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Hawking Says Humans Must Go Into Space
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Tue Jun 13, 2006 01:03 PM
from the purple-belly-push dept.
from the purple-belly-push dept.
neutralino writes "The Associated Press reports that astrophysicist Stephen Hawking wants humans to establish colonies in space in order to ensure the survival of the human race. At a news conference in Hong Kong, Hawking said that 'It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species. Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.'"
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Stephen Hawking Receives Copley Medal 118 comments
smooth wombat writes "Stephen Hawking, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, has been awarded the Royal Society's 275th Copley medal for his contribution to cosmology and theoretical physics. Other notables to receive the award, established by Stephen Gray in 1731 'For his new Electrical Experiments', include Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur and Albert Einstein. In his remarks, Professor Hawking reiterated his previous comments that man must colonize other planets. The medal presented to Professor Hawking was sent into space onboard Space Shuttle Discovery and spent some time on the International Space Station in July of this year. Hawking has expressed an interest in going into space and commented, 'My next goal is to go into space, maybe Richard Branson will help me.'"
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The Impossibility of Colonizing the Galaxy 979 comments
OriginalArlen writes "The science fiction writer Charlie Stross has written an excellent and comprehensive explanation of why, thousands of SF books, movies, and games notwithstanding, human colonization of other star systems is impossible. Although interstellar colonization seems common-sensical to many, Charlie makes a clear-headed and unarguable case, so far as I can see, that it ain't gonna happen without a 'magic wand' or two. Nevertheless it would be interesting to see reasoned responses from the community who believe that colonization is not merely possible, but inevitable — and even, as Hawking has said, vital for the survival of the species. So, who's right — Hawking or Stross?"
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Right now? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Right now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Right now? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Right now? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Right now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm just a Star Trek geek (and if I am, not I'm not a particularly good one... I haven't memorized any episodes or anything like that and it was only yesterday that I got the joke of Data telling Scotty, "...it is... green...") but the idea of a world where things like money are obsolete? A simply amazing thing. There are people like that from time to time such as Nikola Tesla... he wanted to give the world free power, but J.P.Morgan put a stop to that pretty quickly. There's always someone ready to shamelessly stand in the way of mankind to make a buck.
Given that we seem bent on such things as placing the value of a dollar above the hunger of our neighbors, do we really deserve to be able to infest the rest of the universe?
Re:Right now? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Right now? (Score:4, Insightful)
In time of emergency or extenuating circumstances, this can be necessary. In the real world it's illegal to disobey the instructions of a police officer, and I presume the same law applies to obeying military officers too.
The only civilian space transport ever shown is on federation vehicles, at the discretion of the federation. No federation civilian-owned space (or even stratospheric) vehicles are portrayed.
In DS9, Kasidy Yates (Sisko's girlfriend/wife) was a civilian freighter captain who at one point was a convey leison officer between a convoy of civilian freighters and starfleet. In TNG, when Worf's mother brought Alexander to stay with him on the Enterprise, she mentioned how she got on a transport to get there. It is unlikely that the wife of a retired enlisted cheif petty officer would be given privlidges to use starfleet vessels for personal travel across the galaxy, so it was likely a civilian or commercial transport.
No private corporations are ever shown
In the TNG episode "Family", Picard was asked by his friend Louis to leave Starfleet and join a civilian project for terraforming the ocean floor. Picard's family also owns a vinyard. Sisko's father owns a restaurant. Ezri Dax's family owns some kind of mining operation.
Contrary to your assertion, I don't believe any election is ever portrayed.
During the changling crisis on earth, the Federation president wishes he had never entered his name onto the ballot for the office.
No civilian media organizations are ever shown
There were several mentions of a "Federation News Service" during DS9, something I imagine would be analogous to the AP.
No legal civilian energy weapons are ever shown (in fact, civilians appear not even to be allowed to have blades!) - yet starfleet personnel are rarely without a powerful sidearm
Well, first off the Star Trek universe is supposed to be idealic where civilians didn't need to be armed. However, Guinan did own a phaser rifle of some kind. About owning blades, if you're refering to Worf disarming Okana in TNG episode "The Outrageous Okona", it seems a resonable precaution to not allow armed civilians to roam around a starfleet vessel.
