Human Survival Depends On Space Exploration, Says Hawking 438
thomst writes "The Winnipeg Free Press posts a story by Cassandra Szklarski of the Canadian Press about an email interview with Stephen Hawking in which the astrophysicist and geek hero opines, 'Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain lurking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space.' The story also covers the upcoming Canadian debut of Hawking's new TV series 'Brave New World With Stephen Hawking,' and his excitement about ongoing work at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ont. investigating quantum theory and gravity."
Space ninjas (Score:5, Insightful)
So he wants us to explore space, but not talk to aliens [slashdot.org].
Looks like he dyed his hair.
Re:Space ninjas (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if he would just get off of his butt and work a bit harder, maybe he can figure out this gravity nonsense and come up with a way to work around it.
Then we can talk about getting off this rock.
Ball's in your court, Stevie.
Re:Space ninjas (Score:4, Insightful)
Without gravity, we'd die. That's only part of what kills me about the whole manned space settlement concept. I love reading sci-fi where we live on lot's of planets and in space stations, but the fact is we're made of meat grown in a biological soup unique to Earth.
So, here's what it take to populate the galaxy. First, you need patience. If you have a problem taking a few hundred years getting from place to place, you'll never make it. Second, you need to be made for deep space. Rather than meat, you need a body made of high-tech materials. Instead of a worrying about radiation damage, you should feel comfortable living near a radiation source that can power you trip from star to star. You should work well at liquid nitrogen temperatures to well above boiling. You should be able to shut down and go into sleep mode for many years at a time, cooling as low as 3 degrees Kelvin. In other words, it's not us meat-based creatures that will populate the galaxy, but the machines we create. Probably some sexy decedent of Siri. I hope she doesn't turn out to be a bitch.
Re:Space ninjas (Score:5, Informative)
No.
Without WEIGHT, we'd die. Not quite the same thing.
A spin habitat will do nicely to provide weight (and, if looked at in the proper general-relativistic way, gravity), without the need for large masses and the other inconveniences of gravity.
Re:Space ninjas (Score:4, Informative)
Unless it's really freakin' big, the Coriolis forces will be a bitch, though.
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It might have to be big for the radiation shielding. Which might be mostly water - you're going to need lots of water anyway[1], so might as well use it for shielding.
[1] People are about 70% water, so just by that the amount of water puts a limit to the max number of humans you can have (assuming the average body mass does not change).
Re:Space ninjas (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to assume that there will, in that far future, be a difference between "us" and "our machines".
One of the common misperceptions about nanotech and other such transhumanist, far-future, sci-fi-style guesswork is the failure to understand what radical advances in medical, materials, and computer science actually mean. Biology is nanotechnology that evolved in nature without having been designed... There is no such thing as wars with our "android children". We are the android children, our technology is an extension of ourselves -- not progeny, it is literally ourselves. We won't be "sending robots", we will be sending ourselves who have become merged with "robots". The term you're looking for is "post-biological".
We won't need to engineer robots to escape Earth in our stead, we will be reengineering our very selves. No longer meatbags, we will be more than mere automata, and there is simply no need for this defeatist, mellowdramatic bitter-sweet send-off of our "children" from the womb of Earth. If there develops a significant population of autonomous robots, they will be with us, we'll bring them along and enjoy the experience of a shared evolution.
Life on Earth doesn't just stop once a new species appears -- life keeps going while it forks. There are ancient species still around and just as alive as new ones.
Re:Space ninjas (Score:4, Insightful)
Biology is nanotechnology that evolved in nature without having been designed... There is no such thing as wars with our "android children". We are the android children, our technology is an extension of ourselves -- not progeny, it is literally ourselves. We won't be "sending robots", we will be sending ourselves who have become merged with "robots". The term you're looking for is "post-biological".
We won't need to engineer robots to escape Earth in our stead, we will be reengineering our very selves.
I agree with this, but the trouble is that it tends to utterly violate most religious dogmas that we're designed by a higher being, and re-engineering ourselves is assraping that so-called "perfect design". To be able to get away with this, we'd need to be able to defeat or eradicate religion, or the religious objection would prevent it. Do you see this happening?
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"Without gravity, we'd die."
Citation needed. Note that none of the astronauts have died due to the lack of gravity. I can't say definitely whether any cosmonauts have died due to lack of gravity, but it seems that we would have heard about it. Sinonauts? (What DOES China call their space explorers? Sinonaut sounds like a nasal problem!) How about European astronauts?
I SUSPECT that you are alluding to health and development problems that are expected to occur in a population without gravity. And, I SU
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Of course, there are valid moral objects to raising kids without any human contact and as part of a laboratory experiment.
... such as the fact that without "loving contact", the children tend to become severely disturbed - this does not make for ideal colonization material.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow [wikipedia.org]
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Ow. That was kind of low...
Not as low as he would fall if he tried to get up.
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Re:Space ninjas (Score:5, Insightful)
So he wants us to explore space, but not talk to aliens [slashdot.org].
