically) we could and would do it faster. I say "save the universe" let mankind die out on earth.

[RC]

38. Can you wait for a hundred or two years for this?

Give my kids a Chance to live a little.

[rmgarrette64]

70. I assume this is your last post, then?

The internet, after all, is not exactly a part of nature. The amount of electricty generated to run all these computers is not living in harmony with nature.

Ok, silly and trivial example. But I tend to react badly whenever I hear this "we need to learn to live in harmony with nature" comment. If you take that even remotely seriously, you're proposing the greatest mass murder in history. 5 billion people don't live in harmony with nature. If we lived naturally, you're proposing killing off 90% or more of our species. Probably a lot more, since I guarantee that 90% won't go quietly, and we're also looking at a war big enough to kill us all, and take a lot of other species with us when we go.

Of course, you probably don't mean it that seriously. Few people do. But there's also a reason that all of human history has been a race away from nature. It is, paradoxically enough, a trait of every species that we try to modify our environment to better suit ourselves. In other words, by nature, we try to change nature. We are very, very good at it. Now, we need to go even further. We don't need to try to abandon technology and live in some mythical harmony-of-death-and-destruction. We need to figure out how to manage the environment at a global level. We need, to be blunt, more technology, not less.

Really, there's no other alternative. We're not going to cut back on technology to the point that it means mass die-offs. The experience of countries that have adopted the Kyoto protocols shows that as a bankrupt approach (none of them are even approaching their goals.) We have to accept that this "natural" environment doesn't really exist - we usually just mean the state of nature that would exist if there was no mankind, after all, and that's not something I really want to see. So let's figure out how to change things deliberately.

Yeah, I'm a science fiction nut. But wild ideas can have technological backgrounds. Read Kim Stanley Robinson's X Mars trilogy for ideas. The science there tends to be fairly good, and none of the engineering feats are impossible. Just apply them to Earth instead of Mars (as I think was one of the subtext's of the book.)

OK, enough evangelization for now.

R. Garrett

[Tellurian]

78. Don't flatter yourself..

All you're propagating here is pure unsubstantiated BS..

The US is the biggest polluter of CO2 emissions at 33%..more than 2 to 3 times more than any other country in the world. Funny, huh? Your evangelizing didn't include the refusal of the US to sign the Kyoto protocols and refusing to accept responsibility for global warming..

[AlienGirl]

24. How about protecting the mountain gorillas and the condors?

Humans are the current best chance any Earth-based lifeform has for surviving past the next extinction-level event. Unless humans get out into space and reproduce Earthly life elsewhere, the gorillas and condors and elephants and parrots and whales and every other thing that is beautiful about this planet will die in whatever event--human-created or not--kills off the humans.

Shall we be the species that causes the great extinction, or shall we be what multiplies and saves this biosphere?

If Earth functions as a living organism, and all living organisms reproduce, who's to say that humans aren't the mechanism by which Earth is trying to reproduce? Wouldn't that be a worthwhile goal?

Tucker

[psychopomp]

32. Oh don't underestimate the lowly bacterium!

Humans are the current best chance any Earth-based lifeform has for surviving past the next extinction-level event.

I am surprised anybody thinks that, really. Once humans die off it will be up to the single-celled lifeforms to carry on... as it ever was!

[Solon]

81. Actually, that' s not necessarily true...

Quite a few scientists thinks the Earth already went through about 90% of its lifespan, if not more. Not to mention that Humans are more than capable of sterilizing the Surface and Oceans of the Earth many times over, killing ourselves in the process. The question isn't whether life could survive such a catastrophe, but whether COMPLEX LIFE will ever arise again, there may not be time for that.

[IntiRaymi]

33. Protect the Mandrils & Wild Hyenas instead!!!

[Solon]

73. Another thing is this, we could "abandon" the planet...

Not necessarily leaving the solar system, in fact, I'm sure humans will hang out in the Solar System for a LONG time. However, if humans have the means, maybe we should leave the planet and let it revert back to a pre-human state, with minimal interference on the planet itself. Turn it into a Park of sorts, where we are the "guardians" deflecting the errant dangerous asteroid and comet while inhabiting space colonies and such.