There appears to be no such thing as privacy, except for high-ranking Starfleet officers. The federation appears to have massive databases containing all known information on everyone, used liberally by Starfleet.
Starfleet is a branch of the government, so it makes sense that they'd have access to government data banks. If the FBI wanted to to a background check on you, how much information do you think they could dig up in various databases? Hell, how much information do you think you could dig up about a person on the internet?
Actual buying and selling appear to be officially prohibited (Picard didn't even understand the concept of "investment"!), reducing trade to barter and trading bars of latinum on the black market
The economy of the federation is a matter of protracted discussion, but doesn't exclude the possibility of some kind of modified socialism that actually works. Just because we can't think of how it could work, doesn't mean it can't (Kinda like Warp Drive).
In at least one case, a civilian is tried by a court with a Starfleet judge!
You'll need to be more specific of where that happened. However, if a person commited a criminal act against the military or government, I'm sure there's some kind of legal precident where they're tried in a military tribunal as an enemy combatant or something along those lines.
The most prestigious jobs in the federation appear to be starfleet offices Dr. Bashir talked about how he was offered a position in a civilian hospital in Paris by his girlfriend's father.
I can't think of examples right now, but the point is that there is sufficient evidence that the Federation is
The United Federation of Planets (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it isn't. The Federation is run by the Vulcan shadow government.
Think about the situation at the time the Vulcans first contacted Earth. They've had their schism with the Romulans and have fought wars with them, and had the worse of it; and now there are Klingons prowling the dark places of the galaxy. Now the Vulcans contact a planet that's just developed warp technology. A planet full of creatures with a horrific record of murder and mayhem, who are capable of justifying the same to themselves in terms of 'pro patria mori' and similar bullshit, who could easily be a terror on the galaxy to make even the Klingons fear... but who are at a very impressionable stage...
Bingo! The Vulcans, in a paternal, imperialist sort of way, take Earth under their wing. They help humans build better starships, they advise and guide. In time, they join with Earth to form the United Federation of Planets. Coincidentally, the enemies of the Earth are the same as the enemies of the Vulcans... How did something like that happen?
So now the Romulans and the Klingons are kept off the Vulcans' backs by Starfleet. By the mighty space navy of the United Federation of Planets. A fleet of ships built at Mars, crewed almost entirely by humans from Earth, now guards a planet of decadent philosophers who are free to pursue their ideals of pure logic and reason. Humans fight and die in huge numbers for the protection of Vulcan. And every Starfleet ship we've ever seen has a single Vulcan, as a highly-ranked officer but not as captain... remember how Soviet ships used to have a 'political officer' to make sure the captain didn't do anything ideologically unsound? Yeah.
And whenever we see Starfleet command, the concentration of pointy ears is so much higher, don't you notice? Oh yes. It's all humans on the front line, but back at base it's all green-blooded bastards.
The entire Federation is a sham, concocted and perpetuated by the Vulcans for their own cowardly ends. Deal with it.
Re:Right now? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Right now? (Score:5, Funny)
The irony is (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The irony is (Score:5, Funny)
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Re:The irony is (Score:5, Insightful)
Me personally, I'm a big fan of humanity. I don't quite get the whole nihilistic "humanity sucks, boo hoo hoo" thing. If that's what you really believe, that we're all so terrible, go eat a gun -- you won't be much missed. I don't think I'm alone here when I say I really like what we've gotten going over the past few trillion years, and I'd like to see it continue for another trillion or so, the rest of the universe be damned.
In addition, there are a bunch of other species of non-human animals that I'd like to see get taken along for the ride off this rock before the sun burns out. (Mosquitos, however, are a no-go.)
Re:The irony is (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, what they're really saying is "humanity sucks, except for me".
Re:I doubt it. (Score:5, Interesting)
But there are ways we could end up sterilizing the galaxy, by creating Berserkers [wikipedia.org]; self-replicating machines that either deliberately or accidentally sterilize all life. Odds are that if any such machines are actually created, unlike the stories that the term comes from, they'll actually win, and once established they can't be displaced.
Berserkers are one of the interesting aspects of the Fermi Paradox; is the solution to the Paradox that some dumb-asses actually did create Berserkers that come and wipe out all civilizations as soon as they attract attention? Is our high-tech doombot even now winging its way here at nearly the speed of light?