Not mutually exclusive. In fact, we should probably colonize space before inviting aliens to the neighborhood.
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The reason he said not to talk to aliens is because they are probably a high tech space-faring species with big ships and guns which may not be friendly to strangers.
Ironically, this seems to be what he suggests we should become.
Our solar system ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So he wants us to explore space, but not talk to aliens
Getting the human race into space does not necessarily mean zipping around from one solar system to another like in Star Trek. Getting the human race to colonize our solar system would be quite sufficient and quite plausible given our understanding of science and technology. We are not likely to run into aliens elsewhere in our solar system so there is no real inconsistency. :-)
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Re:Our solar system ... (Score:5, Interesting)
In the other hand, terraforming/colonizing other planets in our solar system, or managing to build self sustained space stations is more probable, and doing what is needed to get that goal could make things better here, or at least better prepared for some potential disasters.
If you can build self-sustaining habitats, you just point one in the direction of another star and fire the engines. Then who cares whether you take 500 years to get there? Life will be little different to floating in an orbit around the sun here.
Re:Our solar system ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is, though, that there is no sun to provide energy. We'd need to lug an extra (~1kW/m2 * 500 yrs) with us. And I don't think lithium batteries will cut it.
Re:Our solar system ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but Uranium could.
Re:Our solar system ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but Uranium could.
Q: What's worse that a Fukushima-style radiation leak?
A: A Fukushima-style radiation leak in a small, enclosed space that you're going to have to live in for the next 300 years.
Re:Our solar system ... (Score:4, Informative)
Why be idiotic enough to put a reactor in the lifesystem when you can park it outside?
Re:Our solar system ... (Score:4, Insightful)
There seems to be a basic human assumption that power plants must reside within the habitable portions of a craft. In reality, the powerplant(s) might be very distantly attached by spars. A mile long spar will introduce some interesting engineering challenges (depending on the materials used to make the spars) but it will most certainly remove most of the radiation hazard.
And, this is where someone asks, "Why in hell would you want mile long spars? How big do you want this craft to be?" Well - thinking in interstellar terms, we don't have the technology to exceed the speed of light. Interstellar colonization will be done with generation ships. They'll have to be BIG, to carry a large DNA pool, plus ship's crew, plus the support personnel that will be needed by the colonists. Unless we get FTL, ships will have to be freaking HUGE! So, putting any hazardous power plants at the far end of a mile long spar just makes sense!
Re:Our solar system ... (Score:4, Informative)
There seems to be a basic human assumption that power plants must reside within the habitable portions of a craft. In reality, the powerplant(s) might be very distantly attached by spars. A mile long spar will introduce some interesting engineering challenges (depending on the materials used to make the spars) but it will most certainly remove most of the radiation hazard.
And, this is where someone asks, "Why in hell would you want mile long spars? How big do you want this craft to be?" Well - thinking in interstellar terms, we don't have the technology to exceed the speed of light. Interstellar colonization will be done with generation ships. They'll have to be BIG, to carry a large DNA pool, plus ship's crew, plus the support personnel that will be needed by the colonists. Unless we get FTL, ships will have to be freaking HUGE! So, putting any hazardous power plants at the far end of a mile long spar just makes sense!
Exactly. There is no better shield than 1/r^2. And, instead of a spar, you can just use a 40km cable and do formation flying. Zero weight radiation shielding!
The actual radiation hazard comes from space itself - it is not empty but full of high energy radioactive stuff. See for example EEv particles [wikipedia.org] - they are fortunately rare, but still have a chance of hitting a sizable interstellar craft. On Earth we are shielded from them by the atmosphere (they trigger less harmfull radiation showers). Lesser energy charged particles are deflected by Earth magnetic field.
Re:Our solar system ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think if you have an 9.0 earthquake and a 8m high tsunami in outer space, then you've got bigger things to worry about.
Re:Our solar system ... (Score:5, Funny)
Probably you leave the earthquake and tsunami generators behind, problem solved.
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Re:Our solar system ... (Score:5, Informative)
Garbage disposal in transit is a problem, stuff you throw out the airlock follows you to your destination.
How so? Assuming you throw it at greater than the escape velocity of your craft (how big is this craft?) surely it will continue to diverge from your path at the same velocity?
Re:Our solar system ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Our solar system ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Money, in this case, stands for the opportunity cost for the skilled labor involved and for moving resources being used for other things to the colonization project. A lot of people currently working on treating cancer, finding new sources of energy, etc. would need to be put on project tract-housing-on-Mars.
I think it's worth doing, mind you. But don't just say it's just a matter of "money." Money is a stand-in for labor and resources.
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Cutting welfare for those people who would not be able to find a job would be a) useless b) cruel c) cause social unrest that wastes even more resources.