Thinking even further ahead, we can then take steps to engineer the solar system itself to ensure Earth survives things such as the Sun's red giant phase, and other catastrophes.

[bling bling]

79. Because we're nature's best chance to continue existing.

I think of all of the life forms including humans on this planet as the "parts" of nature and NATURE as the ultimate "whole" so to speak. The design of and seemingly ultimate purpose of the "parts" is to enhance the chances of their survival. As long as any of the "parts" are surviving, nature is surviving and life itself is surviving.

I think that nature will wipe out humans if humans threaten the survival for life (nature) itself. But right now I think that humans are nature's way of evolving enough for nature to survive even after our star burns out by transporting nature (namely: humans and maybe some of the other plants and animals) somewhere else in the universe.

And this is the reason why we would want to protect our species, why nature would want to protect our species -- not necessarily all of the species, but those who have something to offer nature in terms of prolonging its survival.

Anyway, that's my theory.

[PATRICK]

17. Hawkings and Einstein

Allow a man, whether movie star, religious leader or scientists famous justifiably and innovative in their field, to share their voice in broader areas of common interest. Unfortunately, people get ticked off when the idol starts invading other areas in less than godlike fashion.

Hawkings was also a jonhnny come lately(but most people are just getting it) to the implications of DNA manipulation and the inevitable self-evolution of homo sapiens. So who exactly will be on any kind of starship or capable of building one? Unlikely that it will be a member of this race of humans.

But anyway there is an easy answer, assuming anyway that it is utterly impossible to MOVE and evacuate earth but only build some kind of ark terrarium lifeboat. So who is "we" and what else goes along except in the shape of formulas and devices? WHY save any particular representatives for an unknown chance. Math and biology assume that millions of such seeds are ended for one possible success. Instead, scanning the stars for other races who could salvage the information necessary for creating a second earth ecology would be the easiest and most cost effective. Our particular atoms wouldn't make it into the recipe goal and who knows what another race out there, even the most sympathetic, would do with our contributions. If they were sane they might just humor us.

Terraforming Mars does not mean we can ever afford to evacuate there to rapidly aid population pressures. If even so, we would have TWO over-populated stressed planets almost instantaneously. Slow immigration means we would have two stressed planets shortly. Low gravity would destroy bone mass just for one effect learned by our brief forays. Mars does nothing to guarantee human survival except as a something to do to learn the next steps to whatever.

Fatalism: even the universe dies. If there is another escape clause why not find that instead of puddle jumping when the puddles are evaporating?

I find these ideas fun. I am not sure how Hawkings stated this but it probably was harmless musing outside the context(thanks to a sensationalist media interviewer?)to make points about stars and there relation to life. He's a popularizer and that is how we know him and his work so we shouldn't complain too much when he shares his ideas about philosophy(positivist sort of) and other science like other people talk about their hobbies or cars. Given how the media reported about the "alien rain" in India my first target of ridicule is never the scientist but the vapid, stupid media intermediary.

[bloom]

19. This isn't the first time that the media has reported him saying that.

A few months ago - it was the same thing.

I think it's a bad idea - him going around saying such things - because if anyone had any hope of saving this planet - then we don't need to go squandering resources and energy on plans that are essentially useless.

I think he's serious - I just don't think it's going to happen.

Really - I think if people were serious about saving the species - we should start working on how we can return to living like people did in the stone age or something. At least get lessons on living without electricity and cars and such - from people like the Amish.

And all stop eating meat. A serious and unnecessary waste of resources.

And figure out an economy that is not based on consumption.


You can see why he thinks it would be easier to leave. But I think his POV is representative of many people's unwillingness to appreciate the complexity of life - as if this could all be duplicated somewhere - or as if there is a similar planet waiting within reach.

