Physicist Stephen Hawking says that humanity must find a new home to live on within a century, or else face possible extinction - hopefully he's not just trying to upstage Bill Maher:https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/05/05/stephen-hawking-just-moved-up-humanitys-deadline-for-escaping-earth/Does that sound about right? Or is it like a Doomsday Clock thing, where the deadline gets moved forward or backward depending on what's going on in the world today?Hawking is supposed to be signed up for a suborbital trip to space on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo - so at least he's putting his money where his mouth is.Is this deadline a realistically achievable goal? I'm assuming that Mars and the Moon would be the earliest targets, and maybe also some choice asteroids.Can it be achieved with room to spare? (ie. we still get to keep Earth in good shape and have these off-world living spaces - or are we destined to keep overloading things down here until we're literally forced to go off-world?)
On the show Cosmos, Neil deGrasse Tyson (NdT) presented the concept that the Earth has survived five apocalyptic events. So if one ascribes a completely impossible chance of surviving just one event, surviving five should begin to illustrate that there really is nothing to worry about. The system sustains life where it should not exist and may be actively managed thru these disasters. The system is perfectly designed to give you the results you are now seeing....
That is similar to Musk's motivation for a Mars colony. Sounds like they believe we're we might be at the height of our technological civilization and this will may be our only opportunity to expand into space.
Once you put an apocalypse mongerer into a spaceship for a 100 year voyage to the planet Utopia, they're probably going to start bemoaning the design (a lot). At some point along the journey, they'll turn the craft around for Earth because the trip is so unpleasant that they'd rather risk going extinct on Earth.
Quote from: RonM on 05/06/2017 01:57 pmThat is similar to Musk's motivation for a Mars colony. Sounds like they believe we're we might be at the height of our technological civilization and this will may be our only opportunity to expand into space.Now that's a valid argument, isn't it?As long as we have fear of death, poverty and religious persecution and before they materialize...
To me it is just a no-brainer. It is not that big an investment compared to things like the war industry, which are worse than useless anyway. 1% should be enough, if spent effectively instead of on boondoggles, and the spinoffs would be very useful for mastering self sufficient cities on earth.
Species visiting Earth seeking refuge from their own apocalypse: 0