Re:Our solar system ... (Score:4, Insightful)
For that to work, you'll need to ditch minimal wage. While we're at it, we could also kill child labor laws - and why not, after all, you want people to start learning to work in the field from dawn till dusk at their young age - that's what most of them will do, anyway, and those who are fit for something better would probably have wealthy parents to begin with. All of which will, of course, lead to a society as prosperous and healthy as U.S. or Europe in late 19th age - a shining example for us to emulate
Just don't forget to budget for machine guns to keep the rabble at bay. Those lazy bastards will do anything to avoid working and earning their pay - like rising up and killing all the job and wealth creators and other similarly important people in a so-called "revolution". We wouldn't want that kind of thing, right?
Re:Our solar system ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Money may be an abstraction for barter, but it still gets you things like food. The amount of "money" is indeed infinite, but the resources available to us are not.
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Actually we're liable to find out there are some cowardly aliens hanging out on the moon.
Don't be silly (Score:4, Funny)
We're all going to become happy fluffy hippies and live a sustainable lifestyle in little teepees where we'll end all conflict by singing happy songs and shit.
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We're all going to become happy fluffy hippies and live a sustainable lifestyle in little teepees where we'll end all conflict by singing happy songs and shit.
Hey, I was just thinking that [wordpress.com], except I was thinking that 99% of us would still live in cities and stuff while maybe 1% drops out, tunes in, and gets with the pre-Columbian vibe. You never know, those DIYers who can live (and reproduce) without a whole pile of techno-infrastructure, like the American Indians did, could come in handy some day.
This Just In (Score:2)
Re:This Just In (Score:5, Interesting)
And here's me thinking it is because cost per Kg to LEO is between $5,000-$10,000 : and that is for non man-rated cargo. So the cost to get someone into LEO in their birthday suit, let alone anywhere interesting like an established moon base, currently exceeds the average total asset holdings of most first world citizens.
But it's the politicians fault; its their fault the planet is dying and Armageddon is nearly upon us, it's their fault that we have not colonized space. Rabble rabble rabble.
Q: Guess who killed the Apollo programme? A: US citizenry not the politicians. The programme was deeply unpopular. Tom Lehrer's sentiment represented broad public opinion at the time:
"what is it that will make it possible to spend 20 billion dollars of your money to put some clown on the moon? well, S good old american know-how, that's what. as provided by good old americans like dr. wernher von braun."
Re:This Just In (Score:5, Insightful)
cost per Kg to LEO is between $5,000-$10,000
But it's the politicians fault...
most likely... what's the cost (including logistics, support, benefit pay, etc.) to deploy a marine to Afghanistan for a year? For every 10 marines deployed "over there" for a year, could we get one up to the ISS?
Re:This Just In (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This Just In (Score:5, Insightful)
So the cost to get someone into LEO in their birthday suit, let alone anywhere interesting like an established moon base, currently exceeds the average total asset holdings of most first world citizens.
And it just keeps getting worse from there. Scientists who actually understand this stuff - all of them supporters of manned space exploration! - have come up with some interesting numbers for the expense of long-range expeditions. Ralph McNutt at JHU wrote a good article about exploring the outer planets [jhuapl.edu] using currently feasible technology. He envisions a series of five missions, each designed to avoid lethal radiation exposure, in the latter half of the 21st century. Estimated cost: $4 trillion. There's no colonization involved - this is just for doing flybys of gas giants and their moons. Sustaining a permanent settlement somewhere won't be any easier, because we'd need constant supply runs from Earth. How long does anyone think a moon base would last without a supply line? Think it'll be any easier on Mars?
Now, I actually think we should do all this stuff at some point in the future - but it needs to get at least an order of magnitude cheaper before I'll advocate spending other people's money on it. Maybe with another hundred years' scientific development in the fields of human physiology, nanotechnology, and propulsion systems we'll be able to afford interplanetary travel for relatively large numbers of people. Right now, however, if we try to establish a permanent base (which we can't afford) on Mars, with enough fertile individuals to perpetuate the human race, they're basically equally fucked if the Earth gets hit by an asteroid - they'll just take a little longer to die.
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Re:This Just In (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a matter of having say 5% of the world population dedicated to getting off this planet... and not be real-estate brokers, or financial analysts, etc. There are plenty of industries that can and should decrease in size---and there are industries that can and should grow---governments can just make it easier for aerospace industry to grow a bit faster than say "creative financial instruments" industry.
Even if governments were to eliminate taxes for companies dedicated to manned space exploration and exploitation, it wouldn't even employ a fraction of 5% of the world's population. You're talking about something that would require (at least) tens of billions in startup capital per company - realistically, you'd need a massive government subsidy. Don't lecture me about asteroid mining; even if it could be made profitable in the long term (and I'm not convinced of that), we are decades away from the technology we need to do it. No (sane) company is going to sink tens of billions into something that will take decades to pay off. That's why we have government investment in basic sciences anyway. So, ultimately, it comes down to spending tax dollars on a massive extraterrestrial colonization effort.