In more recent fiction, the Replicators of Stargate SG-1 are updated versions of the Saberhagen berserkers, designed with a better understanding of computers and more magical technology, but otherwise almost indistinguishable from the Saberhagen variety. (Saberhagen even had some berserkers that masqueraded as humans at some points, and used time travel, which Stargate hasn't gotten around to, mercifully, though I couldn't tell you why.)
In other words, while on Earth the "Gray Goo" scenario is implausible due to energy requirements and simple thermodynamics, the Galactic "Grey Goo" scenario has no such restrictions.
Re:I doubt it. (Score:5, Insightful)
But, for some reason, that doesn't happen...
Every wondered WHY something was more or less fit than something else? It simply has to do with resource efficiency. You can't just go gung-ho in one single direction, such as non-stop reproduction, and expect to be successful... otherwise there would be organisms NOW that don't stop reproducing to take a breath. If the evolutionary system doedn't spend teh energy to balance the forces, focusing in required measure on health, defense, resource allocation and rationing, it will be quickly over taken by an organism that does.
The grey goo spends all it's time making more grey goo.... thus very little time developing defenses against the things that would love to either make a meal of them (everything is edible to someone, various iron metabolizing microbes are hungrily waiting to meet the micromachines at the bottom of the ocean) or build a house out of it, nor does it spend any time building feedback systems to make sure that it is expanding in a direction that won't leave it stranded in a dead end (like expanding directly down a hole and then unable to expand back out because it's own dead little corpses are blocking the exit), etc.
Grey goo, on Earth today, would quickly discover that attepting to compete with an system with a 4.5 billion history of winnter-take-all-no-holds-barred-free-for-all evolutionary deathmatch is not quite as easy as it may have first thought, and that's before the humans even begin to notice.
Re:Poor solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Good. It's called "drive." It fuels things like space exploration. Unlike our navel-contemplating planet co-squatters in the East, our "God" is outside us, above us, and we're forever (hopefully forever) building towers and spaceships to meet Him. Works for me, just fine.
It's the itchy, unsatisfied sacroliliac of some impotent balding outside-looking 40ish engineer today that will -- again, hopefully -- lead to my daughter finding herself working on Mars thirty years from now.
"Woot!" to Professor Hawking, sez I.
"Woot!" to his nurse, too...
Re:Poor solution (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be too damn busy and tired to notice that I was miserable, or even wonder if there was any other way to be.
I'll take my slot in the rat race, thank-you-very-much.
Re:Poor solution (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sick to death of people romanticizing the past. Far from being an idyllic life full of good health and hearty laughs, it was, for the average person, a grim and miserable existence by modern standards. Poor health and toothaches were the norm, mixed with a variety of concerns about how this season's dry weather was going to allow the family to survive the winter.
We have it pretty good. Our concerns and stresses about getting ahead in the rat race are a damned sight more tolerable than last century's stresses about simply staying alive.
Re:Poor solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Poor solution (Score:5, Funny)
One of the worst posts I've ever seen (Score:5, Funny)
Fly over urban metropolises and you'll see pus and grime coming out of them, a haze of brown tinges their atmosphere.
But from my SUV the sun is dimmed to a pleasant orange color.
People shuttle to and fro in their daily lives, consuming as much as their salaries will allow. They justify this as acceptable in the "spirit of capitalism". It's "acceptable" to spend all that money on crap you don't need, because everybody else has it, or "it's cool".
But aren't you free to reject these ideas. People would gravitate to better alternatives. It is hard to beat Nascar on my plasma HD and a six pack of beer
Then most of these blobs will be told they need to hurry up there too, so that they can meet that quota, and then by the time you're 40, bald, and more or less impotent, you say: "My God! I've arrived!" And you look around and realize that not much changed, and you feel a big let down, you feel deceived, as if there was some hoax played on you.
This is a victim's thinking. Are you having a midlife crisis? Try buying a red sports car.
If you're interested about what I said here, please know that it was basically all taken from the words of Alan Watts [wikipedia.org], the 20th century's best and little known-about philosopher and interpreter of Eastern religions.
Sounds kinda creepy to me, like Heaven's Gate. If you haven't noticed a lot of people from the far east are highly motivated by US style consumerism. You can only meditate so much I guess.
