
Stephen Hawking: Human Survival Depends on Space Exploration - gatsby
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/human-survival-depends-space-exploration-says-stephen-hawking-201506059.html
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tsotha
Hawking is wrong. The population isn't "growing exponentially". In fact, it's
set to level off mid-century and start decreasing. We're not going to just
keep growing like bacteria until we all die.

Having said that, let me say a large extinction event is certainly possible -
we may have barely dodged one in the late 1800s:

[http://www.theblaze.com/stories/has-the-earth-come-close-
to-...](http://www.theblaze.com/stories/has-the-earth-come-close-to-ending-in-
recent-centuries/)

But to plan for something like that we would be better off tunneling into the
earth than trying to colonize Mars. The other planets will never be hospitable
to human life, and there's no point in bothering with them until we have the
technology we need to make the colonies independent. We're a long, long way
from that, and sending more rockets to the moon doesn't get us any closer.

~~~
moe
_In fact, it's set to level off mid-century and start decreasing._

Have these kind of predictions ever worked out?

Last time I checked there would always be an unanticipated war or invention to
ruin the beautiful projections...

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loganfrederick
Do elaborate on how war or inventions will make more babies?

It's something I've certainly thought about quite a bit and would love to
study more in the future, but the parent post was correct: The population in
developed countries will be declining if there are no significant changes in
how life longevity or increased birthrates (which can be affected by a lot of
factors).

For more information:

 _Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Scott Burns (2004). The Coming Generational Storm:
What You Need to Know about America's Economic Future'. MIT Press. ISBN
0-262-11286. Description and chapter-preview links, p. vii.

_ The Age Curve: [http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&#...</a>

~~~
moe
_Do elaborate on how war or inventions will make more babies?_

Well, wars probably remove babies, same for the invention of the anti-baby
pill. IIRC neither the wars nor the pill were predicted in the 1900s, just
like we can't predict what will happen before the end of this century.

Some big asteroid impact might just end our population concerns for good. Or
perhaps we defeat aging with bio-tech. Or designer-babies become so popular
that everyone even in developed countries suddenly wants five.

I'm not saying any of that _will_ happen. I'm just wary of predictions
reaching more than half a century into the future. After all: We're having
this discussion on a medium that nobody 50 years ago would have imagined to
exist (outside of SciFi books).

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jphackworth
Space exploration is like selling off your stocks during a tech bubble: it's
obvious it needs to happen sometime, but it's really hard to figure out when
the right time is. Unfortunately, that means for-profit organizations
underinvest. This is one of those cases where it really does make sense for
government to encourage the sector with investment, although it seems like
X-prize-type systems might work better than NASA-type systems.

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thornad
Unless we learn to live harmoniously with each other on this planet, why
should we expand to other planets ? To perpetuate the same cycle of justified
violence on ourselves and everything else? Look what happened to the Native
Americans and all other indigenous populations, cultures, countries, when
people brainwashed by a culture of greed and religiously, scientifically
(eugenics), and more recently 'humanitarianlly' justified violence got in
there to take their resources.

Is this way of life worth preserving? Maybe there is something better, maybe a
self-sustaining, thriving way of life that is in harmony with nature and
doesn't need continuous conquering, colonization, resource raping and
pillaging in order to be maintained would be worth exploring first, before we
think about jumping ship?

Maybe all this apocalyptic stuff is all BS, and it is just a sign we need to
change something in the way we live, rather than we need to jump ship?

The problem is some people would like us to not change at all, or to change
such that they can maintain or even increase their power and privileges (see
carbon tax scam). This is where the problem lies.

The only thing we need right now is to wake up and separate wheat from chaff,
inquire into ourselves, find our own truth of who we are and what we are doing
here, and reject all theories imposed by any so called 'authority'.

Forget about space exploration for now, it's just another distraction.

Inner (and outer) truth is what we need right now.

~~~
mkr-hn
Your comment sounds like a wordier version of "we should stop exploring space
and solve all the problems on Earth." It doesn't sound any more compelling
when you use more words to say it. We can continue to push our boundaries
while working on improving things.