And I already know about Elon Musk and Space-X - and I wish him the best of luck. It would be fantastic if someone could come up with a sustainable business model for orbital spaceflight (other than getting your local Congresspeople to legislate your product into the NASA budget). But even if they succeed on all counts, manned space flight is still going to be too expensive for anyone except the government and the mega-rich, and colonization is still out of the question. Elon says he wants to retire on Mars, which is a nice fantasy if you don't mind spending your old age being sealed in a bubble and recycling your waste products, but he's going to need to make a shitload of money off satellite launches if he wants to afford it. Right now, I don't think even Bill Gates could afford this. I can maybe see them making a manned flyby in a couple of decades, but even that is going to take a huge chunk out of their revenues and yield no short-term return.
Re:This Just In (Score:4, Interesting)
governments of the world can spend significantly more than 5% of GDP on military (vast majority of which is... a completely waste), and you're saying they can't (if they were actually interested in the idea) spend that much on doing something about "getting off this rock"?
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governments of the world can spend significantly more than 5% of GDP on military (vast majority of which is... a completely waste), and you're saying they can't (if they were actually interested in the idea) spend that much on doing something about "getting off this rock"?
The US actually spends less than 5% of GDP on its military, and we can't even afford that at this point. And even if we devoted our entire military budget to colonizing space, we would still not be capable of creating self-sufficient colo
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I don't see the U.S. leading any more manned space missions. The political climate does not allow that. All projects have to be done the "captialistic" way which means that everyone involved has to make a profit but since the project has to be funded by taxes anything more than $0 is too much.
Uh, what? Are you a member of the Glorious People's Soviet Cryosleep Program who just woke up after thirty years?
Launch costs for the Glorious People's Space Shuttle were around $20,000 a pound. The EVIL CAPITALIST Falcon 9 Heavy is expected to cost around $1,000 a pound.
There are few things government does better than making things more expensive than they need to be. People who are spending their own money care about cost far more than people who are spending other people's money.
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If we cant survive on earth the last place we should go is into space.
Our future is in learning to fix the problems we create.
But your right, the idea that our future lies in space is pretty common, rather unfortunate really.
On the other hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like technologies that would be important here on Earth also, and setting up a lunar base would create a need for such technology. The moon also has the advantage of allowing an emergency return to Earth, which makes it a good first step for living in space.
Of course, the expenses are pretty high, and the technologies that would be developed would not be useful on Earth for a long time after the initial investment. Without any real profitable reason to live on the moon, it would be hard to justify spending that much money. Now, if we discovered some useful resource that could be profitably mined, that would be another story.
Terraform Earth First! Ecology is key space tech (Score:3)
The most important technology you need for any serious space colonization is the ability to manage a closed ecosystem with no internal inputs except energy. If you can't do that, you might still be able to get to Mars using less complete recycling, and you can park in Earth orbit with occasional resupply, but you can't do anything significant out in asteroid belts and you certainly can't run a generation ship out to other star systems. Even Mars colonies are pretty sketchy - you've got spare CO2, sand, ir
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What "we?"
What if the people who go into space don't identify with the problems of those they leave behind? Perhaps much of humanity is like an abusive household, and the best thing to do is just leave.
Perhaps "humanity" is not the end-all, be-all category you think it is.
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You're spot-on except for situations out of our control like asteroid/comet strike, gamma ray burst [wikipedia.org], or the eventual death of our Sun. Sure, we may be able to come up with a solution for the first and actually apply it given enough warning, but a GRB can't be detected until after
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Good way to put it. Attempting to scale down and live quietly, without conflict and constant stimulation and revolution, won't work for humanity. That would just kill us. We need to USE our strengths, and keep exploring, growing, and conquering.
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It is in our best interests as a race to expand beyond this planet so when this does inevitably happen, we can learn from that mistake and try something different on our other worlds.
I'd be the first to agree with the above -- if there were any other worlds. But there aren't any, in any usable sense. The other planets in our solar system are reachable, but they won't sustain human life. There might be planets in other solar systems that could sustain human life, but they aren't reachable.
If it's a sustainable human society that you're after (where "sustainable" == "can function on its own indefinitely without support from Earth"), there simply is no substitute for the planet our spec
Another only chance of long-term survival . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
"Mr. President, I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. It would be quite easy at the bottom of some of our deeper mine shafts . . . Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do. But ah with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years."
"Doctor, you mentioned the ration of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?"
"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."
Re:Another only chance of long-term survival . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Keeping a Dr. Strangelove quote prepared and ready to copy paste, there has to be some kind of geek badge for that.
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What I never understood is that if only a selected number of few can fit in the mines than how will they breed? I mean, the mines are already full.
Make it a religion (Score:5, Insightful)
People are always inventing religions. Most die, but the new (in the span of history) cults Scientology and Mormonism seem to be doing a good business, in the USA at least, other religions elsewhere. Since all religion does is answer the unanswerable questions of life, such as the purpose of it, just found a new religion where the answer to the meaning of life is to get the fuck off this planet. Maybe not using those exact words, I'm sure some more mystic and transcendental and pompous word choices can be arranged.