[RC]

21. And if we find a livable world out there?

What of the life already there? Would there be "Human type intelligence" there? What of microbes, as in War of the Worlds?
We can't even take care of this world knowing we can't go anywhere else. What would we do to another world? The same thing we are doing to this world, for that is all we know.

[pitohui]

22. he's just shooting the breeze

civilization ain't lasted 50,000 years, we're not going to expend that on a rocketship full of stir crazy whacks -- and trust me, no matter how sane they were at day one of the journey, they'd be stir crazy whacks round about six months much less 50,000 years, this is how people in olden pre-teevee, telephone, and internet times could get cabin fever over a single winter

we're not made to be cooped up in tin cans

next question?

[Spider Jerusalem]

26. We're not made to live in cities, drive automobiles, or fly, either.

Our species is adapted by evolution to live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle; the relatively short five to seven thousand years or so since our ancestors figured out agriculture, started to build cities, and embarked on this whole project of so-called "civilisation", have had far less impact on our species than the tens and hundreds of thousands of years THEIR ancestors spent hunting mammoth on the Great European Plain, or foraging for fruits and berries in the jungles of Africa. And yet we live in cities, and drive cars, and work in offices at desks, and eat food that someone else has killed for us...and our descendants someday, assuming our species lasts that long, will probably find a way to journey across the galaxy. After all, if we were still doing what we were "made" to do, we'd be wearing skins, living in caves and eating raw meat.

[pitohui]

46. the metaphor is we're not made to live in high security prisons

which is what a space-faring generational ship would have to be, yes, people CAN and do, but why would anyone want to and what would be the point of transporting the kind of people they'd become into the stars?

[SquireJons]

35. I don't know...

The European explorers did OK, and they were gone for years at a time, stuck in a tiny wooden boat. You underestimate man kind. All we have to do is find people who can live for more than 50,000 years.

Piece of cake.

[pitohui]

45. you wouldn't be willing to live in a tin can for years, come on

yes, there are always a few people who can tolerate anything but for most people life in solitary or cooped up in a prison is a terrible punishment

50,000 years in a tin can is no different from 50,000 years in a prison

the kind of people who could survive that are not the kind of people we would want to become

you don't have to find individuals who can live for 50,000 years, rats in an experimental lab continue to breed even while they're tearing off each other's heads from overcrowding, people can get used to anything, i don't doubt we can live in hell if rats can, i just don't quite see the point of doing so

[NickB79]

67. Why do they have to be biological, awake, or even developed yet?

Some form of cryogenics is not impossible, allowing colonists to be frozen for the long trip until they reach their destination. Fertilized ovum in cryo and grown in artifical wombs by the ship's AI computer upon arrival is another possibility. Properly genetically engineered, human children could learn and grow at a much more advanced rate than children normally do. Cybernetic implants could assist them to learn, simply downloading information directly into their brains (the only teachers available would be the ship computers). Or, if nanotech finally takes off, humans could be "disassembled" here on Earth and their composition stored in the ship's computers, then "reassembled" by nanotech once the ship reaches it's destination. In all of these scenarios, humans don't have to endure the burden of 50,000 yrs in a generation ship.

This is all currently in the realm of sci-fi, but none of it couldn't be accomplished within the next century so long as we don't kill ourselves off by then.

[Crayson]

36. why ? you can always go outside...

and outside it's veeeery lonely.
Have a smoke and then you can go back inside and enjoy the crowded capsule again.
^_^

[pitohui]

47. well if you presume all interiority is bred out of people...

which you are probably correct, there is already a campaign to cast people who are introverted as nuts and serial killers, however, i think a people who are incapable of being alone are no longer individual members of the human race as we know it, they are the mob and the mob is not such a pleasant organism that it should go to the stars

another issue that arises is that, quite perversely for those planning such star trips, is that asperger's/nerdiness/math expertise is quite often linked with being what is considered anti-social, a need to be alone, introspection...so while they are busily selecting only the people who love to hobnob with the mob, they are selecting OUT the very people who could repair the ship and keep it on course should anything technical go wrong

[lumberjack_jeff]

61. Spreading life will be done by self-repairing robot ships...

carrying a genetic payload.