~~~
thornad
Nope, I'm not saying anyhting against space exploration. On the contrary. I
actually did work as a contractor for NASA, and it was a dream of mine to work
there. But I do have a problem with going there as an escape from the mess we
can't face at home, and to rob and pillage some more - a pattern so common to
our culture.

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PedroCandeias
I agree with Hawking. But we need to understand why space exploration isn't
happening and what's being done about it.

Space exploration is different from earlier forms of exploration because the
technological and financial requirements are a couple orders of magnitude
higher than they have ever been. Also, we have yet to find natural resources
up in space which would justify the expense of mining them.

That's why it isn't happening at the pace some people expected after Apollo.

But with the latest developments in orbital tourism, and a world population
that's generally wealthier than it's ever been, tech and financial huddles
will fall in time.

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alexwolfe
Unfortunately colonization with conventional spaceflight is not realistic. It
would be far easier and exponentially cheaper to try to colonize the dessert
than any moon or planet in our solar system.

However, if we can figure out a way to travel very quickly without the use of
fossil fuels than things start to get interesting.

~~~
ew
Even at the speed of light the closest potential planets we could colonize at
4.5 years away. Now think about communication. Telling your parent's "hi"
would take 4.5 years in either direction, even if we could ensure the signal
gets back.

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atarian
"People are like dung. When they're all together they smell really bad, but if
you spread them out they fertilize the land." Forgot who the author of that
quote was..

~~~
shrikant
I've heard this about money - "Money is like manure. If you spread it around
it does a lot of good. But if you pile it up in one place it stinks like
hell."

See <http://www.quotecosmos.com/quotes/27137/view>.

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talkthetalk
Talk is cheap. We are pretty clear on what is required for space exploration
on that level. How about he stops talking about it and instead comes up with
the physics required for such endeavors:

    
    
      - Hyper drive/Warp drive or any other faster-than-light drives.
      - Shield generators providing the equivalent of 100km of atmosphere.
      - Sub-space communication devices or some other faster-than-light communication technology.
      - Inertial dampeners. IE gravity/anti-gravity generators.
      - Fuel and power generating devices to run the above technology.
    

and so on

~~~
pyrhho
A feasible cold-sleep system would solve a lot of these. As it means it
matters a lot less how long it takes to get somewhere.

I was reading "A Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge the other day, and his
portrayal of that was pretty good. Basically on a long trip the crew cycles
being awake and "on watch". So there are always some people awake to deal with
problems, but everyone only has to expend a year or two of their lifespan on
the trip. (As an aside, great book)

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ew
Other than Mars, any future humans living on any "M" class planets that we
discover will be one-way, multi-generational trips. Unless we can travel
instantaneously throughout the universe, exploration is pretty pointless since
it'll literally take decades (in each direction) to communicate with our
colonies, never mind bringing resources back to Earth.

Either we're never leaving, a few brave souls leave, or we're all leaving.
Really there's little incentive to leave unless the rest of your life, and
your grandchildren's, and their children's lives are that much better off
aboard a space ship than they are on Earth.

Hawking also recently stated that if we ever met "aliens" they would almost
certainly be aggressive toward us, which I disagree with. Hawking definitely
doesn't give much credit to the human race, or any other potentially
intelligent life forms.

Unless instantaneous travel is possible (which it probably is, but not anytime
soon), us and any other form of intelligent life in the universe are in the
same boat.

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agentgt
As a whole civilization is getting better. We are becoming less violent, less
aggressive and more educated then ever.

As the author of freakanomics says "Its amazing statistically how many people
'Do the right thing.'".

Its also discouraging how Hawking does not back any of this with charts or
numbers or something that would be convincing. I have to wonder if Hawking's
agenda and outlook are from his own "selfish desires".

Certainly there are more achievable options then the immense challenges of
space. Like underground infrastructure or mass gene therapy that allows
immense intelligence for all (think Limitless for all).

Also have you noticed that most "dynasties" do not go out like a light switch.
Its a very slow decline. Examples: Romans, Ottoman Empire, the Dinosaurs
various music artists and athletic teams.

I am betting that humanity will end in a slow boring decline.

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Lagged2Death
I'd _like_ to cheer for Hawking's position, but I find the opposing view
really convincing:

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-
high...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high-
frontier-redux.html)

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mostlyListening
The problem with making predictions about a complex system (nonlinear system)
like human civilization is that there are so many factors and variables that
can affect the trajectory that accurate prediction is virtually impossible.
You would think that, of all people, a physicist would appreciate that and
thus refrain from making strong claims about the future trajectory of such a
system.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect>

<http://necsi.edu/research/overview/prediction.html>

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pagejim
It is a great worry for me, that we have stopped looking out into the space
with the kind of fascination that we used to.

Unfortunately, most of the world's wealth and technology is somehow taking
(pushing) us to our own end. With Nuclear weapons seeing ever more
proliferation and irreversible climate change knocking on our doors, I feel
that we might just not end up with enough time to save ourselves from Mass
extinction.

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johno215
Good (but long) video of why NASA's goal should be colonization.

<http://vimeo.com/24260744>

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TechNewb
Constellation should be restarted.

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Rastafarian
Is his new TV show worth watching?

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andyl
No. If we can't make it work here on earth, where we have everything we need,
how are we going to make it work somewhere else? Before going into the galaxy,
we have to fix ourselves and our society. And we can do it.