What motivated people is not cold rational analysis. Motivation is emotional. So just translate the valid motivation into the wacky language of religion.
Re:Make it a religion (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with this, is that it's too easy to end up with a Heaven's Gate [wikipedia.org], where the members end up committing suicide so that their spirits can reach a spaceship hidden behind a comet. Religious frameworks can sometimes herd people into accomplishing great works, but they're volatile and dangerous. If you invent a religion to achieve some grand goal, then you have the problem of what to do with the religion once the goal is achieved.
Re: (Score:3)
Simple: create a new religion and call the old one paganism and/or devil worship. What can go wrong? ;)
Re:Make it a religion (Score:4, Insightful)
Cold rational analysis shows that we have neither the technology nor energy resources to even put a family of four on Mars, let alone spread out to other star systems.
Thank you for proving that Anti-Space Nuttery is a religion.
Cold rational analysis shows that you could put a family of four on Mars for a few billion dollars. Sustaining them would be more difficult, but probably not cost more than a hundred billion. So long as it was a private venture and not run by NASA, anyway.
You sound like the people in 1900 claiming that we'd never fly a heavier-than-air aircraft, or in the 1930s that the fastest airliner might one day reach 250mph and carry a hundred people.
Only a fanatic could believe that humans won't develop the technology to live in space, because all of our past history shows that we will if we're allowed to do so.
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We pretty clearly do have the technology and energy resources to put a family of four on Mars now. It quite simply is possible with currently available resources. You can argue about whether there's any point to it, or the cost, or the long-term health implications of the environment, etc., but arguing that we don't have the capability is ridiculous. The total mission cost of Pathfinder was something like $280 million. If we can land a rover on Mars, we can land supplies. The upcoming Curiosity mission will
Wrong attitude (Score:3)
There always was religion, and always will be. It's a psychosocial phenomenon that is never going away. So you can sit in your Ivory Tower and cast scorn on it, or USE it to actually promote the future of mankind in outer space.
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”
-Seneca
Stop warring with what you cannot change, accept it, and use it for something positive. And yes, it is useful, as there is a lot of grunt work needed to get us in
What constitutes "survival"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it just the transmission of DNA?
Then if it is, then transmitting our DNA via high powered radio telescopes would be far cheaper than a space program. Next would be including DNA samples on anything leaving the solar system (pioneer, voyager, new horizon).
If it's our cultural heritage, we've been beaming a (lopsided) collection out into space for the last 100 years. We've even sent some physical artifacts.
If it's the survival of our MINDS that we're concerned with, well rather than build space ships capable of crossing the interstellar void (which'll likely take centuries) maybe it would be faster to figure out how to convert them into code and beam THAT.
Of course this assumes that there is someone out there on the receiving end. I don't think that's too unlikely a hypothesis but reasonable people might disagree. So let's get listening! (And maybe we'll figure out the answer to the Fermi Paradox).
(By the way, I'm all for a VERY aggressive space program, it's just that maybe we shouldn't think survival is the best reason for it!)
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Is it just the transmission of DNA? Then if it is, then transmitting our DNA via high powered radio telescopes would be far cheaper than a space program.
But not nearly as fun as the more traditional method. :-)
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But what damn fool race would be idiotic enough to actually attempt to construct an entity from a DNA sequence received via radio signals from space? [imdb.com]
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Is it just the transmission of DNA?
Then if it is, then transmitting our DNA via high powered radio telescopes would be far cheaper than a space program. Next would be including DNA samples on anything leaving the solar system (pioneer, voyager, new horizon).
I
I tried doing that when I worked at NASA but I got fired when someone saw me.
the stargate is faster then useing ships (Score:3)
so we just need to find places to go and then with the stargate we can move to them real fast.
not any time soon (Score:4, Insightful)
The basic point is that, given our current situation, proposing a future in space is essentially a distraction that ignores the problems we will absolutely have to solve here on Earth. Hawking is probably right in that, if we manage to survive long enough, we will eventually establish colonies on other worlds. But if we can't focus on immediate challenges here, we'll never get there.
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"... we will exhaust our planet's resources long before we're actually able to permanently survive somewhere else."
Precisely.
An interesting aspect is though that if we solve this resource exhaustion problem here on earth, i.e. find a better nearly inexhaustible and dense energy source, we would be able to extract resources on other planets. The do the math blog mentions that we have to stop growing then, otherwise we would heat up the planet too much.
Here is a link about resource concentrations:
http://www.n [nss.org]
We can mine without colonization (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently Hawking is worried of our resources running out, but mining other celesatial bodies can be done without colonizing them. And even if we did colonize them, exponential growth would not be feasible indefinitely. I believe it's much easier to change our ways than to colonize space.
Re:We can mine without colonization (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, if Bill Gates finishes designing his reactor [wikipedia.org] then we could build one on the Moon, and use the uranium [space.com] there to fuel it. The reactor would power the station and also generate enriched plutonium in the process, wich then could be shot down to Earth using mass driver [wikipedia.org] system to shoot it back to Earth, thus having no need for fuel. Current railguns can already reach the lunar escape velocity, so that shouldn't be a problem.