Re:Poor solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I was brought up on sci-fi stories and used to think that we would colonise the stars someday. I no longer think this is possible. Even a moonbase I regard as highly unlikely and the idea of living on Mars for me belongs to 1950's style sci-fi. To me, sadly, the future of mankind looks more like NOLA post-Katrina than Star Trek. But every culture and civilisation has it's fantasies and dreams and these are ours.
Re:The irony is (Score:5, Insightful)
If these are all problems of being human, then the problem is humans. We need to do the galaxy a favor and protect the galaxy from humans.
Only if you care about the future of humanity... (Score:3, Insightful)
We must search for intelligent life (Score:3, Funny)
Although seriously, everyone still living on earth makes for a giant single point of failure. But my ping time is going to suck if I start gaming from the moon.
Hawking demands it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hawking demands it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hawking demands it! -further elaboration (Score:5, Funny)
"Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature."
Life == humans? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those can provide us with a LOT of experience at a lesser risk. If animals die in space (or maybe even bacteria) people will probably make a small fuzz but forget it quickly. If humans die in space it could mean the end of the space project.
Once we establish a solid base, and knowledge about building a new colonie we can send humans...??
Re:Life == humans? (Score:5, Funny)
Why should the species survive? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because the universe doesn't care either way. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because a hardwired, nihilistic, self-destructive (self, including species as self) outlook wouldn't have allowed us to get this far, genetically. The very traits that allow us to nurture offspring that take years to develop simply require us to look at the big picture, and to cherish the future. And to make that more workable, we develop cultures that are built around generational continuity and hope. Anything less than that is a sort of cultural insanity and requires a truly loony willing suspension of disbelief (see 70-virgins-if-I-blow-myself-up-in-a-Zbarro, childish "rapture" fantasies, and related examples).
We're generally wired to get a warm and fuzzy feeling from passing along our culture and protecting our little broods. Remove that, and you're not going to have people, as a whole, living out a "good" life.
Reaching out to or making other livable environments (as in, off-world) is just as rational as clearing the bear out of the cave you need to shelter your tribe. Just as rational as using that bear's hide to keep your little naked ape-like offspring warm through the ice age. It's silly to ask if we "deserve" to survive... survival is deserved by rationally taking advantage of the fact that we exist at all. There is no meaning in anything, otherwise. Since we make the meaning in our lives, we decide if we're worth surving or not. The universe doesn't give a crap one way or the other.
Another star system? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like his solution isn't necessarily based on developing habitats in the solar system (though he did say moon and Mars were the first steps). This seems like an ultra-long term scenario for which the technology doesn't even exist yet. It's almost like he's saying the Earth is screwed, so let's get off this hunk of rock. I think, considering we could be here for a very very long time, the better solution is to develop technology or philosophies dedicated to helping us live where we are. Can't just give up on Earth...we have no other options no matter how many sci-fi shows we watch.
Just one problem among many. (Score:5, Funny)
How are we going to take cows into space? We need cows for steaks and dairy (milk, cheese and ice cream).
They have spacesuits for man. Could they make a spacesuit for a cow? A cowsuit?
Re:Just one problem among many. (Score:5, Funny)
A spacesuit is what you wear when you are in space. A cowsuit...?!
What about.. (Score:3, Funny)
Postponing the Inevitable (Score:3, Interesting)
yes (Score:3, Insightful)
and as weapons become more and more powerful, it will take smaller and smaller groups of people to do more and more damage
until the truly scary it is achieved: it is not inconceivable that at some future date, just one committed nihilistic person could unleash something which could wipe out most of humanity, and at the very least destroy civilization
this could be via genetics or nanotechnology or something weirder and not yet discovered
so indeed, the best way to safeguard from such people is to live in far flung locations, such that a disaster, manmade or not, in one location can lead to recolonization by the other location
hawking is 100% right, it really is in mankind's best interest to take out a survival insurance policy and get our asses into space in a self-sustainable manner
i would give us a century or two to achieve this goal, and with serendity and luck, we will get into space before the statistical inevitability of that one demonic person appearing making their vile mark on the world by killing most of us
Space is not the escape (Score:5, Funny)
ObBabylon5: (Score:5, Insightful)
Reporter: "After all that you've just gone through, I have to ask you the same question a lot of people back home are asking about space these days. Is it worth it? Should we just pull back, forget the whole thing as a bad idea, and take care of our own problems, at home?"