~~~
zeteo
> Before going into the galaxy, we have to fix ourselves and our society

Space exploration, i.e. NASA, takes up 0.6% of the federal budget, and
decreasing. The Great Society programs, Medicare, Medicaid and Social
Security, take up 54% and increasing.

So, be happy: as a society, we've decided that an extra 1% on grandma's
pension is worth more than a Moon colony and humans on Mars (quite likely to
have been achieved with double the space exploration budget).

~~~
Rastafarian
You've made an interesting point, but budget is a very poor measure of effort.
Grandpa's pension mostly circulates on Earth, while NASA budget throws
extremely hard to design and produce stuff into space.

~~~
bff
Not really - a lot of the technology that NASA builds ends up being used in
other areas, from materials science to computer engineering.

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Peaker
Land exploration lead to having many different kingdoms, which scaled wars up
from inter-tribal wars to inter-kingdom wars. Later, world wars.

Space exploration will scale wars up from inter-continental world wars, to
inter-world wars, which are much more massive.

~~~
PedroCandeias
Right now I'm sitting in Portugal, Europe, typing this on a laptop which was
designed in America and manufactured in China. And we're not at war with one
another at the moment. I believe there may have been a few consequences to
exploration that were far nicer than war, trade chief among them.

~~~
koolkelso
Not only that, if we've become advanced enough to finally decide we should
genuinely spend our efforts on exploring space, by then perhaps a humanistic
consciousness could have emerged rendering war irrelevant.

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leak
False. Humans are, by default, gonna fuck shit up. I don't care what planet we
end up on. We're going to destroy ourselves before the lack of resources
destroys us. That's just me tho.

~~~
iwwr
The point being, space expansion would prevent the sudden eradication of the
human technological culture. Politicians, warmongers, prophets and priests
will continue to fuck things up, but distributed redundancy means not
everything is destroyed at once.

~~~
leak
I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted.

Anyways, who says Earth created "Politicians, warmongers, prophets and
priests, etc.."? Kids fight among themselves without any of these lovely
things to help them. As does everything in the living world.

~~~
chc
You're being downvoted because you missed the point and continue to do so.
Nobody said that earth created those things, or that going into space would
somehow make us more compassionate. The point is that being spread out across
interplanetary distances reduces the need for bad people to take truly drastic
measures, and mitigates the damage that any particular disaster can do. Even
if we a madman managed to blow up the entire world, as long as he can't do so
to every world that humans are inhabiting simultaneously, humanity will live
on.