Re:We can mine without colonization (Score:5, Funny)
if Bill Gates finishes designing his reactor
This may be the most terrifying phrase I've ever read on Slashdot ;^)
What about adapting the species? (Score:3)
How about not destroying earth? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Go west" doesn't work anymore. You can't just rest all your hopes on being able to continue life on another planet. It's a romantic idea, but actually doing so would require efforts that are by far much larger than ending world poverty or convincing people to care about the environment. A manned mission to mars would cost $40-$80 billion [newscientist.com]. Here are some problems, each enough to explain why we won't be anything near this in the next 50 years (just some examples, I'm sure there are more):
Space expenses don't scale well. While development costs do scale, things like transport, fuel, assembly of rockets, etc. does not scale very well.
Full Autonomy is extremely hard. If earth goes down the toilet, you can't rely on yearly shipments of equipment and technology. You'd have to build *everything* in your colony, which would require a huge colony indeed (so that you have a factory that makes the robots that manufacturers your mp3 players and *everything else you rely on nowadays*) and thus an even greater effort.
Humans just love earth. Even mild changes to our environment can have extreme consequences on our health. Thinking about going to Europa, that trendy Jupiter moon? Well, it only has 0.134 g, so you need to put *everything* in giant centrifuges. And that's just one factor. Building a huge shell that keeps the pressure of 1 bar earth atmosphere and 10^-12 bar Europa atmosphere separate is another one...
Re:How about not destroying earth? (Score:4, Interesting)
Full Autonomy is extremely hard. If earth goes down the toilet, you can't rely on yearly shipments of equipment and technology. You'd have to build *everything* in your colony, which would require a huge colony indeed (so that you have a factory that makes the robots that manufacturers your mp3 players and *everything else you rely on nowadays*) and thus an even greater effort.
F*ck MP3 players, how about the fact that the only reason a space colony could function at all is because of high tech. This isn't Earth were you can have some sort of cataclysmic event and practically go back to a primitive agrarian society. You want that space suit to function? That airlock to work? The solar panels to produce heat so you don't freeze to death? If they break down and you can't fix them or replace them you're dead.
Full autonomy is so far outside the scope of anything that's even been considered, we can send a radiation hardened CPU to Mars but a factory to build one? And all the tools required to maintain and repair that factory? And everything required to build those tools? It's easy to forget how extremely specialized we've become and how many steps there are between raw ore in the ground and working product. We'd need either an army of robots or many, many thousand people to be anything like autonomous.
And that's one of the issues here, the more people you add the bigger the resource demands will be. I don't know exactly at what size the tide will turn and each person makes the colony more self-sufficient, but I'm thinking big. Like, really really big.
Small minded thinking from Hawking (Score:3, Interesting)
Our bodies are not adapted, evolved, or designed for space.
We are vastly better off concentrating resources into robotics, AI, and technologies that will allow for the imaging and transfer of brain state. Those next creations - or evolution of intelligence - will be free to explore the universe.
Alternatively, mastering genetic engineering may allow us to create organic lifeforms that ARE adapted to those environments, and have or exceed our own intelligence. That is also possible within a short timeframe.
As the Dr. already indicated, it's not likely we are going to make it the next few hundred years as-is. That'll be ok, we'll all be at the feet of (insert deity here) in eternal paradise, right? *laughs*
Look the other way (Score:5, Insightful)
All this talk about Space Exploration is great, and I agree that in the future, we will one day have to colonize space.
But what about right now?
Space Colonization is simply not practical today and may not be for another century or longer. So why not look the other way? What about Oceanic Colonization? No exotic technology like carbon nanotube space tethers are required, no worries about intersteller radiation, bone mineral depletion, obtaining drinking water, fuel or breathable air. We have all the technology to build floating and underwater structures, we know who to make artificial island communities (look at Dubai)
All this is right here, right now. Why don't we stop focusing so hard on the long shots and start looking at what we can start doing today to alleviate the population crises and making better use of our existing resources? It seems our astrophysics community really has a hard-on for space exploration while Oceanic dwellings are merely the pipe-dream of young architects as part of design competitions, but is mainly regarded as a novelty and not really taken all that seriously.
70% of the earth is covered in water, scientists predict this will increase within the century.
Does it not make sense to start adapting and learning to exist on the largest resource available on the Earth?
Deja vu much? (Score:5, Informative)
Once, I would have written it off to deja vu and went on with my life. But the same article, 3 times? I might be human, but my memory is not that terrible, Slashdot!