Sinclair: "No. We have to stay here, and there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics - and you'll get ten different answers. But there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on: whether it happens in a hundred years, or a thousand years, or a million years, eventually our sun will grow cold, and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us, it'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-tsu, Einstein, Maruputo, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes - all of this. All of this was for nothing, unless we go to the stars."
I'm tired of a lot of the viewpoints here (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it isn't feasible to go to space now, but if we, as a species, come together to pool our resources to create interstellar travel or indeed any kind of feasible, long-term space flight, we could just pull it off in a few generations. Things like cancer research, AIDS research, and research into creating more efficient and environmentally-friendly ways of life would all continue on while the project is underway; The world wouldn't stand still for a few centuries while such a project is put in motion. In fact, it could be considered as top priority in the research required for such a thing, since in order for a colony to be sustainable, it must have a higher standard of health than we've ever known, and it must be composed almost entirely of renewable resources. It would require a renewable source of food, a renewable power source, renewable water sources, a renewable source of oxygen, a renewable crew (both robotic and human), military/policing forces, skilled workers, a large surplus of parts and materials to fashion new parts, sufficient fuel to reach its projected destination (preferably with excess), medical services, entertainment services, and so on. It would have to be, in and of itself, capable of functioning as a country on Earth might, with the added disadvantage of the inability to perform trade (and so requiring a mass surplus of supplies).
I think Hawking is one of the greatest people of our time, and I also think that he's dead-on about this particular issue. However, I also think that wider-scale marine colonization would probably be a better place to start this venture than the Moon or Mars. If we can successfully live day-to-day life in an underwater environment for extended periods of time, with high degrees of external pressure, then it's entirely possible to live in space, where the opposite is true. The preparations for such space travel are right here on Earth; We just need to use it, and I'm sure the extra habitable space wouldn't go unused.
A cosmic disaster, a virus, a global war OR... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:avoidance (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:avoidance (Score:5, Insightful)
People will stay on Earth, and try to fix it's problems, and other people will go to various colonies and start fresh, and perhaps differently there. That way if any one spot gets whacked by a huge rock, or any other disaster you care to think of, not all of us will be killed. There will be some left somewhere to continue the species.
Re:avoidance (Score:5, Funny)
Re:avoidance (Score:3, Insightful)
Hawking isn't saying "Earth's toast, let's go screw someplace else up." He is saying that we don't want to put all our eggs in one basket. Let's have a backup Earth somew
Re:avoidance (Score:5, Insightful)
Bollocks. Space offers us an unlimited future. As soon as anyone can exist in space, we have that limited backup (sort of). As soon as we can build, garden, live and breed in space, then we have that unlimited future.
The problems people cite as reasons not to explore have always been with us, read Tacitus, Sun Tzu or the Hammurabi column for proof. The "Fix us first" crowd wants Utopia on Earth. There is no such thing, unless you can stamp out human nature. If their arguments won out, we'd still be clubbing antelope in Africa, "Oh, no, don't walk north, you might stub your toe."
Space is our future. Lead, follow or get out of the way. The meek shall inherit the Earth, the rest of us are going to the stars. Earth is the cradle of civilization, but one cannot live in a cradle forever . Ad Astra, etc, etc.
Josh
Re:Ahh, yes, this always works so well (Score:5, Insightful)
And what part of wanting your offspring (or theirs, etc) to actually live and carry on your culture is "altruistic?" For most of us, that's exactly the opposite. It's completely, rationally seflish. We want what we build to last and improve. And you don't build large systems without redundancy, that's all. And the thirst for some adventure and a challenge is hardly "altruism." You want altruism? That would be killing yourself to free up some resources for somebody else so they don't have to work as hard. Except, a fat lot of good that does if a giant meteor smacks into your resources.
Re:Perhaps we need to accept species death... (Score:4, Insightful)
the same factors that lead to it destroying the Earth and/or human life thereon might well lead to the same outcome in our planetary colonies.
yes, but not all at the same time. think of life on a larger scale. instead of there being hundreds of countries, there are hundreds of colonies. some may destroy themselves. some won't. new ones will be founded. no problem.