Scout the universe, find a suitable planet, establish plant life, then animal life then genetically adapted quasi-humans. Repeat.

[Solon]

72. First, the subjective time on the space ship may be a few years or even months...

If we are able to accelerate a starship to just a whisker below the speed of light, from an outside observer, yes it could take 20 years, 100 years, or whatever to get to the next solar system, however, on board the ship itself, it could be a few months, a year, or 5 years. That's relativity for you. Also, why do you keep referencing tin cans? Most designs for said starships involve habitation areas that are as large in square meters as most medium sized to large cities, hundreds of square meters of space, these would include agricultural areas, parks, etc. Hardly "tin cans".

[Odin2005]

23. I see the "we'll just trash that planet too" luddites have started thier usual rants...

...as usual when the topic of colonization comes up. :eyes:

[meganmonkey]

57. That's a bit of a stretch

from "we'll trash that planet too" to "luddite".

Considering how well we have trashed this planet, it seems like a logical conclusion, not an attack on technology or industry :shrug:

[IDemo]

27. Looks like Branson may help him (Hawking) get there:

Physicist Hawking may get lift from billionaire Branson.

British billionaire Richard Branson says he's sending over a medical officer to talk with physicist Stephen Hawking about getting him into space. That's how the founder of Virgin Galactic responded to Hawking's comment that "maybe Richard Branson will help" him achieve his long-held goal of reaching the final frontier, even though he's a quadriplegic who needs a blink-controlled computer to communicate.

Branson and other Virgin executives indicated today that if there's any way on earth to accommodate the good doctor-with-a-disability, they'll do it. And for practice, Hawking could conceivably experience weightlessness aboard a Zero Gravity Corp. plane as early as next year.

It would be one giant leap for the world's best-known physicist - and a powerful signal of support for other people with disabilities.

Hawking, who has been coping with a degenerative nerve disease for decades and now spends most of his waking hours in a high-tech wheelchair, is famous for his theoretical work on black holes and other space curiosities. He's also a major-league space geek, going so far as to play a virtual version of himself on "Star Trek: The Next Generation." For months he's been dropping hints about going beyond mere theorizing and play acting, by flying to the edge of space on one of Branson's yet-to-be-built suborbital spaceships.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2006/11/30/16569.aspx

[pitohui]

49. getting there isn't staying there

we can get to the arctic/antarctic as well but only a tiny fraction of the earth's population can successfully eat, live, and breed there

i would think it more practical to inhabit antarctica in a serious way before we can consider other planets, bearing in mind that rocket exhaust is another cause of atmospheric pollutants and too many of them will supposedly inevitably destroy the atmosphere/climate we've already got here on earth

it does little good to transport a few billionaires and buddies into space if the cost is the entire earth, indeed all this space travel will just help accelerate our doom down here from the look of it

[GoddessOfGuinness]

28. Gene Roddenberry knew how...

But seriously, moving to a new system will be pointless as long as we refuse to evolve. If we have the ability to get there, we would most certainly have the ability to destroy "there" as well.

I'm all for scientific research, but we need to develop our souls as much as our technology.

[pitohui]

50. oh for the love of pete

if we sit around waiting for human nature to change, we're never going to get anywhere, human nature hasn't changed in the last 10,000 years

we've wasted enough time and blood on trying to change people's "souls," you know, how many thousands of years of religions prattling about peace while advocating the crucifixion, mass murder, war, and bombings of one's neighbor do we have to endure?

[GoddessOfGuinness]

69. Yes, for the love of Pete, and everybody else, I'm not talking about religion.

I'm talking about evolution, on an emotional level.
Perhaps the internet is as good a place as any to start evolving beyond our personal notions of what a person means, and start actually listening to what they have to say.

Religion has relatively little, if anything, to do with the soul, my friend.

