Space Development And Earth's Future

apsmith writes "In the New York Times' Sunday Book Review Dennis Overbye reviews British Astronomer Royal Martin Rees' new book: Our Final Hour - A Scientist's Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind's Future In This Century--On Earth and Beyond. The book paints an exceedingly grim picture of our future - Reese gives humanity only a 50-50 chance of surviving the 21st century, with all the potential for calamity we have unleashed (and that nature may have in store for us too). But the book isn't just doom and gloom - we CAN do something, and the answer lies in space. But NASA has been doing it all wrong. Interestingly enough, this coming weekend is the International Space Development Conference in San Jose, where you can find out the latest ideas on how we really should be settling space."

Comments

Re:A solution to many problems

[PD]

Thanks to being a vacuum, pollutants can be better contained or cleaned up after leakage.

And that's a good thing too. We wouldn't want to turn space into a lifeless place full of radiation and harsh substances that would require a person to wear a protective suit just to survive.

Just another alarmist wacko

[Roto-Rooter Man]

"This is my long-run forecast in brief: The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today's Western living standards. I also speculate, however, that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse." - Julian Simon

Rees is too much of an optimist

[Anonymous Coward]

All matter will decay. This universe will end in a big crunch or expand forever into nothingness. It won't matter if we escape the solar system. There is no place for us to go. We will all die and the matter we're made of will decay and the universe will end and there is NOTHING we can do about.