Populate the oceans (Score:3)
It seems like a week since Ceres (Score:4, Funny)
The launch was a rush. That railgun they drilled through the planetoid accelerated me at 50G, or 490m/s/s. With only 487km of railgun it was over in just a few seconds and I was off to the stars. It's cold out here and dark, with not much to do as I sleep almost all of the time. They keep pushing. The high-energy lasers in orbit around Venus still fluff my solar sail and deliver power so I don't have to activate my nuclear engine. I'm supposed to be seeing some time dilation at this point, but really, not so much that it can't be accounted for.
I understand launching so much mass shifted the orbit of the planetoid significantly, but was timed to do so in a way that moved it into a more convenient orbit around the sun. Not that they fill me in on the details.
They laid my way with resupply years before of course. I'll be docking with one of those probes soon to boost my xenon and hydrogen - that's why I'm awake to make this log. I've five of these resupplies to do, and this next one is the fourth. I'm halfway to my destination, and still have all of this resupply inventory. It's for deceleration, and I may not need any of it if the L2 solar sails work to spec. I'm glad for the backup plan because we all know how low bidder contracts kill.
It's been 40 years, and it feels like a week.
There's not much to do out here except wonder if tech innovations will have people stopping by to pick me up on their way to the stars with new drive tech. It's nice that my mental donor wasn't too introspective - some replayed vids and a little virtual dolphin flogging and we're ready for sleep again. That will be handy when we get to Tau Ceti if we've got to do some terraforming before it's fit for men. That could take a few million years even with my well-designed spore toolkit. Sleep will be a blessing.
Twenty years and it seems like a week. Frankly I'm glad they vary my clock at need. I wonder what meat people would feel like by turnaround. Perhaps it's best not to go there. It's not like they could survive the launch acceleration anyway.
They said this personality is rated for 18 months of subjective time before it's overcome by a psychotic desire to kill the manipulative bitch that made me volunteer for this program. That may have been optimistic.
End log.
the bigger picture (Score:3)
i'm w/ the good doctor,
but also my thinking is that we should raise our heads out of our shapely buttocks for a moment
and think about spreading life of any form, not only human, to the rest of the galaxy.
i'm a good science boy and have no doubt that there is life out there,
but so far there's no signs of anyone except us.
we're on the cusp of wiping ourselves out in one way or another,
and when we do it's by no means certain that this planet will ever again attain space-faring capability
before it gets eaten by the sun. given this, i think we have a huge moral imperative to send out
large numbers of cheap life-bearing probes into the galaxy. little infectious bombs.
primary producers wired to chill out until there's a reliable energy source, and then mutate like crazy.
Re: (Score:3)
Seriously, what we need is a good predator that preys upon the fat and stupid.
CAD? (Coronary Artery Disease)
Re: (Score:3)
Seriously, what we need is a good predator that preys upon the fat and stupid.
CAD? (Coronary Artery Disease)
Zombies to keep us fit, and aliens to give us a common enemy - the human race can be saved in only two horror movies.
Re:or just don't fuck up this planet so bad (Score:5, Interesting)
Smokers typically die around retirement age, after their productive life is over. Nonsmokers, on the other hand, may linger on unproductively for decades in nursing homes with around-the-clock care, or requiring family members to leave the work force to care for them. Sure lung cancer is costly, but it is a one-time expense.
The "cost of smoking" numbers you see are not offset with the cost of not smoking due to longer unproductive lives that burden society. It would be interesting to see some unbiased calculations.
Re:Conservation can work, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Conservation can't work. The sun will distroy the Earth regardless.
4 Billion Years vs. Next 40-400 years. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, we need to get off the planet and out of the solar system before the Sun blows up 4 billion years from now. We've got time. We also need to get off the planet before the next dinosaur-killer asteroid hits, probably somewhere between 0-100 million years from now. We've got time for that too. Meanwhile, our first step needs to be Not Being Dead, which means we not only have to find ways to not have a major nuclear war or an interesting biological war, and our next step needs to be to avoid rendering Earth uninhabitable before then. Working on both at once is just fine.
Space technology is useful for building measurement systems to understand what's going on here on Earth. It's also useful for understanding what's going on in the rest of the solar system, so we can identify any dino-killer asteroids pointed at us and deflect them or blow them up, though even Tunguska-sized events are pretty rare - it'll be a much easier project if we let Moore's Law crank our electronics development for a couple of decades so we'll have much better and lighter-weight equipment. But to do anything serious out in space, or to terraform Mars into an emergency backup planet, we need to develop serious understanding of ecosystems, because we need to bring ecosystems anywhere we're going to bring humans. (You also need them even for robots, but they can use much simpler ecosystems.) All of that biology's a lot more difficult work than merely getting rockets that can go halfway across the solar system.
Meanwhile, getting to the Moon was a fun way to demonstrate our military-industrial complex's skills that are layered on top of the heavy industry business. But right now we have to figure out how to get the heavy industry folks to stop cranking up the planet's thermostat, get the military-industrial complex to stop drumming up new business for themselves, and get a bunch of farmers to have better technology than slash-and-burn agriculture or petro-business-based fertilizers, and it wouldn't hurt if we can find something productive for the 50% of humanity that are no longer farmers to do.