[Vidar]

29. If we had done it right, we would have a mining base & rocket

lauch facility for further space exploration on the moon already. Much cheaper to launch in 1/6 gravity.

[Blue_Tires]

30. i have a feeling that

this is where the super-rich will eventually go to build their utopia

[0rganism]

31. getting there really isn't the biggest problem...

Strangely enough, we're not far from having the means to achieve the near-light speeds necessary to cross interstellar distances within a single lifetime of a traveler. Space-time is actually very friendly when it comes to traveling long distances, thanks to time dilation. Frictionless and gravity-free, our descendents could really start doing this within a few hundred years.

The next major barrier is terraforming. I happen to think this one is pretty tricky, seeing as how we haven't yet found a way to patch up and protect the still-livable planet we started with. Nonetheless, let's suppose it can be done by the time we're ready to move on.

The biggest and ugliest problem we face is our own cultural (some say natural but I disagree) propensity to base our measures of success on exponentially-increasing levels of population growth and resource consumption. THAT will do us in eventually, wherever we go.

Let's say our planetary population increases 1% per year -- this is somewhat lower than the current growth rate, but let's go with it long-term. That means every 70 years, our population doubles. This is crucial to understanding the problem. So imagine we humans make a sensible evaluation of the carrying capacity of the planet, and we figure we've reached the halfway point -- in 70 years, the planet will be "full" of humans, whatever we decide that means. OK, that's pretty harsh news, but we have a couple generations to deal with it. Well, lo and behold, astronomers locate not one, but THREE, three perfectly decent earthlike planets, and by some miracle of alien technology, we can move in tomorrow.

So now we've effectively quadrupled the liebensraum for humanity. That's fantastic news! Pile three quarters of the population into the interstellar El Camino, and blammo! off we go. But there's one problem. How long will these four planets (3 new plus the original earth) last us, at our assumed growth rate? The answer is, just over 200 years -- and then we'd need four more fresh planets just to last another 70!

The answer, really the only workable answer, is to change our attitudes to comply with reality. If we can do that, we probably won't even need another planet or three.

[SquireJons]

34. Nuclear powered wheel chairs?

Just the thing for a country at war for generations.

But seriously, Bush should sigh up "Dark-Matter Man" before the terrorists do. Otherwise, distant stars might become safe havens for enemies of freedom. The "Universal Joint" of Evil, if you will.

But think of the possible benifits... An entire planet to despoil, no regulations, and if it's inhabited we can create a Galactic Free Trade Zone where the locals could be exploited for perhaps nothing at all. For this reason we should pick an underdeveloped world, so any conflict would be a 'cake walk,' just like Iraq.

[Eurobabe]

39. Why in the TRANSPORTER of course...

you know, from STNG??

Beam me up Scotty?

[catmandu57]

40. We can do this

Look at how technology has advanced, 1000 years ago our world was very small with few venturing out in wooden ships. We were emerging from a dark age, look at how far we've came in just that time, 1000 years is nothing, a blink of the eye.

You can't start out running, we've been crawling, learning how to stand on our feet, I'm confident that our decendants will be going to where we only dream of going. None of us will be around to see it, but men and women living in caves didn't have cars and cell phones either, we'll get there, it's for our children to do though.

[RebelOne]

41. Maybe we could get ourselves raptured to another star system. n/t

[Orsino]

42. We haven't left low Earth orbit in 34 years.

It's a little early to start planning interstellar migrations, when we've forgotten how to reach the Moon. Scraping together enough money and manpower to send a handful of people on a journey of a few days is beyond us.

While Hawking may be quite right about our long-term prospects on Earth, there's no intermediate payoff to keep humanity focused on colonization. The might not be enough people on Earth with the necessary foresight and patience.

It's more fun to squander resources right here, and when those run out, we won't be able to support a space program of any sort.

[KansDem]

51. OK, but I get the first McDonald's franchise!

When can we start cutting down the Brazilian-like rain forests?

edited to add...

