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Human Survival Depends On Space Exploration, Says Hawking
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."
So he wants us to explore space, but not talk to aliens.
Looks like he dyed his hair.
"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."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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!)
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."
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. :-)
Conservation can't work. The sun will distroy the Earth regardless.
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?
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."
No idea, I'm not a huge Phil Collins fan.
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 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.
"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. 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...
Nothing short of zero population growth is going to do anything but slow down the inevitable. Suppose we discover a means of building colony starships capable of moving ten billion people at the speed of light. Further, suppose there is an empty, habitable "class M" planet around every star.
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 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.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
For example, if Bill Gates finishes designing his reactor then we could build one on the Moon, and use the uranium 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 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.
Imagine the technology that would be needed to build a self-sufficient lunar colony. You would need to be carbon-neutral, recycle all your water, and pollution would generally be out of the question. Any dangerous byproducts created by the colony would have to be dealt with on-site.
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.
Palm trees and 8
if Bill Gates finishes designing his reactor
This may be the most terrifying phrase I've ever read on Slashdot ;^)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
What can you do with all those marines in orbit except paratroop them back to Earth?
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?
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.
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!