Re: (Score:3)
Nothing personal, but... if it wasn't for the "heavy industry folks cranking up the world's thermostat", we'd be in the middle of an ice age right now.
A little math and history goes a long way.
Re:Conservation can work, too (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, the human race has been expanding exponentially at the historic average of 2% per year. That means that, on average, the number of people doubles every 35 years. It's crowded here, and we've got a starship and an empty planet only 4 light years away. So we load half the population and take them to Alpha Centauri. It took (according to some estimates) 20,000 years for homo sapiens to get where we are today. Do you know how long it will take us to populate Alpha Centauri to today's levels? Only 35 years.
Okay, it's 39 years later (Four years transit time plus 35 years of growth), 2050, and now you have two crowded planets. No problem, Barnard's Star is only 6 years away from Earth, and Wolf 359 is 8 years from Alpha Centari. So we pack up half the population of Earth and send them to Barnard's Star, and we take half the population of Alpha Centauri and send them to Wolf 359. Again, it will only take 35 years to fill each of the planets. By 2093 we will need to find 8 more planets. We now have a colony on each of the stars within ten light years. 35 years after that, and we will need 16 planets, 70 years and we'll need 32, then 64. By 2200 we will have colonized all the stars within 20 light years.
By 2360ish we'll hit a snag. We will have populated all of the stars within 35 light years of Earth. Colony ships leaving Earth at this point will not arrive at their destination before it is time to send out another colony ship. Of course, all the other colonies will be sending out their colony ships as well. We'll need another 512 planets. At the end of another 35 year cycle, we'll need 1024, another cycle and we'll have used up all the stars within 50 light years.
Scientists estimate that there is about one star per 280 cubic light years. In 800 years or so, our empire will need 34 million new planets. However there are only some 19 million stars within 800 light years. In other words, we will have outgrown our ability to travel.
Today we have 7 billion people on the planet. By 2150, your target date, we will have 36 billion people. Your 50/50 by 2150 plan would result in each person having only half an acre of land on which to live and support themself. This [netdna-cdn.com] suggests 2 acres per person are needed. 50/50 by 2150 would result in 3/4 of the population starving to death.
It's basic mathematics. A fixed resource cannot supply an ever increasing population. Any plan that does not include zero population growth and 100% recycling will eventually fail.
Re: (Score:3)
The world population is not growing exponentially but linearly at most
Source [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
No, the human race - and all other breeding populations bellow any limited threshold - is on a logisic curve [wikipedia.org]. Historically it just looks looks exponential because we have been near the origin. It's also a much scarier curve when you consider the growth period is the 'good times.'
In a natural population the number of breeders explodes until it hit some limit and loss suppresses any more gains. It is a simple con
Re: (Score:3)
Unless you plan on living a few hundred years, it's their children's children who will be doomed. However, this is only assuming exponential growth. Looking at first-world countries, there is a clear peak that is attained, after which population actually decreases. We don't know for sure, but there's good reason to believe that other countries will reach a similar peak and then Earth's population will stabilize.
If it does not stabilize for good reasons (ie. general enrichment of the population and diminishi
Re: (Score:2)
At least if we spread out to Mars, those humans on Mars would remember those lost on Earth
Yeah, and they'd have a few extra months to reflect on the demise of humanity, as they waited for their systems to break down and kill them. Sorry, but independently sustainable settlement on other planets is impossible for the foreseeable future.
Re:Hawking goes beyond our environment. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry, but independently sustainable settlement on other planets is impossible for the foreseeable future.
Settling on other planets would be silly, because they suffer all the same problems as Earth. Any long-term human settlement will be in free-flying habitats, because building them is much easier than terraforming Mars, they can move on if resources become scare and they're much more difficult targets for people who want to kill you.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, lots of resources in nearly empty space.
Tell you what, lets try some baby steps first - land on an asteroid. Put a research colony on the moon. Maybe a space elevator if your daring. In the mean time, try to figure out how to stay alive on the current space ship for a couple dozen more generations.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, lots of resources in nearly empty space.
Approximately 99.999999999999999999999% of the resources of the universe are in space.
Mars? (Score:3)
Re:Great, another Space Nutter (Score:5, Interesting)
Counterpoint:
"The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that thereâ(TM)s no good reason to go into space â" each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision."
Re:Genesis (Score:4, Funny)
No idea, I'm not a huge Phil Collins fan.
Re: (Score:3)
The biggest threat to humanity by far is... humanity.
Not exactly. The actual threat is resource depletion. Humanity only gets truly nasty when there are no longer enough goodies to go around.
if we're stuck on Earth then you have a choice between a totalitarian state that would make 1984 look like utopia, or death.
You forgot the third option -- stabilizing the population at a size the planet can sustain. That should be doable without a totalitarian nightmare-state, "simply"(*) by improving living conditions to the point where people have the tools to control their reproduction and also the motivation to do so (i.e. a social safety net that works well enough that they no longer f
Re: (Score:3)