[LanternWaste]

52. It seems that in the course of human history

It seems that in the course of human history, mankind's technological achievements have increased at an exponential rate, so I don't see this as being out of the question.

We're doing things today that were unthought of in context and form merely 50 years ago. 50 years ago, we were doing things that were unthought of 500 years ago and so on...

And it's not just in the hard sciences that we've made astounding leaps, but in culture, values and mores, also. The "freaks" of 100 years ago have become mainstream members of the world community (for the most part). Theory & philosophy on governments, business practices, religion, et. al have brought us closer and closer to a utopian dream.

Although I'm the first to admit that there are many, many who are still disenfranchised from the rest of society, I'm heartened that that number appears to steadily decrease as time goes by.

In the end, I think that although technological advances far out pace those of philosophical advances, we still continue to make progress in both. Enough to hope and dream that exploration and colonization of space may be reachable human goal.

Overall, I have faith in humanity. Specific humans? Not so much. But as a collective, I think we're doing a lot better than we could be, though worse than we could be doing also).

Ed-- spelling

[raccoon]

53. Astral projection, maybe? nt

[MasonJar]

55. Why should our species survive, when we have done nothing

but kill innocent, fellow species which had the misfortune to exist along side us?

[lumberjack_jeff]

59. there is every reason to believe that we're alone in the galaxy.

If life is something unique, and intelligence is even more unique, then there is a compelling reason to preserve it.

Paradoxically, what you are proposing to do is precisely nothing. Bringing life to a dispassionate and lifeless universe is an admirable goal.

[yurbud]

56. while everybody is laughing, his chair will probably blast off into space.

[shadowknows69]

63. No, wormhole generator

he'll just pop out where he sits. Pop in at Proxima Centauri.

[yurbud]

84. if you went through a wormhole, wouldn't your head implode?

[lumberjack_jeff]

58. I suggest "The millennial project : colonizing the galaxy in eight easy steps"

Faulty? Yes. Visionary, undoubtely.

Sadly, crazy people are often visionary, too.

I thought it was an excellent book. It captured my imagination, something I believe we could use more of.

[shadowknows69]

62. Yeh that stuff we knew Stephen

We're kind of counting on guys like you to figure out how.

[Yavin4]

64. Wouldn't Moving To Another Planet Make Us Illegal Alien Immigrants?

We'd be taking jobs that the native population won't do. What if they build a big wall around their planet?

[yurbud]

85. we should start digging our tunnel now. I've got some spare spoons...

[Phoonzang]

65. Not as far fetched as many think...

It's within our capability to spread humanity beyond the Earth, at least into the nearby solar system, right now if we wanted to. But it would cost money...alot of money. And no ones' willing to spend it. Better to spend money on building new aircraft carriers or B-2 bombers or other weapons systems. The powers that be won't put the billions in to space travel that they would need to. Who cares about people taking rides on "rocketships" when you need to worry about getting re-elected?

As for the will of the people..they don't care either. The idea of going to another planet is a joke to them. Because it's so "outlandish" it's not even worth considering. Talk of space is good for a little chuckle, but they just push those thoughts aside and go about their boring narrow lives. Better to spend your life looking at the ground only thinking of the immediate and the mundane. No, don't think about the future unless it has to do with what you're going to eat when you go home, and what new gadget you'll buy for Christmas, and what car you want to by next year. The small-mindedness and lack of imagination of people never fails to amaze me. Anything that seems outlandish....like say going to the moon, isn't worth consideration. Many times they aren't willing to look beyond their own stupid neighborhoods much less beyond the Earth.

People don't even realize the sheer size and complexity of the universe. They don't know the difference between a galaxy, a nebula, and a gas giant. They don't realize that they're living in a tiny region on an insignificant speck of a planet orbiting 1 star in a galaxy of hundreds of billions of stars in a universe with hundreds of billions of galaxies and possibly a multiverse with infinite universes.

Can you tell I'm a bit frustrated? I could go on a rant about luddites (technology bad!), scientific pessimists (we'll never do that, it's impossible), rare earthers (Earth is all there is and we're all alone) but I restrain myself.

PS- To answer the original question Hawking proposes that we use matter-anti matter propulsion for interstellar travel. If a ship were propelled to near the speed of light the journey to the nearest star would take 6-8 years but for the people on the ship it would seem like a few weeks. No need for generational ships or anything like that. Honestly I think Hawking is still being quite limited. Matter/anti-matter propulsion still is an overblown rocket. By the time we're able to do something like this we'll have probably developed new methods of propulsion. Its kind of like how people in the late 19th century thought we'd get to the moon by using balloons or a giant cannon.

[Algorem]

66. aliens-"there goes the neighborhood"

[Tight_rope]

68. Oh sure...Go gut & kill off another planet after we are done here on earth.

I swear...some days I'm just disgusted with the human race.

[jaybeat]

71. Sounds like the premise for "Earth 2"

The 1994-95 sci-fi series based on the premise that:

In 2192, human beings have left Earth, for the most part, to live on giant orbiting space stations. Earth has been environmentally devastated, and the only people left are miners and other poor laborers.

(Lots more at the http://umsa7.ums.edu/~anniebw/earth2/e2faq.html">Earth 2 FAQ.)

The show had some very interesting political overtones, including:

• Life on the stations was extremely controlled by an authoritarian government of ruling elites.
  
• As Earth was being abandoned, those who could not afford passage were given the "opportunity" to take out multi-generational loans, which decedents are still paying off over 100 years later. Many of those in the lower economic classes end up doing dangerous work in the hopes of not passing on their debt to their children.
  
• Despite having left Earth, the station government still fights wars there, presumably over resources. "Counter-insurgency tactics" (aka torture) are standard operating procedure in such conflicts. The "military-industrial complex" is extremely powerful within the government.
  
• Genetic engineering is used by elites to "skew" their children toward various professions, further widening class distinctions.
  
• "Criminals" (especially political ones) are used as the subjects of various cybernetic experiments, which often end in death, madness or uncontrollable violent behavior.
  
• The government goes to great length to find and either imprison, kill or exile so-called "Radical Biologists" who believe that humans need to be connected with a living environment in order to survive.
  
• Prisoners (political and otherwise) are shipped off to remote planets and left there to determine if the planets are suitable for colonization.
  
• A recent and fatal illness has begun affecting children, and while all signs point to the artificial environment of the stations as the cause, the government opposes any scientific work that supports this.
  
• Only the very wealthy have any chance of going against the government's wishes, and their efforts are still opposed by any and all means, including sabotage, espionage, and programming unsuspecting workers to act against the dissidents.
  
• The largest migration from Earth to the stations was nicknamed "The '84 Uplift." Presumably, that means 2084, a time by which, many real-life scientists and others believe, our Earth may be in a world of hurt, from global warming and fishing stock depletion to overpopulation, peak oil and wars fought over dwindling resources.

I wish Hawking and others with "big brains" would use their voices to condemn those who are accelerating our progress toward destroying our only Earth, rather than promote fantasies of "moving on" to other planets.

The world of Earth 2 was chillingly prophetic; we need them to help us reverse the trend, not to see it as inevitable and suggest that we somehow "move on."

[AnnieBW]

76. Hey, Another Earthie!

I wrote that FAQ many, many moons ago.

It's also the basis for "Firefly" - humanity moved out to the stars, but brought our problems with us.

[shadowknows69]

86. Firefly rocks

Browncoats forever!

[Megahurtz]

77. Oh great. We're going to invade another Planet now?

:+

[DoYouEverWonder]

80. Humans are the worst invasive species

on the planet. I'd really hate it if just go and muck up another planet.

[gulliver]

83. Hawking was just sucking up to Branson.

Hawking probably just wants to ride on one of Branson's space ships. If humanity goes to the stars physically, it will be as the pets of the creatures that supercede us.